Jess Cohen, Special to The Denisonian—

Kyle Gordon ‘14 is a Brooklyn-based comedian known for his hilarious, wide-ranging character skits on TikTok and Instagram. Most recently, he released Planet of the Bass, a parody Europop song with over two million views on YouTube under the persona DJ Crazy Times. In this interview, Gordon shares his comedy journey post-Denison and exciting career developments. 

Q: What did you study and what extracurriculars did you engage in while at Denison? Did you develop any characters as a student?

A: At Denison, my major was East Asian studies and I was really trying to learn Japanese. I studied abroad in Japan and by the time I left, I was conversational. On campus, doing the Doobie [radio] was my big thing and I was involved in the Hilltoppers. On my album, each song is a parody of a different genre but they’re all tethered together with these radio station-like interstitials and there’s one that is a spot-on impression of me as a Doobie DJ. The first time I ever did DJ Crazy Times was at Denison [and] it’s probably my oldest character. The Hilltoppers made a CD in 2013 and there is a recording of me introing. The album’s called Make Some Noise.

Q: What was your Doobie show’s name and theme? 

A: I don’t remember the show’s name but my DJ name was DJ Boutrous Boutrous Ghali after the UN Secretary General from the early 1990s. Each show would have a different theme so I’d have Christmas music in March, I did Bulgarian top 40 [and] traditional Irish music. Every week would be a completely demented different theme which is very much in keeping with my taste.

Q: What was your journey into the New York City comedy scene? 

A: I didn’t audition for the Burpees my Freshman year and because of that, I didn’t do that much comedy at Denison. But, the summer going into my Senior year, I went into Columbus and did an open mic at the Funny Bone. After that, I moved to New York and pretty much immediately started doing improv but I had tons of different jobs. I took classes at UCB and was on [improv] teams at The Magnet. I’m not a stand-up [and] I’ve never really done stand-up so I was like how do I develop a solo performance thing that isn’t stand-up? So that’s how I found characters and that would have been a year or two into doing comedy.

Q: What is your process for developing a character? How do you choose which character you will perform at shows and continue to make videos of?

A: I have this giant note on my phone called new characters and it’s years and years long and so anytime I have an idea throughout the day, I’ve gotten really good at just like jotting down ideas. I think the real process comes from separating the wheat from the chaff and figuring out which of those ideas are actually worth pursuing. I’ll sit down and I write a bunch of potential lines of dialogue that the character might say. When I actually go to film, I’ll go through all the things I free wrote and be like all right these are the best of those. After that it’s just a question of if I have anything else to say in the character and if it like feels like pulling teeth…there’s really nothing else to say in this character. 

Q: Your most recent song and music video, Planet of the Bass, has gone viral. What was your process for writing this song and shooting the music video? 

A: I had begun doing it [DJ Crazy Times] online and it was fairly popular. December 2020 was the first video I posted and I posted a few of those videos throughout that year. I never had an original DJ Crazy Times song. When I knew I was going to be putting out this album I was like now is a good time to like write an original song. I shot it [the music video] in Columbus with my friends from Denison. It’s a production company called Loose Films and they’re based in Columbus. It was always my plan for them to shoot the music video, but then with all this hype it turned into this giant thing. I’m just so happy for them that they are getting all these props and they did such an amazing job. They were on a 72-hour no-sleep editing session to get it done so working with those guys was my favorite part of the whole thing. I’m still completely ignorant when it comes to technical film stuff so I think the big idea is find people who have that expertise and you’ll learn a lot in the process.

Q: How did you end up performing at a Jonas Brothers concert and can you describe that experience?

A: Nick Jonas DMed me cuz he’d been following me for a while on TikTok. From the moment I knew I was going to be performing with them till when I actually got on stage was less than 24 hours. It all came together extremely fast. Before that, the most amount of people I’d ever performed for was maybe 400 and there were 20,000 people there. I mean it was really fun and it was totally surreal. At that point, I was just playing pretend rockstar.

Q: What are your plans for the next year following the success of Planet of the Bass?

A: The next big thing is the rest of the album set to be released in the fall. With all the craziness on DJ Crazy Times the release date has got pushed around but I’ll definitely have two more singles coming out. I’m going to be in Columbus in November which will be fun. I’m doing a mini tour [with] three shows in the UK at the end of October and a bigger tour in the spring. I’m still building the show but the tour is going to be a lot of music.

Q: Going back to your experiences at Denison to conclude this interview, I’m wondering what’s the wackiest memory from your times as a student.

A: My generation will remember when a deer got trapped in the downstairs of Slayter and was thrashing around and destroying things. You couldn’t go into Slayter all morning because a deer was in there. It tried to smash the Doobie glass. I don’t know how it got in there! 

Q: What’s one piece of advice you would give to Denison students who are not majoring in the arts but want to pursue a career in comedy?

A: The most important thing is trying to develop your own voice and figure out your taste. If you’re trying to do stand-up or any solo performance, go to open mics [and] build your network. When you’re starting out, there’s a gap between your taste and your ability, so try to perform as much as humanly possible. You absolutely do not need to major in the arts in order to become proficient at it. You are gonna learn more from one-night bombing at an open mic than you would if you majored in comedy. Put blinders on and dive in head first!