The Story Behind Earthquake's Name

The JMusicOt I took it from there. So did you rehearse it in your head? Like how did you do it? I rehearsed it in the mirror like most comedians. And you know, the toothbrushes are hollering and the toothpaste is standing up and everything, but it didn't translate on the stage that time. Cause when I first started doing it, I just look up, unfortunately, looking up at the sky, up at the roof of the place like a woman ain't making love for money, you know what I'm saying? Ain't enjoying it at all. So I am, that's how I got down for my first one. So you just didn't know where to look? Did you feel uncomfortable? Like trying to? The insecurity. That's why my name is Earthquake. You know, and people keep asking me, why your name earthquake? I said the reason I named my name Earthquake, cause if this shit don't work out, I ain't gonna mess up my good name. So somebody come in and say, hey, what's up earthquake? Hey, my name Nathaniel. I don't know earthquake. He was earthquake. Nah, that was my brother or somebody, but my name is Nathaniel. I don't even know no earthquake. That's hilarious. I thought it was just from the reaction you got from the crowd. No, it was an insecurity that if this don't work out, I did not fuck up my good name. That's hilarious. Cause I thought it was the total opposite. I thought it was a cocky move. No. Like you're about to cause an earthquake. No, it was like, nah, this don't work out, baby. You know what I mean? I wouldn't be, I wouldn't scully my good name. It's funny because it's a perfect name for you. Oh, thank you. It really is. It's the insecurity of want to protect your name. You literally came up with the best nickname ever for you. Yes, yeah. And that's how I came. I used to tell the joke. We'd be like, how you came into the earthquake? This is happening when your mother take every precautions and not to have a child and you still get pregnant. And there's nothing else you can name that child but a natural disaster. That's what I wrote as a joke for it. But the truth honestly about it was the insecurity that if this don't work, I don't want to mess up my name. Were you living in Florida at the time? I lived in Florida when I got out, I went to Atlanta. And from when you're going to Atlanta, that's when I started seeing what the comedy clubs was like. That's when we started opening up our club two years later. So you do an open mic two years later, you have your own club and you're going on every day. Yeah. Wow. So every, you gotta understand, on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, three shows on Fridays and Saturdays. One on Tuesday, one on Wednesday, one on Thursday, two on Sunday, every day for about four straight years. Wow. And it just. And you're doing like an hour every night. Every show. Every show. Off the top. Have you ever read the book Outliers? No. It's a great book. Is that Malcolm, who is that? No, it's someone else. Is Malcolm Godwell? It's a great book and one of the things it's about is they detail people who are extremely successful and he talks about the amount of time that's required to get really good at something and how many people that look like overnight successes, the amount of time they put in was extraordinary. One of the things he talks about is the Beatles. And at the Beatles, they did all these shows in Germany where they were doing like what you were doing, where they were doing every fucking night they were doing shows and they had put in hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hours doing these shows. And so when they first, air quote, made it on the scene, they had put in so much time performing, so much different than most bands because they had done so many shows nightly over and over and over again. Yeah. There's no substitute for that. Not at all. And it's the foundation of who I am. So when I have to sit here, I go in with the confident knowing all I gotta do is make sure my environment is pure for me to be able to write the way I do, keep my mind straight and I can come up with an hour. Phew, I can come up with an hour. And when you were doing this, like two years in that is a very unusual, that's not a lot of time for someone to be, forget about headlining at all, but headlining every fucking night and basically being the whole show every night. Yeah. We would get some comedians that come on it, but we didn't get any of the main comedians because Comedy Act wasn't happening. That's such a cocky move to open up your own club two years in, that's amazing. But they were so vulnerable. They was in the bad part of town. They didn't serve food. And then the cotton was thin more than, I mean, the one that really would bring them down. They were so arrogant with it that they would book a comic, two comics for the whole month. Same comic every week. Every week. Oh, that's crazy. Yes. I remember it was Joe Torrey, Joe Torrey and Ted Carpenter. And they did the whole month. So when I bring my investors there to get the club, I said, look, these same two gonna be here. There's 400 people in here. They got two waitresses. Plus they ain't got no food. Plus they in the bad part of town. So what we gonna do, we gonna put it, we gonna put the club in Buckhead. Black people don't go there that much right there because they don't go there. We gonna call it Uptown. And we gonna serve food. We gonna have valet service. We gonna be in a better part of the town. And that's how you got it. So why don't you, any of you gonna go up against anybody and you first gotta recognize their weakness and where you can draw from what they got. And that's why I pivot all my commercials to them that way. Are you tired of going down to a place, your pocket car, and you might don't know who gonna be there and they begging you for money? Nah, come get your jokes up at Uptown Comedy Corner. You know what I'm saying? Where you don't see the same comedian over and over again. And we have food. And we have prompt service and everything else coming to Uptown so I just psh, psh, psh. And as you sit there you give them a comparison out of town and people like, yeah, we like it. And that's how I got them. That's amazing though that you did that two years in. Like go from your career in the military where you're kinda half-ass it, you're not really into it. And then all of a sudden you find this new thing and you're all in. Yeah. You're all in. You're opening up your own club 24 months in. That's crazy. But what, you know, it was out of necessity because I got tired of driving night all the way to Lakeland, Florida to get $50 a show. And then the biggest one, you'll tell a woman you're a comedian. And she's like, oh, I ain't never seen you at the time yet. You know, we segregated in the black community. If you ain't here, then you ain't doing it. You know what I mean? So it ain't done. Just, it wasn't as expanded as it is now that they can even imagine this other club. This was the club of all club, the only club. If you didn't work there, you wasn't no black comedian. So you had this in your head that you wanted to do this. And how did you make that happen? Like who did you get to invest in it? Like how did you start a club? Well, it was this dude named Gary Abdu. He was a comedian too. But he booked things in like, he used to do little small places like Denny's, for example, and put a plywood box up there, little small place, sit there and he'll throw a shell. And he'll book me, pay me $150, me, Ricky Smiley, and rest of them. And we sat down and said, what you need to do is we need to open up a black club. So I showed it to him. And I said, this is how we can get him, what I previously said. Said, good idea. So we all went out and tried to get investors. I went to Aul, Dion, Sanders, Dominique, all the people in Atlanta. Hey man, show them all. Just call this person, call this person. Motherfuckers ain't never do nothing. One of the person was real. One of the person represented was very honest. We said, listen man, quick, I get five of these calls a day. He ain't gonna do shit. Just, he ain't gonna do nothing. I ain't gonna waste your time. You know what I mean? So lucky Gary found the number one plastic surgeon in Atlanta and he invest, but he told us, give y'all $10,000, if y'all can flip this and show it can work on the small stage, then I'll get the club. So we went to Birmingham, a couple places, and turned the tent into about 50 to 60,000. And then when we get that from that point on, he said, you can do it. And he gave us the half a million dollars to get the club. Wow. Yeah. Dr. Tom. Wow. Rest in peace, my brother. Wow. Yeah, white dude was great. He used to put all the titties in the women in Atlanta joints. He was the tittie specialist, you know what I mean? So if you seen any big titties in the 90s, in the early 2000s, it was Dr. Tom. And how did you know him? I didn't. My partner, Gary, at the time knew him. And he brought him in and we got together and he said, I found somebody I could do with Patista. It's the stipulation for us to do it. And when I met him, I was cool. It was beautiful. Do you remember the opening night? Yes. We had 15 people. Yeah. Wow. Yeah, it was 15 people. How many seats is the place? It hold 250. Yeah, yeah. 250 people. Some of the people, matter of fact, my video person who handled my media for me, Star, she was, that's how we met. I hired her as my waitress and we've been friends ever since. Wow. And I gave her a job to handle all my social media. Wow. So we go from there, 15 people. Yes. And was it you the first guy on stage? Yeah, I had a couple of comedians to help me out, but I was the main man until we was able because once that club closed, then all the comedians, oh man, I'm sorry, man. Now I'm gonna get down because now you're the only comedy club in the city. Right. You know what I mean? But till then, it was a battle. And it was a blessing in disguise because it made me the beast that I am today. When did it start to catch on? After Steve left, once Steve, and Steve, he taught me so much, you know, because when he came, he said, I'm gonna do your club because I couldn't get no headliners. Nobody that could draw. And I was like, Steve, would you do it? He was hosting Showtime in the place, I'd do it for you. And he came in on a Wednesday and it was only about 30 people in there. And I was like, okay. And he came in there and looked and he said, give them all their money back and come pick me up tomorrow at five o'clock when we do video. I said, what you mean? There's 30 people in here? He said, Steve Harvey don't do no show for 30 people. I said, okay, them up. And then I picked him up and he took me to the radio. That's when I learned how powerful media is. And he stopped by, he said, let's stop by Dunkin' Donuts because we gotta get some donuts and some oysters because you gotta smooth these jocks, egos, because they feel you're gonna try to take their fucking job and everything, you gotta be good on them. And we got in there at 5.30, stayed on from six to nine. I tell you, Joe, when we got back, when we got back, he had sold out two on Thursday, four on Friday, four on Saturday and two on Sunday. Back in 93, I wrote him a check for 45,000. I didn't even know that kind of money exists in comedy. I was like, oh yeah, I ain't never going nowhere. I ain't never going nowhere. And when I saw him pick up that kind of money and seeing what kind of money can be generated as a comedian, I said, this is where I need to be. And once all of those people came and seen all the things that our club had to offer and where it was at and we had valet service and all the things that it could do, it was no turning back after that and they saw me. So it was great. Wow. That will change the whole game. That's a great story.