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Chris Distefano Took a Page From Taylor Swift’s Playbook to Reclaim Ownership of His Comedy

Stand-up comic Chris Distefano is not only hilarious, he's savvy about the major changes in his business. He also loves The 1975 and Whitney Houston.

It wasn’t quite the same as Phil Collins playing at Live Aid in London in 1985 then hopping on the Concorde to do the same at the Philadelphia show, but you try making people double over in laughter for three hours in a single day. Forty-year-old New York-based Distefano, who has been performing stand-up since 2009, is as savvy about the changing nature of the comedy business as he is funny, and he spoke to Billboard about the value of podcasting, fan-building and his love of The 1975 — and as a comic who married into a Puerto Rican family, his take on Tony Hinchcliffe’s “floating island of garbage” joke at Donald Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally in October. Because you could go see your favorite comic and hear them tell the same jokes you heard him or her say on the internet or their special, but it’s going to be a totally different experience, because every audience is like a living, breathing organism that’s changing little things here and there about the show.

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