“When people ask me if they should do stand-up comedy, I tell them to do something else,” said funny man Moses Storm. “If you’re trying to do stand-up, you’re trying to play the professional lottery.” Moses Storm (yes, this is his real name, not a stage name) is a 31-year-old comedian. One of six homeschooled children, his missionary/ grifter parents drove around in a converted Greyhound bus looking to make ends meet in any way possible.

“I’ve seen so many people — they’re good, they’re talented — but it doesn’t work out. It is a lottery,” he said of his profession, which he came to after deciding in community college that he simply was “good at nothing else.”

In some ways, this is the norm. The barrier of entry to get up on stage is less complex than say selling a screenplay or landing a role on television, because the only person standing in your way is you. But, the reason you stand in your own way is because of the rejection that inevitably follows.

“I hate when comics say they can’t do anything else, because you could work at Taco Bell or Costco, but it’s the only thing that I could monetize to break generational poverty,” he added. All of this and more comes to the surface in Moses’ new special for HBO Max, Moses Storm: Trash White.

“I grew up very poor, in a big family,” he said on stage, surrounded by literal trash, spray-painted white. “We were on food stamps. We would dumpster dive for food. A lot of people find it hard to believe that I was ever that poor [because] I look like I was conceived at an Ivy League a cappella concert.”

The special, presented by Team Coco, comes from Moses’ professional relationship with Conan O’Brien, where both appreciate ironic self-depreciating humor and both are uniquely gifted at riffing in live performances.

In many ways, Moses being spotted by Conan’s agent was his big break. The booker saw Moses and Chris Redd performing for a small crowd in the back of a comic book store. They were asked to come do some crowd work for Conan’s upcoming Comic Con event.

“It was just like me and Chris standing with microphones,” he said, “throwing up clips and riffing. And then one of the days Conan was going to come up and just sort of endorse the show. He’s just riffing with us and two minutes turned into twenty-five minutes.”

Moses Storm. Photo by Sela Shiloni

Early in the performance, Chris Redd helped carry part of the show as Moses was somewhat starstruck to be riffing with his idol. As a kid, Moses actually taped over his Christian learning tapes with episodes of Conan’s talk show.

Not long after, Moses was invited to perform a six minute spot on Conan’s show. Conan taught Moses about the value of being able to riff with a live audience but also writing material that was more evergreen for stage performances and eventually a special.

“If people see me live, it’s mainly riffing, stuff happening on the spot, and I think that’s the funniest stuff. Conan said that’s the biggest laugh, something that happens in the room, but the complicated thing is that once you move to tape medium, it doesn’t translate.”

These ‘you-have-to-be-there’ jokes mixed with a “crafted, sculpted joke” helped Moses land more and more stage time to build up material. “You have to invest in the written stuff as well because it just doesn’t work if you’re not in the room and you don’t have those chemicals flowing and the person next to you is laughing.”

As he started to gather material for his 2022 special, it became clear that the bulk of his material focused on his family and his unique childhood. “I came to understand the whole special was about forgiveness,” he said. “There’s so many parallels to what I do now and how we grew up.”

His parents, who made their money grifting, inadvertently taught Moses the art of the long con. His mother would do things like stage comedic videos in an effort to win money on America’s Funniest Home Videos (although this never actually worked out for them).

“Grifting is standard business. A grift is just soliciting a spontaneous response by using a very canned performance. I mean the standard joke you’re hearing is one I’ve said maybe 10,000 times before you heard it, and you still have to sell it like it’s the first time. It is a grift.”

As the special started to take shape, Moses continued to work harder and harder on his craft. In fact, it’s what he’s known best for among the many young comedians today. “That’s the number one question I get, wow you work hard. I don’t see that. I just see the days I’m lazy.”

He continued, “I just beat myself up for the days I’m not constantly working. But I think a great rule is that if you want to do something that is a very lucky job to have, essentially doing the impossible, then you shouldn’t know anyone who works harder than you.”

Other than work ethic and getting on stage as often as possible, Moses believes there is some luck involved, but anyone who wants to chase this type of goal needs to chase opportunities and put in the work, night after night.

“It took me a while to understand there’s no advice for stand-up,” he said about the time he asked Mike Birbiglia for advice and he simply told him to watch Jerry Seinfeld do interviews. “What does that even mean?” he thought to himself at the time. “What he was really saying is there is no advice for stand-up. I was expecting a shortcut… but there is no class. You just spend four hours at open mic and do your three minutes and keep failing. That’s really it.”

Logistics aside, Moses did provide some advice for finding a voice amongst these many, many failures. Ironically, he said comics shouldn’t be afraid to steal other comics’ voices in an effort to find their own. “Voices, never jokes,” he clarified. 

“In the process of trying to find your voice, it was helpful to try on other personalities. Maybe try John Mulaney for a week, but then find your own.” He tried one-liners like Demetri Martin. He tried telling stories like Mike Birbiglia. Eventually, he found his own voice on stage. “There’s a premium on originality, but you will only be original because you are trying out different cadences and voices to find your own.”

As for his own past traumas covered very publically in his latest special, he said the job is first and foremost to entertain, even though he found forgiveness along the way. “Your job is to entertain. No one is there for your therapy. There should be some evidence that you have moved past what you’re talking about and that you have some perspective on it.”

This interview has been condensed. Listen to the full audio version here.