Dusty Slay is back on the show. Last time I chatted with him, it was about the comedians he was joining for the stand up series on Netflix. NOW, Dusty has a one hour special dedicated just to him. Check out our chat about self driving cars, disappointing our moms and so much more.
DUSTY SLAY – Bio
You can take the boy out of the trailer park, but you can’t take the trailer park out of the boy… stand-up comedian Dusty Slay grew up on Lot 8 of a mobile home neighborhood in Opelika, Alabama, with a love for both classic country and rock and a career history peppered with jobs like waiting tables and selling pesticides. Now the Alabama native with the “We’re havin’ a Good Time” attitude is hitting cities all across the country playing comedy clubs and selling out theaters filled with fans eager to imitate his signature Wave. The trucker hat, long hair and mustache, flannel shirt and oversized glasses aren’t affectations to cultivate a stage persona as the B-side of a 1970s Bob Seger track – it’s just Dusty.
As a young boy, growing up in a trailer park, Dusty never felt like he was poor. He didn’t even know folks were better off than him until he went to school and was the only kid whose home address said “Lot 8 Moore’s Trailer Park”. In his comedy he reflects, “We never felt poor, we just didn’t have everything growing up. Like instead of ice cream, my mom would just pour milk into a bowl and then she’d call us in the room and say ‘welp, you’re too late!'” Raised by a single mother with two daughters from a previous marriage, Dusty’s unique family home was never lacking for warmth or love. His father, always present in his life from the very beginning, made sure to show him the simple joys of boyhood adventure. “We never had real pets growing up, we just had prisoners of nature. A dog would wander up, we’d chain it to a tree. Now he’s ours.”
As he became of age and started joining the workforce, Dusty had many jobs. He had multiple stints as a dishwasher and waiter at restaurants and food chains like Papa Johns, Jim Bob’s Chicken Fingers as well as a couple tours with Western Sizzlin’ and the historic Hyman’s Seafood. He spent 8 years as a pesticide salesman selling to hardware chains like Lowes and Home Depot. “A lot of people would come up to me and ask weird questions like, we want something that’s gonna kill the insects but not harm the environment. I’d say well, ‘How bout a shoe’. Cause I’m selling pesticides here.” In 2001, Dusty bought back his childhood home, the trailer that he grew up in. At this time he made plans to join the army, but an untimely arrest for marijuana possession disrupted those plans. Later that September terrorists attacked the World Trade Center in New York and months after that the country was at war. “Everything happens for a reason” says Dusty. After a few years of improv classes, in 2008 Dusty was inspired to try his hand at stand up comedy where he found his true calling. He won the Charleston Comedy Competition and was named Charleston City Paper’s Stand Up Comedian of the year in his then hometown two years in a row. In 2014 he made the move to Nashville and made Comedy a full time gig touring comedy clubs all across the country.
The breakout comedian hit the mainstream, featured as one of six comics in season 3 of Netflix’s The Stand Ups, highlighting new comedians at the top of their game. Previous appearances on Comedy Central, as a guest panelist on Lights Out with David Spade and Stand-Up Featuring as well as 3 unforgettable late night sets on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon have helped establish Dusty as a crowd favorite and bonafide star on the silver screen. In 2019 he joined Comedy Central’s Clusterfest in 2019 and has previously performed on Jimmy Kimmel Live, Last Comic Standing, and Laughs on Fox in addition to regular stints on “The Bob & Tom Radio Show” as well as the nationally syndicated “The Bobby Bones Show”.
At age 36, Slay became the youngest comedian to ever perform on the legendary Grand Ole Opry stage in his adopted hometown of Nashville. To date he’s logged dozens of appearances in front of “his people” on the historic stage in the last few years fully imbedding himself in the country music scene and having been asked to host some of the biggest events across the subculture, including Hangover Fest at the ACMs in Las Vegas in 2022 and CMA Fest’s Forever Country Stage with the likes of Scotty McCreery, Dustin Lynch, Lainey Wilson and some of the most iconic names in the genre.
