A tall, lanky man, with a head of curly brown hair, a drooping mustache and thick, expressive eyebrows, Brown talks fast with the assurance of a skilled confidence man. One imagines that this was a learned during the eight years he spent as a street performer, juggling flaming torches to entertain the passing tourists. 

Brown‘s humor is wrapped around a subtle commentary on life in America – and the absurd things some of us do without thinking. 

Brown thinks that telling funny stories, as opposed to just jokes, is a major factor in his rise in the comedy scene “People can follow a story,” he said “It’s like juggling. You keep their attention with the balls and you make them laugh, kind of from the side. But to put pressure on somebody – now I’m going to tell you a joke and this joke is going to make you laugh – that’s a really hard way to do comedy. And I feel it’s an insincere way to do comedy. Because I don’t think humor is a thing in itself. It’s not a substance. It’s a style. It’s not the wood, it’s the varnish. And once you have a story, making it funny is easy.”

Born in Charlotte, Michigan, Brown was abandoned by his parents when he was 12 years old. “My parents got a divorce, and my dad signed me into a state institution. 

Brown says he learned a lot about comedy while institutionalized. “Jailbird humor. Without a sense of humor you really can’t make it. To this day, I look back to the time in reform school is really being horrible, but I laughed a lot while I was in there.“ 

It was the late ‘60s when Brown got out – the hippie ethic was the rage, and Brown bought in. “I was on the road for about three years. At Woodstock and riding freight trains and hitchhiking and sleeping under bridges hand-to-mouth totally for a couple of years. Just open to anything.“ In fact, being open to anything is how Brown ended up an entertainer; he fell into it completely by chance. “I never did decide,“ he said, “I was hitchhiking down in San Luis Obispo. One night and at about 10 o’clock this guy picks me up in one of those old Plymouths. He took me out to his ranch and he was building this big circus wagon that he wanted to go out on the road with. And he was an accordion player. I told him I knew how to juggle, and he said, “Great we’ll be gypsies. We’ll travel around, perform for people.“ 

Which is what they did for the next few years, until Brown‘s friend got depressed and blew his brains out one night in Sacramento. “That just made me want to keep doing it. “said Brown when I asked if he that didn’t just sour him on the whole thing. “I never really had a father, and he had been like a father to me. He taught me how to work in the world. I felt if I quit, then it would all be wasted. So I went out on the street and made $50 the first day. So then I kept doing it. After a year I realized that I was a professional entertainer.“ 

Brown and his trained dog, Brownie became well known at the Cannery, Pier 39 and Ghirardelli Square. Then in 1977 at the invitation of Frank Kidder, Brown appeared at the San Francisco comedy competition. “I saw some stand ups and I realized this is an infinite art. Anything you want to talk about, you can talk about it. All you have to do is make people laugh every minute or so and you can talk about anything.“ Goodbye, variety act; hello stand up.

These days, Brown has no regrets about that decision. Does he think there’s a secret to becoming a successful comedian? “The thing about humor or comedy, it doesn’t exist as a thing,“ said Brown. “Nobody can say: this is funny. It’s what everybody agrees is funny. Nothing tangible there. It’s just the faith of the audience that makes it happen. If I say something funny, it isn’t that it’s funny, it’s the fact that we think it’s funny that makes it funny.“