Comedian Nate Bargatze Wraps Up 2023 at Amerant Bank Arena

When Nate Bargatze takes the stage at the Amerant Bank Arena on New Year's Eve, the show will serve to cap off an eventful year for the comedian bookended by both the debut of his January special, Hello World, and the recent announcement as a coheadliner for other family-friendly comedians Jerry Seinfeld, Jim Gaffigan, and Sebastian Maniscalco at the Hollywood Bowl in 2024. The latter is not unlike going to the Olympics with the Dream Team.

"The clean Olympics," Bargatze tells New Times.

Under the comedian's Nateland Company banner, the goal is to produce comedy that the whole family can enjoy. This includes seeing Bargatze himself on stage.

"I enjoy getting to see entire families coming to do something together cause I don't think there's that much you could do, you know, having an 11-year-old daughter," Bargatze says. "There's limited stuff you could all go do as a family, it feels like."

This attention to entertaining the whole family has been on Bargatze's radar ever since he started performing 20 years ago. He thinks back to bringing his more conservative parents to watch his shows.

"I wanted them to be able to go like, 'Go watch my son' and really not have to be like, 'Well, he's a little bit this or that.' I was thinking that at the start, just with my parents," he explains. "They would come to open mics, and I would always be like, 'You know other people are dirty.' It's not like my parents can't handle anything or that they're even one way or the other, but I would have felt very uncomfortable to do that, and I didn't have it in me to want to do that."

It seems like Bargatze was on to something. His special, Hello World, broke Amazon Prime's viewership records, totaling 2.9 million views in its first 28 days. For a touring comedian, that is now 2.9 million people who may come see him the next time he's in their hometown. However, that's also 2.9 million people who have now heard every joke in his arsenal.

"Every time you tape a special, you don't think you could come up with any more material ever again," Bargatze says. "I taped [Hello World] in October '22, and so it came out January '23, so you have like that amount of time, and I was on tour, so there I was doing theaters, some arenas, but it's like trying to really get this new material so it's turned over by January. When the special came out, I didn't want to have any old material, so you get it turned over in January."
After taping a special, Bargatze opens shows by testing all-new, unproven bits before dipping into the older, more reliable material. It starts with ten minutes of new material, then evolves into 30 minutes, then 40. This continues until he's crowd-tested enough to sustain an entire show independent of the older stuff.

Part of the process for an observational comedian is also living a life quiet enough to be observed. That's why Bargatze lives in his hometown of Nashville rather than in entertainment hubs like Los Angeles or New York.

"I'm still hanging out with a lot of friends that I grew up with my whole life and meeting up with my neighbors. No one is in entertainment, so when I come home, I'm not really around any entertainment," Bargatze adds. "I think that helps, and that helps you live a normal life. Our daughter goes to school; we live in a cul-de-sac. You try to do everything to keep it as normal as possible."

Audiences got a peek at what Bargatze's been working on this past year when he hosted Saturday Night Live in October. Bits like Bargatze describing himself as a man "from Tennessee, and also the 1900s" were already in his act before hosting SNL. He did have some reservations about broadcasting a chunk of his latest material from Studio 8H.

"Because I did it for SNL, I didn't want to burn it and feel like, well, that's over," he says. "I want to put it on my special, but I did make it, like, I've messed with it a little bit, so it feels a little different, and on that one, I kind of just told the brief versions of those jokes so when people come to see it live there's more to it than what they just would've seen on SNL."

Bargatze also had the added pressure of no pressure from producer Lorne Michaels when finalizing what material would make it to air, specifically the monologue. Ultimately, he had complete creative control.

"Lorne does a really good job. He goes, 'That's your time,'" Bargatze adds. "Like I was trying to be like, 'Alright, what if I show this video of what I'm gonna do?' And they were like, 'Just go do it. It's your time to go do it,' which is kind of crazy. In my head, I'm like, 'Will someone just watch this and tell me it's okay?'"

Nate Bargatze. 8 p.m. Sunday, December 31, at Amerant Bank Arena, 1 Panther Pkwy., Sunrise; 954-835-7000; amerantbankarena.com. Tickets cost $31 to $391 via seatgeek.com.