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Josh Sneed's love for stand-up comedy took him away from a career at P&G
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Like many young comics, Cincinnati native Josh Sneed had a promising career outside of comedy. "I was systems analyst for Procter & Gamble. I worked in IT. I basically managed a help desk. A computer geek -- that's what it was," he recalls. While working at P&G, he felt compelled to test his joke-telling skills at an open mic night at Go Bananas in February of 1998.
"I always wanted to be on Saturday Night Live," he explains, "and I thought comedy might be a good place to start. I just loved it."
For the first few months, he wasn't too concerned with becoming an immediate smash. "I don't know if I was well received," he admits. "I just kind of just fell in love with being up there, and I couldn't wait to try it again. If I did well, I couldn't wait to get that feeling again, and if I had a bad set, I couldn't wait to get up there and try it a different way or try something else."
Eventually it worked out well enough that he had to make a choice. "Continue with the day job or decide to give (stand-up) my all. I thought I was young enough that if it didn't pan out I could bounce back from it. So far I have no complaints."
His parents, however, weren't sure if Sneed had made the right decision. "My mom was disappointed," he says. "She's a P&G employee. I think the thought of me leaving P&G for anywhere else kind of upset her. But both of my parents knew how happy it made me, and that whenever I do something I try to give it 100 percent, so they respected the fact that I was going to give it my all."
That commitment meant a certain dedication to trial and error. "There's a balance between having good material and finding the right material for your persona on stage. I think my problem (at first) was that I was just trying to write jokes, and I didn't have a stage presence established. I figured out that once I developed a stage presence it was easier to write for me, instead of trying to write jokes that maybe don't fit my character."
Sneed adds, "It's like telling a story and not having to say 'I guess you had to be there.' "
Though he used to do impressions, he's moved away from that over the years. "It is so hard to not say, 'Here's an impression of so and so,' " he says. "It's hard not to get labeled as an impressionist, so I like to just throw in little voices like my grandpa or an ex-girlfriend instead of 'What would Star Wars be like if Hank Hill were Yoda?' "
Sneed's career has moved along at a fairly steady clip. In 2004 he was selected to perform at the prestigious Montreal Just For Laughs Comedy Festival. His Comedy Central Premium Blend performance debuts Friday at 10 p.m. Can the call from Saturday Night Live be closer? Perhaps.
"One of my best friends is on SNL this year (Finesse Mitchell). Now that I kind of have two degrees of separation from the show with a good manager, and I'm starting to build up my credits, I feel like the opportunity might come, whereas before it was just, 'How cool would that be?' "
Sneed feels that if you have the notion to try stand-up, you should. "Anybody that even thinks they might want to do it, they have to do it. It's kind of like being a server. You leave a better tip after you've been a server for even a day, because you have better appreciation of what it's like."
JOSH SNEED performs at Go Bananas in Montgomery Dec. 16-19.
