Laugh if you want to, but please laugh

If folks working in the fields of Leopolis hear laughter in the distance, it can only mean one thing: Judd Reminger has come home to visit his family.

Whether they’re laughing with him or at him, the stand-up comedian who grew up in rural Shawano County is perfectly fine with that, as long as people are laughing. Constantly churning out jokes that leave audiences gasping for air and falling out of their chairs is no easy task, as Reminger learned over 11 years ago when someone suggested he give comedy a whirl.

“It was always something I wanted to do,” Reminger said. “I was in college, and a roommate of mine kind of pushed me towards doing it. We found a comedy competition about an hour away, and it was a competition where, if you bring enough people — it’s fan-voted — you become the winning comedian of the night.”

Reminger brought enough people to win the popular vote that night. The prize was $100 and the opportunity to open for a professional comedian at a club in Milwaukee.

“It was my first time doing comedy, and I didn’t know much about the art form,” Reminger said. “I wrote some jokes and thought I’d tell some jokes that I thought were funny and that my friends thought were funny.”

He acknowledged some of the other competitors were probably upset that their humor had been executed better but he wound up winning because he brought enough friends to stuff the ballot box. That tactic would come back to bite Reminger when he actually opened for the comedian two weeks later.

“I completely bombed,” he said. “My friends weren’t in the audience. I was very new to the art form, and I just remember there was so much dead noise. After I got off the stage, I went to the back of the room and put my head down. The owner of the club saw me. He put his arm around me and said, ‘Hey. You’re very new. Don’t worry. It happens.’”

Taking the words of wisdom to heart, Reminger stuck it out and continues to perform for metropolitan audiences across southern Wisconsin today. He turned that one-time disastrous performance into a successful full-time career, doing full shows as a headliner, helping to book other comedians, introducing some of them and working as the producer and showrunner for the West Bend Theater in Milwaukee.

“Pretty much all my weekends are filled with comedy,” he said. “I pretty much do it all. I have to put it on my taxes, so that’s an official thing.”

Reminger is currently living in Milwaukee but still finding time to come home to visit family. He is the son of John and Kay Reminger, the latter being familiar to locals because she writes the “Farm Life From a Farm Wife” column that appears in NEW Media newspapers, as well as the Marion Advertiser.

It was a matter of writing better jokes, practicing more and refining his craft that helped Reminger to avoid any more shows where the last words from his mouth were not followed up with laughter and applause. Reminger hadn’t intended to go into comedy when he started at Lakeland University, but he said he fell in love with the craft.

“It’s still like a rush when you get on stage,” Reminger said. “When you perform in any kind of live performance, the energy you feel from the crowd is unreal. You go to open mics. You go to places where you can try out new jokes and find out whether they were funny.”

Reminger noted that, while folks come out on a Saturday night to see a comedian perform, they don’t realize that person has been working all week to prepare for the show and figure out which jokes should make the cut and how they flow together.

“I fell in love with that as a young comedian,” Reminger said. “That’s fun to me.”

Reminger said his whole family is a constant source of comedic material, noting that it gives audience a piece of who he is inside. Growing up on a farm is relatable across the Midwest, whether he’s performing in Milwaukee or traveling to St. Louis, Missouri.

“I have jokes about about my mom and my dad, my siblings, growing up on a farm. It’s fun to do,” Reminger said. “Every time I go home, I can grab another piece.”

When asked if he’d ever come back home for a comedy show, Reminger was of two minds about that.

“My mom asked me about that very recently,” Reminger said. “When I go back (home), I have rapport already. It’s a little bit different than when I’m performing in front of strangers. When I talk about my dad, it’s not like he’s a character, and they already think, ‘Oh, that’s him. I know him. I play golf with him.’”

Although Reminger’s making a living off of laughter, he still feels there’s further to go on the comedy trail, growing his fan base. He dreams of having a television special or being on a show on Netflix, and he aspires to put out a comedy album. He said he plans to keep doing stand-up comedy as long as it’s fun.

“I don’t think I’ve even peaked yet,” Reminger said. “For me, it just keeps growing and growing. I don’t like to look back and think, ‘Oh, that was a rejection point.’ I just want to keep getting better and having fun with that.”

lpulaski@newmedia-wi.com