Jeff Allen brings his comedic act for all ages to The Tarkington

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Jeff Allen’s comedic appeal is finding the humor in everyday life, the ups and downs of marriage, raising kids, being an empty nester and being a grandparent.

“I also talk a lot about my ailments and my body falling apart,” he said.

“The Jeff Allen 2.0 Tour” lands at 7:30 p.m. Jan. 7 at The Tarkington at the Center for the Performing Arts in Carmel. Carmel comedian Dave Dugan will perform the opening act.

“I tell the audience that people think it’s a reboot of old material, but it’s really just my GPA,” Allen said. “I was a C student and a middle dweller and this is a celebration of the middle dwellers. We figure all the smart people ruined the world. We just show up and do our jobs and want to be left alone. Higher learning is not for everyone, that’s my point.”

Allen, 66, has been working professionally as a comedian since 1978. He got out of regularly doing comedy clubs for approximately 20 years.

“I just got back into them three years ago because of Dry Bar Comedy,” he said.

Dry Bar Comedy is a site where comedy is suitable for all ages. Dugan also has been featured on Dry Bar Comedy.

“Dry Bar went viral with 150 million views,” Allen said. “I liken it to back in the ‘70s if you did the ’The Tonight Show’ with Johnny Carson. It was like overnight the phone started ringing. It’s interesting after being around for 40 years, people are just finding you. It’s exhausting. We had to make up 50 to 60 COVID dates in the last year-and-a-half.”

In the 20 years when he was regularly working clubs, Allen was primarily performed for corporate events and at churches.

“I got older and people going to clubs didn’t. I didn’t want to go back until I could draw my audience,” he said.

Allen said he was friends with comedian Brian Regan.

“I wasn’t working very clean,” Allen said. “I said, ‘Why are you working clean?’ He said, ‘I don’t know, it works for me.’ I started cleaning everything up as a storyteller. I realized that I was using a third of the vocabulary that I should use. I found it was just better for stories when you get a thesaurus out and look for different ways to say the same thing and it started working for me. A couple years later, I came to my faith, and it just seemed to kind of fit.”

Allen said his goal is to bring three generations out to shows.

“When I grew up, we just went to the Ice Capades as a family,” Allen said. “No one like the Ice Capades, but it was just, ‘Shut up and get in the car. We have to do something. We’re a family.’”

Allen can be heard regularly on SiriusXM’s comedy channels, Pandora and Spotify. His previous tour centered on “My America I Grew Up In.”

Allen is known for the special, “Happy Wife, Happy Live Revisited.” He also has appeared in the full-length comedy films “Apostles of Comedy” and “Thou Shalt Laugh.”

For tickets, visit thecenterpresents.org. For more, visit jeffallencomedy.com or drybarcomedy.com.


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