Trae Crowder at the Weinberg Center

BY SHUAN BUTCHER Special to The News-Post

Trae Crowder went viral in 2016 for his Southern-fried comedic videos on social media and has since written a book, toured the country, appeared on HBO, ABC and MTV and in the Veronica Mars reboot as Chattanooga Charlie. He also now co-hosts the “WellRED,” “Evening Skews” and “Puttin’ On Airs” podcasts. On March 25, Crowder will bring his “Liberal Redneck” humor to the Weinberg Center.

I know the small town rural feel. Tell me what it was like growing up in Celina, Tennessee.

It’s very rural. It’s, like, equal distance from Nashville, Knoxville, Chattanooga, and Lexington, Kentucky. It’s sort of dead in the middle of those four cities and about as close to the middle of nowhere as you can get in the state of Tennessee. I always tell people there’s no traffic lights, there’s no McDonald’s, there’s only one high school in the whole county and each graduating class is around 50 kids, give or take five or 10.

So, I mean, it’s very, very, very rural. My family was a bunch of small business owners. My grandpa owned a car lot and a garage. My dad owned the video store in town. I kind of grew up in that video store, and that’s sort of what got me into show business in the first place. My openly gay uncle and his partner owned a deli on the town square. In the mid-’90s — after the factory, which was the beating heart of the town’s economy, left and moved to Mexico — it just absolutely devastated us, and it’s remained devastated ever since. It’s never really recovered. I say the factory left forever and the pills showed up for good.

It sounds like your family owned half of town.

It sounds like that. We weren’t like landed gentry types at all. Well, it’s not like a “they owned this town” type of thing. We had a bunch of small businesses in my family, but we were still very blue collar. My grandpa did own the car lot. He was kind of a “pillar of the community” type of guy. He was real tight with the sheriff and all that, and he was highly respected. But, you know, we weren’t, like, boss hogging it or nothing like that.

When the shift happened, when the factory closed, everything started to take a turn for the worst. I sort of remember the good days of my early childhood, but it’s mostly darkness. My mom got hooked on pills and went to jail a couple times.

I’ve still got a lot of pride, but it’s not like a warm nostalgia associated with it. Do you know what I mean?

You have mentioned that some of your liberal political views were attributed to that object poverty you experienced, and you talk about being a “liberal redneck.” How do you define liberal redneck?

First of all, it’s all a matter of perspective. In my hometown of Celina, I was the smart kid, and I got made fun of for talking like gentry. I got bullied for talking proper and for being pretentious and stuff, and I wasn’t. But in Burbank [California], where I live now, I’m the most redneck person most of these people will ever meet.

In terms of defining redneck, I always really like Jeff Foxworthy’s definition, which was the glorious absence of sophistication. At the end of the day, I’m not refined in my text or my opinions or attitudes or any of that. I’ve got a master’s degree and went to college, but I’m still kinda trashy, I guess, for lack of a better word.

Then the other part should be pretty self-explanatory. I’m not homophobic. I’m not racist. I don’t like corporations and billionaires, and they should be taxed, and poor people should be taken care of. There should be universal healthcare — and pretty much all the way down the list. Maybe a couple of things I’m a little more moderate on, but I’m just a lefty, as defined in this country.

TRAE CROWDER: JUST ME AND Y’ALL!

You mentioned college. What led you to getting a degree in psychology?

Well, my answer is gonna disappoint you. By the time I got to college, I already knew that I wanted to be not just in show business but specifically a comedian. From the time I was 12-ish on, it was comedy specifically. But I was in the middle of nowhere. No comedy clubs. No open mics or nothing. But I still knew I wanted to do it. So I decided I would get the degree that I thought was the most versatile and gave me the best shot at getting a good job while I moonlit as a comedian. I know that doesn’t sound like psychology, ’cause, as my favorite psychology professor said, “With a bachelor’s in psychology and $5, you can get a cup of coffee at Starbucks.”

So, it hasn’t come in handy as a comedian to be able to better understand human nature?

Not gonna toot my own horn about it, but I think that comedians have to be pretty observant. You have to have an interest in other people and try to dissect why people are the way they are and stuff like that.

After that, why did you go to work at the Department of Energy?

It’s in Oak Ridge, which is by Knoxville, and Knoxville was big enough for a comedy club. It was just a job that I was able to get, and so I took it. People that work there don’t leave it. It’s a pretty sweet gig. You know, it’s not overly laborious, you’re not working a lot of overtime or that type of thing. it’s not overly stressful, you don’t have to take your work home with you, you got good benefits.

I was always free on the weekend. Weekends are when you do a lot of standup, so it worked out pretty well.

When was that moment that you took the leap into comedy as a career?

There are probably three things that all happened around the same time. The phone call when I found out that I had sold the book was the specific moment. Then hearing from Warner Bros. of their interest in a television development deal. Then I went out on tour, which sold out.

And how did you get into podcasting?

Well, I’ve got too many podcasts. I’ve got three now. It seems like if you are a comedian, you have to have a podcast — just basically because that’s what you do.

The first one, “wellRED,” was started with Corey Ryan Forrester and Drew Morgan, good friends and comedians also from the South. We toured together and wrote a book together.

The genesis of second one, called “Weekly Skews,” is about politics specifically, and obviously politics is a lot of my draw on the internet. So, I thought I should probably do something that was explicitly political in nature.

Then the third one is with Corey again. It’s called “Puttin’ On Airs” and is a podcast where two good ol’ boys from the rural South analyze fancy people s—. We talk about the royals, Marie Antoinette, or crystal decanters or yachts or whatever.

Being from rural Tennessee, what was the move like to Los Angeles?

It wasn’t totally foreign or alien to us. The only things I don’t like about it are the same things everybody doesn’t like about it: the immense size, the traffic, and the cost of living is very hard to swallow. I mean, the sticker shock is unreal.

Being from the South, especially