I met Vance Michel at a wild time in my life. Fresh off a disastrous two-year run of comedy club management, I was teetering on the edge of permanent banishment from Montreal’s stand-up scene. I was mostly performing out of spite and not a lot of people wanted me around. And then I met Vance.

It was at an Art Loft show I think. My recollections from this period can’t really be trusted as I had recently made the transition from beer to vodka sodas. More on that later.

Vance was a presence from day one. He stood out because of his look and the New York accent, but mostly for his larger-than-life personality and near-constant exuberance. We got along from day one. It wasn’t clear where he had been before this, nor were many other details about his life. But he was here now, and that’s all that mattered.

The community embraced Vance almost immediately. Soon, he was hosting his own showcase nights at Art Loft, where he would gladly include me, despite my own checkered reputation. This included an incident in which I went off-script and screamed horrendous accusations at an up-and-coming comic. I really thought it was funny at the time. You had to be there.

I would book Vance more and more on whatever ill-conceived shows I was producing at the time. Although some seemed to be flummoxed by the sudden introduction of Vance into the regular crew, he’d always win anybody over quickly.

Then one day I had Vance on as a guest on Keith Hesitermann’s Go Plug Yourself podcast, which I was still co-hosting at the time. We recorded that episode in the speakeasy space of Hurley’s Irish Pub, which could really only hold about a dozen people, tops.

“I bet we could do a show in here and all we’d need is six audience members for the place to feel full,” I said to Vance.

Vance was enthusiastic about the idea. “I'm so down.”

Once we got the show going, he was instrumental in booking, promoting, and hosting this insane weekly night of comedy. We called it The World’s Smallest Open Mic. That was six years ago already. Since then, other shows and comedians have come and gone. We lost friends. There was a pandemic. But World’s Smallest survived, mostly because Vance would not let it die. They called Phil Hartman “The Glue” on SNL because he held the show together. Vance Michel might be super glue.

I’ve had so many fun, stupid, amazing times with Vance. One summer, I got us both press accreditation to see Lynyrd Skynyrd in Quebec City. I thought there would be potential issues as Vance would likely be the only black guy there. But everything was pretty smooth until Vance almost started a literal riot when he thought the band was going to skip “Freebird.”

“They better play Freebird yo, this crowd finna fight!”

They did, thankfully, and we all lived to see another day. In retrospect, there’s a lot of details to that story I don’t want to put in print.

I’ve had the privilege of seeing Vance grow as a comedian and a performer. Rough around the edges initially, he efficiently turned himself into a comedic force to be reckoned with, sometimes even in French. This past April, he recorded his first comedy special at the Art Loft, and he was good enough to ask me to host. The evening was absolutely magical and if you want to see the finished product, come to the closing night of The World’s Smallest Comedy Festival, this Wednesday at Hurley’s Irish Pub. We’re upstairs now. They turned the old room into a bathroom.

World’s Smallest Comedy Festival runs til Wednesday, July 31st, 2024. For complete show listings, visit HERE.

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