Welwood crackin ‘em up all over

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This article was published 20/10/2015 (3875 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

With a little hard work and a knack for turning a funny idea into a gut-busting bit, local comedian Jordan Welwood is taking his act on the road, getting belly laughs outside of the Perimeter.

“Each year I’d kind of set a new goal, and they keep happening,” Welwood said before a gig at the King’s Head Pub last week. “I gotta just keep riding it out.”

Welwood got his start in the local comedy scene by entering Winnipeg’s Funniest Person with a Day Job contest at Rumor’s Comedy Club in 2009.

“From there, there was an open mic just starting up that John B. Duff was running at the Cavern,” Welwood said. “It just snowballed from there.”

Fast forward to 2015, which has been a big year for Welwood, who graduated from River East Collegiate in 2005 (“Go Kodiaks!”). Apart from gigging regularly in and around the city, Welwood graduated from Red River’s Creative Communications program, and was the runner up in the Sirius XM Canada’s Next Top Comic competition, earning him a co-headlining spot at Just For Laughs 42 next year in Toronto, and a TV taping at Just For Laughs in Montreal.

“With contests, you can’t really care about winning,” Welwood said. “You’ve just got to try to do well in front of the people who are there. If you kill it in front of them, you’ve already won.”

By all accounts, Welwood did just that during his set at the Canada’s Next Top Comic finals. One of the judges of the competition, comedian Pete Holmes, was so impressed by Welwood’s act that Holmes asked the up and comer to open for him the following evening.

“I got to hang out and work with him,” Welwood said. “It’s kind of surreal. To get that kind of validation, that was huge.”

Over the course of the last six years on stage, Welwood has developed his craft alongside a scene that is now coming into its own.

“We didn’t really know anything when we started,” Welwood recalled. “We were just trying to learn, do shows, and get better. The people who do run shows now, they’re comics, they’re really concerned about the quality of the show. If we’re putting on a good show at some open mic, then people will have fun and they’ll make it their night out. As a result of that it builds on itself.”

As for himself, Welwood is honing his craft, developing killer material for his Just For Laughs appearances next summer.

“I like to work it out onstage a lot,” he explained. “I like to hit up every show I can in the city. I’ll just keep hammering at it, adding to it and taking away. Then, maybe in a year from now, it’ll be a really good bit. If you can make it work at all different shows around the city, that’s a good barometer.”

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