The interview with the comedian Bill Engvall

Phone | 903-885-8663

Email | dave@ssnewstelegram.com

On Friday, Sept. 24, right before he performed at Choctaw Casino in Grant, Oklahoma, I had the honor of sitting down with world famous comedian Bill Engvall. Engvall has been performing for 42 years and will be retiring from touring this year, but he’s definitely not retiring from entertaining us. He has a new TV series entitled Blue Collar Auction, which premiered Sept. 10 on Peacock’s Circle TV, a country-themed music and lifestyle network. The show features Bill as head auctioneer, engaging viewers in competition as various items are sold to the highest bidder. They will auction off collectors’ items, such as celebrity memorabilia and automobiles, to virtual buyers, and also focuses on the personal stories behind the items.

Engvall also has his website, www.billengvall.com, his YouTube channel, where he has clips of his standup routines. He also has on his YouTube channel something he calls, Sunday Morning with Bill. They are 5-10 minute inspirational, funny, heartwarming messages. If that’s not enough, he has a weekly podcast that he has hosted since 2016 called, “My 2 Cents,” with PodcastOne. Add all of that in with his various acting roles and we will still be fortunate enough to see and enjoy plenty of Bill Engvall in 2022 and beyond.

Here is my interview with Bill Engvall:

DS: “So I understand you are familiar with Sulphur Springs, having grown up in Texas.”

Bill: “Yes, I was born in Galveston, and my wife is from Midland, Texas.”

DS: “But I bet you don’t know about our famous mirrored bathrooms in our downtown square?” (I then showed him photos of them.)

Bill: “Wow, glass bathrooms and gigantic chess sets.”

DS: “And if you’re inside those bathrooms, you can see out, but no one can see in.”

Bill: “That’s what they tell you,” (as he chuckles.)

DS: “I was asked to ask you, if you come to Sulphur Springs, will you use one of those bathrooms?”

Bill: “Of course I would!” (as he laughs.)

DS: “I’ve been very impressed on how you’ve adapted to the modern way of connecting with your fans and delivering your message and your comedy, the website, the YouTube Channel, the podcast, etc. And on your Sunday Morning with Bill videos, I saw that you encouraged people to embrace other cultures and I thought it was great and I wish more people with your voice would help spread that message.

Bill: “It wasn’t all my doing to be honest. Celebrities are so concerned with losing any kind of fanbase that they often times don’t acknowledge what they should acknowledge. I understand their fear and let me say this, well, let me back up a bit. Up until a certain event in my life, I was what you’d call a moderate Christian, I’d go at Christmas or Easter and give money to the church, like the majority of people. But when I got hired to play a character called ‘Rev. Paul,’ on Tim Allen’s TV show, Last Man Standing, this character felt good and was a really fun character to play and I’ve played a lot of different characters. The more I played that character I started to want to know more, and I have a buddy who’s a retired Episcopalian priest and I called him up and asked him if he had any books on the Basics of Theology or Theology for Dummies, and he said yes. I started reading those books and started re-reading the Bible and I became fascinated because for a book that’s about love and getting along, it’s also been the impetus for some of the bloodiest wars and hate and stuff. So, I was lying in bed and my wife Gail was asleep and I was thinking about what I needed to do the next day and clear as I’m talking to you, I heard someone say, ‘now you’re doing what I want you to do.’ And I wasn’t scared, I did what you would think, I got up, walked around the house, but I thought, why would someone break into my house just to tell me ‘now you’re doing what I want you to do?’ And I knew who it was, it was God and there came over me a peace that I had never felt or understood. The next day I enrolled in college and got my degree in Christian Studies. I’m actually going back in October and I’m going to get to walk in my graduation.”

DS: “I like that your messages are not overly religious.

Bill: “I don’t ever want to get preachy and I’m not telling anyone what they should do or that they are wrong or the way I think is right, but I do feel like I have the obligation to tell people a message and it was interesting because before that, I was just a comedian and I made people laugh. Now I understand why I’m on this planet. My role is to make people feel better. I’m not a doctor, but in my Sunday Mornings with Bill, I just want to help get your week started with some inspiration.”

DS: “I like that you keep them 5-10 minutes in length.”

Bill: “My buddy told me to do that. He learned in Seminary school to keep them short and keep it about God. I think what’s happened in religion and why there’s such a gap and I blame it on ministers. I became a minister and I think what happened is some of them stopped preaching about God and started preaching as if they were God. They have their own agendas.”

DS: “And many parishioners believe everything they say.”

Bill: “Well yes, who else are you going to trust, you want to trust your clergy. All of a sudden my vision opened up and I realized that we need to be more open and more tolerant of others. In fact, my wife and I just got back from Dubai and we went to the Grand Mosque. It’s a Muslim place and I was talking to the fella there for over 45 minutes. I feel the problem the Muslims have is they’ve been lumped in with the bad element of Muslims. They were the friendliest and nicest people when I was there. What’s interesting and I don’t want to turn this into a religious conversation,”

DS: “No, I love this, please continue…”

Bill: “but when you read the Quran and the Old Testament and the Torah, it’s all the Old Testament. The New Testament came along later.”

DS: “All of these religions are based in peace and love and people have interpreted the words to fit their hate filled agendas.”

Bill: “Yes. I have a friend and he asks how I balance all of this info and I say, this is my redneck, blue collar theory about religion, it’s like a wagon wheel and the hub is God and all the spokes that come off of it are, Christianity, Muslim, Judaism, whatever, we’re all going for the same thing, and we all feel that our way is the only way to get there and that’s not the way it is. My honest belief is when it comes time for us to leave this planet and we get to where we are going, we’re going to say, ‘oh, I didn’t see this coming,’ (as he chuckles). And like I say on Sunday mornings, this is just what I think, I’m not telling you what you should think and I’m just laying it out there for you. On Sunday mornings, I’ll have from 6,000 to 10,000 people tuning in to that thing and they say ‘thank you’ for doing this. I also think it makes me more human and I think that’s part of the problem in the entertainment world. That’s why Blue Collar got so big because all of us came off as very approachable, we weren’t these high and mighty celebrities, just four guys on the road and we had the perfect storm.”

DS: “My Dad would say that it probably humbles you, not that you need humbling, but that’s what my Dad would say we all need at times.”

Bill: “Oh yeah, totally, even driving in here tonight, I never forget that these people had a lot of different ways to spend their money and my job is to give them a product where they can say, ‘that was great.’

DS: “Tell me about your retirement.”

Bill: “It was a hard decision to come to, but I always said, two things, one, I want to go out on my terms and I wanted to go out while I was still good. I didn’t want to be that act you go see and think, ‘they just walked through that,’ because that’s not fair to the fans. One of my favorite comics was George Carlin and I saw him a couple years before he died, and he had just become a grouchy old man and I didn’t want that to happen to me.”

DS: “Speaking of Carlin and Richard Pryor and comics from the past, I debated on whether to ask you this, but what do you think about comics today having to apologize for their jokes?”

Bill: “Well that’s another issue that helped my decision to retire from touring. As clean as my show is, I still get people who will come up and say, ‘why’d you say that?’ The world has changed, and I don’t think it’s going to go back and we’re just going to have to adjust, and I’d rather not spend my energy defending what I have to say.”

DS: “If you were a young comic just coming up now, would you do everything the same way?”

Bill: “That’s a great question. I think I’d have to do it different. In fact, I joke about if I had to start over today, I don’t think I’d make it. When I started in comedy in the early 80’s, comedy was peaking, and even open mic nights were sold out and people just came in to laugh. You never had that feeling of can I say this or that. I can’t do any political jokes. I could write the best political joke and I’ve already alienated 50% of the audience. When you have to start explaining stuff, well, I’m just out. I did a movie called The Neighbor, where I played a bad guy, a guy who murdered people and people would say to me, ‘why did you do that movie?’ I’m like, it’s just a movie, it’s not life, I’m not out doing that for real, it’s just a job. I told my wife, the biggest problem with all of this is social media. There’s no accountability anymore. Someone could go on Twitter and say Bill Engvall’s album sucks, but they wouldn’t walk up to me on the street and say that. I could go on Facebook right now and write something so far out there and people would believe it.”

DS: “I try to tell people to stop getting their news from Facebook.”

Bill: “Remember when people got their news from the newspaper and not Facebook? And I also don’t want to be held responsible for somebody making a decision because of something they heard me say and took it the wrong way.”

DS: “So, I’m learning about Friday Night Football here in Texas.”

Bill: “Like I said, my wife is from Midland. Football and God. If you want to rob a house, do it on Friday night, everyone’s at the football game.” (he laughs)

DS: “How’d you get from Galveston to where you’ve ended up?”

Bill: “My Dad was in public health. He was a doctor and worked for the government, so we got moved every couple of years. I was born in Galveston then moved to Baltimore, then back to Texas and then to Arizona, which I believe was the beginnings of my path to a career in comedy. To make friends in all of these new schools, I became the funny guy. I wasn’t a jock, even though I did try baseball, but to make friends quickly, I became the funny guy. I think that was the basics of me becoming a comedian. My Dad had Bob Newhart albums that we would listen to, but the thought of becoming a comedian and making a living at it, that was like ‘no way.’

DS: “Back in the mid-80’s I told my Dad that I wanted to be a standup and he literally said, ‘what are you, some kind of a comedian?’ He told me to get a real job and get married.”

Bill: “I have to give my Dad credit, he never once did that to me, in fact, I remember I had come back home to spend the weekend with him very early in my career and he said, ‘I’ve always wanted to do what you’re doing.’ I said, ‘but you’re a doctor.’ And he was the kind of doctor you wanted, he was funny and he knew his stuff. And when he said that, it validated what I was doing.”

DS: “How old were you when you had that conversation with your Dad?”

Bill: “Probably in my early 20’s.”

DS: “That must have really made you feel good.”

Bill: “It did and the sad thing is that he only got to see me early on and never saw me at this level. But I know he’s proud of me and proud that I got my degree and found what my niche in life is.”

DS: “Did you find going back to college easier or harder than the first time?”

Bill: “Actually it was easier. I’ll tell you a funny story. My first semester of college, the first time, I think I had like a .076 GPA and this year, I graduated from Grand Canyon University with a 3.97 GPA. The joke I’m going to do tonight is that I found it’s easy to get good grades when you’re not drunk and horny all the time. My wife and I were getting ready to go out and I said, ‘hold on, I have a paper due in a few weeks and I want to get this part done.’ She said, ‘who are you?’ as they both laughed. I also did try to pay my Dad back because I felt like I wasted his money. This was my Dad and this is why I loved him so much, he said, ‘you learned what you needed to learn. You learned how to live with people, and how to deal with people, even though you didn’t do it academically. But when I got my degree, I held it up to the heavens and said, ‘look at this Dad.’ What a great feeling.”