Stand-up comedian Darryl Lenox, born in America but now living in Canada, regales the audience at Vancouver’s Vogue theatre.
“You love the word humble. In Canada it’s a good day if somebody calls you humble. Nobody calls us Americans humble. They always call us arrogant. I mean there’s no Real Housewives of Burnaby, you know what I mean?”
The crowd laughs uproariously. He continues.
“Race was never an issue with me in Canada. You never made me feel like just a black guy. You always treated me as a man first, a black dude second, and sometimes a CFL football star third.”
More laughter and a round of applause.
Totally blind since 2020, Darryl, 56, is still packing them in. He’s sightless but not defeated – he’s just come back from gigs in Anchorage, New York, Winnipeg and Toronto – and he doesn’t let his visual impairment get in the way of his drive or ambition.
Darryl’s a performer but he’s also on a mission – to resurrect the comedy scene after years of pandemic restrictions. And to that end, he’s trying to purchase the Yuk Yuks comedy club franchise from founder Mark Breslin and expand it into the US.
“I would like to buy him completely out. I would like to take over the entire franchise,” he says. “I think people would like to see more diverse acts, so I want to open it up.”
Expensive? Sure, but Darryl says a lot of existing clubs closed during the pandemic and the properties are available.
“I think it’s the perfect time now for the comedy industry to really launch back into the entertainment world.”
And who’s to say he’s wrong? Darryl’s always dreamt big. As a kid, he wanted to be a basketball star and when his comedy career took off, he wanted to be famous. It’s been an epic journey, rocky at first, but ultimately rewarding.
Born in Las Vegas, Darryl moved to Seattle and then back again to Vegas when he was four. His Dad was an Army vet who had trouble settling down.
“Ultimately, he didn’t want to be tied down to family stuff,” says Darryl. His mother re-married and Darryl and his four sisters were raised by a stepfather. It left a hole.
“I loved my stepfather immensely but knowing my real father was out there, I kind of wanted to know why I was the way I was. I kind of wanted to know where my DNA was at.”
So, Darryl moved to Seattle at age 19.
“I chased him down and I found him. He wasn’t ready to have me around, so I just stayed there, played a little college basketball and started my career. One day, I found myself on stage at a comedy club in Seattle. It was open mic. I walked up and told a story I made up and I did really well. Then the manager of the club said, ‘I want you to audition for a comedy club competition tomorrow’ and that was it. Once that happened, I said I’ll never do anything else for the rest of my life. I had the ambition of a wolverine.”
He played the clubs, got married for a short time and, in 1994, accepted an offer to come to Canada.
“I had one week of work in Surrey at a club called The Comedy Cave. I came up and after the show they said, ‘you can stay here until you get your stuff together,’ so I stayed here for a while.”
In fact, Darryl stayed for years, and Canada became his base. Schooled in the humour of his heroes Chris Rock and Richard Pryor, Darryl found joking about racial tension in America didn’t play so well north of the border and he had to adapt.
“It was by necessity,” he says. “I came up here and they go, ‘huh?’ When I’m in Vanderhoof, I’m the only black guy there, so how can I get them to understand the black-white plight in the US? Then when I do some urban shows in Toronto or Montreal, I’m not talking to African Americans, I’m talking to Haitians and Jamaicans. I’m talking to a diaspora.”
His new routine focused on Canadian issues like living in the shadow of our big neighbour.
“It doesn’t matter where you go, people in Canada love to beat an American in anything. I don’t care if it’s rock/paper/scissors or a rock concert, you guys are going to have a medal ceremony and a parade afterwards.”
Or this bit on Canadian decorum.
“I picked up a couple of new moves living here. I learned something called sentence structure and deep, cognitive thought process. A few please and thank yous.
He credits his second wife, Claire, a Canadian, with turning his dreams into reality.
“Everything I dreamt of doing she just said, ‘Well, let’s do that’ and I never had that before. I was learning more about myself and I was learning how to be a better comedian and I loved it. And then my eyes began to deteriorate and, all of a sudden, it was about my vulnerabilities. So, now I’m here sans Claire (they divorced in 2019) and extra vulnerable.”
Going blind was a progressive deterioration spanning decades. An injury to his left eye in 1994 went unattended and slowly robbed him of vision. His routine changed once again. It was now about him, his feelings and how he was coping. He had no trouble sharing.
“You know what I can’t wait to be? I can’t wait to be an eyewitness. I’ve been dreaming about this ever since I was a little boy. I can’t wait to show up at a crime scene.”
Then acknowledging his one good eye, he drops the punchline. “I saw the whole thing officer. Okay, not the whole thing. I saw everything on that side over there.”
Or this bit about searching for a surgeon to remove a cataract from his remaining good eye.
“I found a Canadian surgeon who was willing to do [the surgery]. He told me, ‘It’s risky and there’s a chance you could end up totally blind. Are you prepared for that?’ I lied. ‘Yeah, I’ll be okay.’ I couldn’t imagine two eyes being gone. I didn’t think I’d have the strength or courage to do it. I thought I couldn’t live that existence. I didn’t think I was strong enough. I started having these serious, suicidal thoughts in my head.”
Personal, serious stuff but there’s still a joke.
“The minute I heard a voice go would you really off yourself if you were totally blind? I said, ‘Yep.’ I heard that same voice go, ‘How? You’d be totally blind.’”
His cataract surgery was problematic. He developed glaucoma in his remaining good eye and the medicine he took to treat it made matters worse. Now he was facing total blindness. On top of everything else, his biological father was diagnosed with cancer, his first wife, Jill, died and his second marriage to Claire ended in divorce. Emotionally, he hit rock bottom.
“I felt like I was trying to be Atlas and carry the world on my back while going blind at the same time. It didn’t make sense to me. I didn’t understand why things were happening at that time. And then when I heard the story about the super bloom, it kind of made sense.”
Super bloom is an explosion of flowers caused by a rapid change in the weather. Think of a severe drought. The drought starts wildfires. Homes are destroyed, lives are lost. Heavy rains follow causing massive flooding and more despair, a cataclysmic event, to be sure, but out of the ashes, new life emerges. Darryl continues the story in stand-up.
“There were droughts that cause great fires in LA County and what happened was the fire oxidized the soil and the rain flood was so strong that it caused a growth of poppies so beautiful that people all around the world came to see those poppies. It resurrected the community’s economic growth, and they called it a super bloom.”
The story struck a nerve. Darryl not only identified with the concept of a super bloom, but he embraced it. He would emerge from the wreckage of his life a new and better version of himself.
Today, Darryl lives alone in an apartment that has been equipped with a special range, a voice-activated telephone, and smart devices that can be operated remotely. He thanks the CNIB for helping him with the transition and has mastered the art of independent living. He relies upon others only when needed, such as travelling for work and pleasure.
Earlier this year, he participated in This American Life, a revealing podcast on his transformation from skepticism to trust. There’s talk of a book. His album Super Bloom is doing well across all platforms, and he continues to work on his dream of taking over the Yuk Yuks franchise. Dad survived the 2019 cancer scare and he and Darryl reconciled.
“I wrote him a letter and said, ‘let’s just be friends’ and that seemed to resonate with him,” says Darryl. “We’ve been pretty good since then.”
His mornings start with meditation.
“I get up and I establish that first thought – this is who I am, this is where I’m going and then I come here and sit in my living room and do some breathing exercises and do some energy shifting stuff. Once I’ve done meditating, I lay on the couch and that’s when I do my visualizations.”
He says his disability has become a positive influence, taking him out of himself and being more reflective. In the early days, he was flippant and sarcastic. Today, he’s more considerate. Don’t be afraid of me or my disability he advises fans in this clip from his Super Bloom album.
“Don’t be embarrassed. I can’t see your handshake, so you’re going to have to ask me to put your hands on me, so I can shake your hand. Otherwise, I’m going to miss your handshakes and I’ll step on some toes.”
Ever the jokester, he pauses to reflect.
“I feel I’m supposed to have a bigger impact this way. I feel I have a better grip on the future and the energy I’m projecting and receiving by not having eyes,” he says. “Life isn’t about me anymore.”
“You know what’s made the big difference? Not being selfish. I’ll say it again, stop being selfish. One more time, stop being selfish. It’s not about what’s wrong with you, it’s about accepting what’s wrong with you and allowing time for people to adjust because once they accept you can be comfortable with you, they’ll be comfortable with you.”
He’s blind but he’s still ambitious. Blindness, he says is just another element in his journey.
“I like the idea of trying to make people feel good. I chase dreams. I’m very, very ‘let’s go get it.’ I do dream big, so if people find it inspiring or role model, I’ll take that, but I really think there’s a lot more in all of us that we could be doing, so I try to push as hard as I can. I got a lot in me. My blackness, my blindness, those things are part of it, but neither one defines me.”
SNAPSHOT
If you were to meet your 20-year-old self, what advice would you give him?
“Be mindful that while you’re going to be ambitious, you’re going to hurt some people, so be a little more patient and a little less aggressive. When you hurt people, you’re going to be okay, but you don’t know if they’re going to be okay.”
Who or what has influenced you the most and why?
“If I hadn’t chased my dad, I would never have got on the microphone and if I hadn’t got on the microphone, I would never have become what I am now. I was inspired by them all, Richard Pryor, George Carlin, Chris Rock, Dave Chapelle. I just loved them all.”
What are you grateful for?
“The list is forever. I’m grateful for each person that showed up to help me get to the right direction: I get my work ethic from my mom; I get my dreaming from my pops; Jill taught me how to be a man; Claire taught me it’s not impossible; and Canada taught me to be a whole human being.”
What does success mean to you?
“If I can make this industry not so much feast or famine – you either have to be Eddie Murphy famous or sleep in your car – and if I can make people laugh and really love laughter, then I’ll have done something.”
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