Comedy, TX gone

by Brian McKim & Traci Skene on October 15th, 2007

An article in the Beaumont Enterprise attempts to sort out the issues involved in the shuttering of that town’s only full-time comedy club, Comedy, TX. That club was co-owned by comedian Slade Ham, who is putting Beaumont in his rear view mirror and moving to L.A.

There’s some disagreement over what killed the club– was it the city’s ban on smoking?

“There’s so many factors involved when you own a business – there’s taxes, there’s employees and comics’ schedules,” said Ham, who spearheaded an unsuccessful effort last year to reverse the smoking ban by putting it on the ballot. “I won’t miss anything about owning a business. It’s the most overrated thing in the world. … But the smoking ban, I don’t know if it had an impact or not. Everyone that was confronted with it adapted. We adapted, we built a patio, moved our open-mic outside.”

Or was it Ham’s desire to move on to the big city? Either way, Beaumont and the comics who call it home are without a venue as of the show’s end last night.

The Male and Female Halves of the Staff did the room twice and found it to be well-run and based on an interesting business model. (And it afforded the Male Half a chance to visit with his old college roommate.) The venue moved after Beaumont was ravaged by a hurricane or two. No word on whether Lee Melton will fire up a new club.