A family-friendly standup star is bringing his viral brand of comedy to the desert.
For more than a decade, Trey Kennedy’s safe-for-work humor about family and life has garnered millions of views online across multiple platforms, and plenty of sold-out standup shows all over the world. Kennedy puts relatable jokes about kids, partners, friends, parents and more into both his online sketch videos and his standup set, always keeping things PG.
You’ve seen him on TikTok, Instagram and Facebook, and now you can see Trey Kennedy perform as part of “The Relatable Tour” on Friday, Dec. 5, at Agua Caliente Rancho Mirage.
During a recent phone interview, Kennedy explained why he thinks his current show is his favorite piece of work thus far.
“I just feel like I’m growing, on and off stage,” Kennedy said. “I’m a husband; I have two kids; and I’m getting into my 30s. I feel like I really found my groove touring and balancing everything, and just got a lot of good feedback from people who have seen each tour, and they like this one the best. I feel the same way.”
Though he’s been both an internet sensation and a road warrior, Kennedy sees his life as “pretty regular.”
“I live in Kansas City. I hang around my buddies I met in college, and I’m just pretty consumed with being a dad and a husband, trying to balance it,” he said. “I like to think I live a pretty regular life. … Along with that, jokes pop in my head all the time while experiencing life things that so many people do.”
Kennedy is so family-forward that he often brings his wife and kids on tour with him.
“Our first born, he came to 30-plus states and a few countries,” Kennedy said. “We took him everywhere. It’s wild to reflect back on that. I have two kids, and they don’t come to every show. We’re still figuring that out. They came out to a couple of weekends, and we were humbled a little bit with the two versus the one. … We’re picking and choosing, so I can kind of minimize being away from my family. It’s a balance.”
Touring as a comedian can be lonely; it’s a one-man show, after all. But thanks to tight connections with his touring crew, and the fact that his wife and kids spend time with him on tour, Kennedy avoids most of those touring-comic blues.
“I’m lucky,” he said. “We have a great crew—a small crew—and the few guys who do the road with me, we’re best buds, and we have a great time. When the family is not there, that’s really unfortunate, and we make the most of it, but when the family does get there, (my crew members) are really cool with dealing with kiddos in the green room.”
A conservative upbringing led Kennedy’s early online sketches to fall into the safe-for-work category.
“I first went viral 12 years ago now, and I’ve always just made videos on what I thought was funny and what I’m experiencing,” he said. “I was raised pretty modestly and conservatively, so I initially made clean comedy because I knew my mom was watching.”
He said he’s proud he chose a career of clean comedy.
“Life evolves, and I just felt authentically right being clean, because that’s how I was raised, and now I have a whole group of fans who really appreciate that,” he said. “I get those comments all the time of, ‘Thanks for keeping it clean,’ so I really take pride in that now. Especially as a dad, and wanting my kids to look up to me, I’m glad I’m a clean comedian, so they can enjoy it as well as the years go on.”
Kennedy is still making viral sketch comedy hits in between standup dates and specials. I was curious how he decides whether to present a certain joke onstage or online.
“Sometimes it’s just a gut feeling,” Kennedy said. “There’s no line of reason to it, but the more personal anecdotes, I like to get on stage and do, to really be more intimate with the crowd. Some of those that are more visual, I just go, ‘Oh, that’s a video.’”
Kennedy gave an example of a recent viral hit that, as of this writing, has 9 million TikTok views, a half-million likes on Instagram, and more than 300,000 reactions on Facebook.
“I hired this middle-aged actor, and the bit was teaching my dad how to use his phone in the way he taught me how to do my homework,” he said. “I’m just screaming at him, ‘Are you even trying?’ That, to me, is way better as a video, because you get to see this old man react to me, versus me trying to just tell it onstage. … Sometimes I take an old video idea and embellish it onstage, and sometimes I take a failed stage joke and turn it into a sketch, and it works better there. It’s all trial and error. There’s no science to it—and that’s what makes this fun.”
Kennedy is one of a relative few comics who have mastered both online and in-person comedy.
“I’m so grateful to have both outlets,” he said. “It lets me just be more creative. I’m so grateful I can do the road and make a living that way, but also, we’ve seen with COVID that who-knows-what-else is coming, so it’s nice not to solely rely on ticket sales to provide for my family.”
Some videos will explode on some platforms, and not perform as well on others. Kennedy said this is because different social media platforms attract different age ranges—but, “It’s important to be on all of them,” he said.
“Most everyone knows that if you’re ranking it by age, it goes Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat, and I don’t do much on Snapchat, because those are mainly teenagers there,” he said. “… You see different videos pop on different places, which is fascinating and confusing and challenging, but it’s also great to have all of them, too, because the algorithms change. One year, Facebook changes something, and now you get a bunch of views, and one day, TikTok changes some things, and now you get less views, so that’s all happening simultaneously.
“That’s why I’m also so grateful for the touring side, where I can get in a room with people and laugh and not worry about getting their attention or hacking an algorithm. We can just make jokes and laugh.”
Trey Kennedy is set to perform at 8 p.m., Friday, Dec. 5, at The Show at Agua Caliente Rancho Mirage, at 32250 Bob Hope Drive. Tickets start at $48.73. For tickets and more information, visit aguacalientecasinos.com.