Comedian Loni Love coming to Lexington,
loves to entertain, still uses street smarts

By Mark Boxley
mark@kyforward.com

When comedian Loni Love hits the stage in Lexington later this month, she’s not going to be up there trying to make people laugh. She’s just going to be herself.

“I still don’t think I can make people laugh,” she said in a recent telephone interview. “I just perform.”

It will be Love’s first time in Lexington when she takes the stage at Comedy Off Broadway Feb. 15-18 (though, she points out that it won’t be her first time in Kentucky).

The latchkey kid from the Brewster-Douglas Housing Projects in Detroit, Love didn’t start off to be a comedian. She worked on the General Motors assembly line while she was still in high school. And she has a degree in electrical engineering from Prairie View A&M University in Texas.

It was during her time in college that Love first started to do standup comedy. After she got her degree, Love took a job in Los Angeles and continued to make people laugh on the side. It wasn’t until an unfortunate work situation that she decided to move to greener, funnier pastures and make the jump to a full-time career in comedy.

The company she was working for was going through a round of layoffs and Love was already looking to do something else. So, instead of letting one of her co-workers get fired, she volunteered to be one of the layoffs.

“I told my boss to save someone else’s job,” she said.

Since that time, Love has made a name for herself in the world of comedy. She was named Hot Comic for 2009 by Campus Activity magazine and was deemed among the “Top 10 Comics to Watch” by Variety and Comedy Central.

When not traveling the globe on her “Love Train” comedy tour, Love hosts E!s “Wildest TV Show Moments,” and recurs as a panelist on both the late night talk show “Chelsea Lately” and truTV’s “The Smoking Gun Presents: The World’s Dumbest.”

Love is also a host of Logo TV’s popular series “Gossip Queens,” currently in its second season.

She was cast in the movie “Soul Plane” where she acted alongside Tom Arnold, D.L. Hughley and Snoop Dog. She as also appeared in theatrical productions of “12 Angry Women,” “LoveSide,” “Sister Girl,” and “Devil’s Journey.”

On the small screen, Love starred in her own half-hour special for Comedy Central in 2007 and has been seen on the channel’s “Premium Blend,” “Weekends at the DL” and “Chocolate News.” She has appeared on “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno,” “The Late Late Show with Craig Kilborn,” “Dr. Drew’s Life Changers,” “Kickin’ It,” “The Doctors,” “The Joy Behar Show,” “Rosie,” “The Best Damn Sports Show Period,” VH1′s “I Love the 70′s/80′s/90′s,” Vh1′s “The Great Debate,” and “Comics Unleashed,” among numerous others.

When she comes to Lexington, on the “Love Train” tour — which has spanned the last two years — Love’s plan is to simply entertain. Lexington may be a smaller market than a lot of comics would come to, but that’s not an issue for Love.

“A lot of comedians don’t want to go to the smaller cities … because it’s a money buyout thing for them,” she said. “For me, it’s about entertaining people.”

Growing up in the projects of Detroit, Love had to develop street smarts to get by. Those experiences definitely play a role in her standup routines today.

“I think that foundation has stayed with me,” she said. “And I think that’s what I base my comedy on; it’s something real.”

Because Love injects a lot of topical news into her routine, each night “my act is always different,” she said.

She can’t stress enough the importance of seeing a live standup comedy routine, just in general. There is just a feel, an immersive experience a person gets in a live comedy show that can’t be replicated on TV, in movies or online.

“Go to a live standup show in your lifetime,” she said. “It doesn’t have to be mine.”

In the long run, Love wants her show to not just entertain, she wants people, especially young people, to take something very personal away from the show. Her situation growing up is not something that can’t be overcome, and Love hopes people will take that with them after they see her show.

“I can help to show a kid that, hey, if you’re in a certain situation, you can get out of it,” she said.

And it is that interaction with the crowd that makes all the hard work and all the traveling worth it.

“My favorite part is usually at the very end when I ask people about themselves,” she said. “Because you always find something different in every show.

“I’m just excited to be coming (to Lexington) and I can’t wait to be there.”

For more information on Love, visit her website. For more information on her upcoming show in Lexington, visit the Comedy Off Broadway website.