Dusty Slay Is ‘Having a Good Time’ With Netflix Comedy Special

Comedian Dusty Slay likes to do things a little different. Looking like a cross between a long haired member of Lynyrd Skynyrd and a NASCAR fan from the early ’90s (who’s also an accountant), the Southern born and bred entertainer doesn’t ask his audience if they’re having a good time — he walks onstage and tells them they’re having a good time. And then he backs it up.

Famous for capturing the beautiful absurdity of the American trailer park, Slay has a way of poking fun at Southern life that’s full of love. Recalling his hero Jeff Foxworthy’s deep and abiding appreciation for the life he makes fun of, Slay’s own brand of working-class humor is now featured on his own episode on Netflix’s The Standups, and he spoke with Sounds Like Nashville about “making it big.”

Hanging out at his home in Nashville, just after a radio appearance on WSM 650 AM and with a show at Zanies that night, Slay described his start in comedy as purely natural. He was always a funny kid, he said, and after a 2003 move to Charleston, South Carolina, he ended up entering and winning some local competitions. That inspired him to “go pro,” and when Slay moved to Nashville in 2014, he had the express goal of becoming a road comic. “That’s better than waiting tables or selling pesticides, for me anyway,” he said with a laugh.

Since then, the funnyman has been on The Tonight Show three times, Jimmy Kimmel Live! once, and has made more than a dozen appearances on the Grand Ole Opry. Clips online find him riffing on looking like a Walmart Billy Ray Cyrus, having to trick Goodwill into taking old TV, and especially life in the trailer park where Slay grew up. Anyone’s who’s never lived in one doesn’t understand, he says. They get a bad rap.

“For one I think everybody thinks it’s all domestic abuse and everything’s sad, nobody has any food, and that wasn’t the case with me,” he explains. “We didn’t have a lot of money and my parents were divorced, but my family always cared about me. I always say the worst thing about living in a trailer park was the address. I didn’t mind living in a trailer, and we had a good time. I wouldn’t have traded the good times we had for any amount of money … but, when you have to write ‘Lot 8 – Morris Trailer Park’ [for your address], it was always embarrassing.”

These days Slay is living in Nashville calls Music City a comedy boom town, with Zanies as his pick for “one of the best if not the best comedy club in the country.” Fans can get an up close look at his style there just about every week if he’s not on the road, or, they can just tune in to Netflix.

His 30 minute episode of The Standups gives Slay a huge platform and the chance to really stretch his comedic legs, and he rose the occasion with the best material of his nearly 20 year career. “For me the episode itself is kind of a ‘Greatest Hits’ from my years on the road,” he says. “I wanted to put something together that really introduced me to the world.”

After a side-splitting set, Slay clearly slayed his big shot. (Comedy is hard). The only problem is, now those jokes are all old news. Slay doesn’t want to get in front of a live audience and do material they’ve already heard on Netflix.

“[It’s all] burned, and that’s the biggest bummer of it — especially my drinking jokes,” Slay says. “There’s a couple on [the Netflix special] that are not really old, and I was looking forward to doing them a while. I like to write a joke that has nothing to do with anything in the world, that way I can tell that joke forever. But then you do it on Netflix …

“I got a joke about hotel rooms, and the plugs being all loose, and I love that joke, but I burned it too quick on Netflix,” he goes on. “I also did all my trailer park jokes which I’ve been telling for a while, so I’m happy to have put them on there. I kinda hate that I burned the drinking jokes, though.”

Luckily for fans, that just means Slay needs new jokes — and he’s up for the challenge. Proclaiming he could film an hour-long special “today” if called upon, the comedian’s new material is still based lovingly in the world he knows best.

“I’ve got a bunch of country music jokes, and I’ve even got a seven-minute breakdown of the song ‘It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere,’” he says. “There are a few new hotel jokes, and now I’ve got some weed jokes to replace my drinking jokes. None of my stuff is ever, like, promoting drinking or weed, though. Mainly my weed jokes are about how weed is too good to be fun now. It’s an anxiety attack in a leaf.”

Having come so far, Slay admits he never thought telling jokes on TV or the Grand Ole Opry would be a viable career — he just loved the feeling of making people laugh. But with more big things in his future, he thinks now there’s more to it.

“I never tried to pretend I was doing comedy for anyone else, like to help anybody or anything,” he says. “It was 100 percent because I enjoyed doing it and making people laugh. But, since 2020, a lot has changed and people have come up to me saying ‘This is the hardest I’ve laughed since COVID hit.’ When I hear somebody say that, it feels different.

“I know I say ‘We’re having a good time’ all the time, but I really do just want people to have a good time,” he goes on. “There’s so much out there, but I want people to forget their problems, forget what’s going on in the world and just enjoy some comedy for a few minutes.”