If there’s anyone who can turn the Cariboo into the Caribhahaha, it’s Alex Mackenzie.
The Prince George comedian is the area’s most nationally renowned comedian this side of Tom Stade who is out on the current circuit. Mackenzie just makes his moves differently than most. Batman has Robin, Kim Possible has Ron Stoppable, and Mackenzie has his RV. Like a turtle, that trusty shell is his coast-to-coast home and it goes with him everywhere in Canada.
Last week was his birthday, so after performing at Yuk Yuks in Vancouver, Mackenzie was back in Prince George for some family time and arrange his merchandise supply for the big tour of northern B.C. He’s in the middle of the Highway 16 leg now and rolls into Quesnel on May 10 for three dates on Highway 97.
“I’m very excited, man. It’s so great to be home,” he said, and this is like a second home for him. The fans used to cheer him on as a Central Interior Hockey League forward for the Quesnel Kangaroos for a couple of seasons (plus two more for the CIHL’s Omineca Ice). This tour feels just like a Roos road trip, he said.
“It’s all the towns I played hockey in. The CIHL is in Rupert, Kitimat, Terrace, Smithers, Quesnel, Williams Lake, so it’s like doing a whole hockey tour but it’s comedy.”
He has done comedy shows in the Cariboo before, but he isn’t around often. His schedule takes him around the world, his farthest gig so far being Perth, Australia.
He also does large shows. Every comedian is hungry for laughs, by Mackenzie takes it to blockbuster levels and got that out of his system in autumn when he and four other headline-caliber performers (comedians, magicians, even an acro-archer) did a nine-night B.C./Alberta Hungry For Laughts tour for charity, filling major venues all the way.
Hungry For Laughs was a huge success, as it has been for a number of years, now, but it doesn’t include the smaller communities and it casts Mackenzie in the role of host, so he gets to only sprinkle some jokes and anecdotes in between the acts as he glues all the performers together. This tour is a traditional comedy presentation.
“From my perspective, what’s great is I get to now present my hour, my full show,” Mackenzie told The Observer. “I get to curate that a little bit differently. There’s some jokes, then some stories, I always close my show with something motivational and inspiring. It’s very fun, because you get to take people along on the full emotional rollercoaster, where they’re laughing, and connecting through the stories, and then, as one woman said at a show the other day in Yuk Yuks ‘you made us laugh all night and now ytou’re going to make us cry,’ which is really cool to bring that full range of emotions to a show.”
Mackenzie said it’s all in the spirit of uplifting entertainment. If he really wanted to make you cry, he’d start talking about the price of groceries and gas, which happen to be the two biggest expenses for someone who lives in an RV.
Despite that, he is actually excited to point the rolling home down the road for the next show, and the next after that. Even though he quit his job as a pulp mill power engineer and sold his house to pursue this unorthodox career, he wasn’t comfortable on the job-site.
“I’m very confident on stage now, and that’s just from years of doing it,” he said. “When I first started, oh my god…just terrified. Like, I remember driving to road gigs in the winter hoping we crashed into the ditch so we didn’t have to do the show. That’s how scared I was. And now, the performance is something I really look forward to.”
More than 60-million people have watched his live videos. His debut TV special is available in Canada on YouTube but in the United States and United Kingdom it is available on Amazon Prime.
The new hour of material he is bringing out for the Cariboo audiences will get practiced all across B.C. this summer, then he rolls east and plans to record his sophomore special in Fredericton.
In addition to Mackenzie’s show May 10 at the Quesnel Seniors’ Centre, he will be in Williams Lake at the Gibraltar Room on May 11, then in 100 Mile House at the South Cariboo Theatre on May 12.
READ MORE: Cut from the Quesnel Roos kicked off Mackenzie’s comedy
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