Ginger Billy at the Rust Belt -- October 13.
Friday, October 13, 8 p.m.
The Rust Belt, 533 12th Avenue, East Moline IL
A South Carolina native boasting more than a million InstaGram followers, the red-headed, frequently shirtless comedian Ginger Billy brings his Midwestern tour to East Moline venue The Rust Belt on October 13, his debut video netting the performer nearly a million views on YouTube alone.
As stated in his online biography at GingerBillyComedy,com, as as told to The Daily Yonder, "Ginger Billy gives viewers a humorous look into life in rural Upstate South Carolina. And he’s doing it all on his own. He lives between Union and Lockhart, South Carolina, with his wife and family. For years, he says, he was a respiratory therapist. But one day, after the retirement of Dale Earnheart, Jr., he thought maybe he’d make a video. 'When I saw how many views it got,' he says, 'I thought to myself, you know what, this might be actually pretty cool. This might be something I want to try again.' The video has almost 840,000 views on YouTube alone. He estimates it got between 40 and 50 million views across all social media channels.
"From there, he said, things just took off. The next thing he knew he was doing stand-up. A manager signed him on and got him a gig at a casino. 'I’d never done stand-up before in my life,' he says. 'So the first time I ever did stand-up, he put me out on the stage and said ‘You’ve got five minutes in front of 4,000 people – have fun.’ It was a real sink or swim situation, you know?' After that, he started touring with Catfish Cooley and others. It was a whole new world, he said. 'Every day I wake up and I’m just like, this is absolutely amazing. I mean, I’m a dude, you know, I grew up in a little blue-collar town. You’re supposed to grow up. You go to school then you work here. I am making a very good living doing videos and acting the total jackass.'
“'It sounds cool, but it is the most stressful thing I’ve ever done in my life,' he says. 'Because every day I have people walking up to me saying, ‘Man, I love you,’ which is the coolest thing in the world to me. … But the downside is that your income is based on you, that’s the thing. If I put out a video and it doesn’t get 5 million views, I think it’s a failure. Now I’m so picky at what I put out I think I hurt myself because I will work my butt off to make a video and then be like ‘That’s not good enough.' [And] the only thing he won’t talk about, he says, is politics. The goal is to give people a place to breathe for a while. 'I want people to be able to come to my page and say, ‘Man, this is a break,’ Right?” he says. “Everybody, you know, I don’t care what you are. A Democrat, Republican. I don’t care. I just want people to be able to come and get a break from all the craziness going on.'"
Ginger Billy brings his tour to East Moline on October 13, admission is $29.75-49.75, and meet-and-greet passes (which don't include a ticket) are available for $60. For more information and reservations, visit TheRustBeltQC.com.
