NASCAR star Michael Waltrip adds stand-up comedy to resume

Want to make Michael Waltrip nervous? Forget about blocking and crowding in the third turn. Check out his Vegas showroom debut instead.

"I'm pretty comfortable in a car to know what I'm doing, and I'm exactly the opposite onstage," says Waltrip, whose "Michael Waltrip Comedy Garage" today and Saturday extends the NASCAR star's series of hyphenates: driver-owner-commentator-author and, now, stand-up comedian.

"I'm new at stand-up. This is, like, my third show," he says of the venture that began in Kansas City last month. Waltrip's team includes two ringers, pro comics Jon Reep and Henry Cho. "I can get up on the stage, and if I notice that what I'm telling is not going good, I can say 'Thank y'all, here's somebody who does this for real.' "

But no pulling away from danger. Waltrip will be telling jokes. "I've always loved comedy. No matter what town we went to, if there was a comedian playing, I'd go watch."

Acknowledging his reputation for being "sort of funny accidentally" in interviews and color commentary over the years, the 47-year-old says the trick is to translate that to formal stand-up. "If you look up the definition of stand-up comedy, it's funny on purpose. A little bit of pressure there.

"It's basically acting," he has decided. "You're telling stories and acting them out for people. The more you make it seem real, really a person doing it, then it seems to me the better it works."

The first couple of shows drew positive encouragement from Reep (the Dodge "Hemi guy") and Cho, the Korean-American with a Southern twang. "They helped me a whole lot," he says.

"They said I seemed to have a decent stage presence and that people wanted to hear what I had to say. And that's a big advantage in the comedy world. A lot of times you struggle to get people's attention. I had everybody's attention to start with. Now I just need to learn to take advantage of that."

Waltrip is on quite a run lately. His stand-up debut came just weeks before he won the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series at Daytona. That was Feb. 18, 10 years to the day his Daytona 500 victory was overshadowed by the final-lap accident that killed his team owner, Dale Earnhardt.

The "Comedy Garage" falls in the midst of promotion for Waltrip's serious memoir, "In the Blink of an Eye," in which he looks back at his early career and goes public with his struggles in the aftermath of Earnhardt's death.

"The 10th year since Dale's death was a big part of who I am. I wanted to do something to celebrate Dale's life," he says of the memoir. Racing at Daytona in a black truck also was just a way to say, "Miss you Dale, love you," he says.

"The book is about life, and the comedy show's a chance to escape life. I think a balance of both is really important," he says. "It's nice that people can see however tough life can be, you can always escape it.

"I think people just assume life was perfect (for me)," he adds. "I think the book is a way to show life is a gift. There's good and there's bad, and you just deal with it."

Contact reporter Mike Weatherford at mweatherford@ reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0288.