Since the Blue Room Comedy Club got its start in 2015, Thanksgiving at the club has meant one thing: Kenny DeForest.
The Springfield-born stand-up comedian — who appeared on “Late Night with Seth Meyers” and the Pete Holmes HBO series “Crashing” — headlined at his hometown club every Thanksgiving weekend since it started in the back of Billiards in 2015, Blue Room owner Chris Richele said.
There would be no Springfield comedy scene without the Blue Room. There would be no Blue Room without DeForest, Richele said.
The momentum around the Springfield comedy scene that allowed the Blue Room to thrive all began with DeForest, Richele said. DeForest helped build the comedy scene in Springfield in the late 2000s and early 2010s. Later, DeForest's success on stage helped a budding Blue Room establish its feet in the national comedy scene, he said.
“Comedy has flourished in Springfield, Missouri, because of Kenny,” Richele said.
On Dec. 13, DeForest died from injuries sustained in a electric bicycle crash in New York City five days earlier. He was a rising star in the national comedy scene, with appearances on ‘The Late Late Show With James Corden” and TruTV's “Friends of the People,'” according to his website. In 2015, he was named one of Comedy Central's “Comics to Watch.”
Homecoming show in DeForest's honor
On Dec. 26, the Blue Room hosted its annual “Christmas Comedy Homecoming” show. Richele said he hoped the show could be a place southwest Missouri comics could come together to remember DeForest and celebrate his impact.
“We're doing this in honor of [DeForest] tonight; he's our hometown hero,” Richele said to the crowd of about 50 people. “This is kind of like an opportunity for us, in the comedy community, to celebrate... and remember Kenny DeForest.”
The show featured about 20 comics, all with Springfield roots. Many of those who performed had known DeForest for years, Richele said. Doors opened at 5:45 p.m., with the show beginning at 6:30 p.m.
Though the Homecoming show wasn't a memorial for DeForest, it kind of felt like one, said Tyler Snodgrass, a comedian who performed at the show. Snodgrass performed at the first Homecoming show held at the Blue Room, along with DeForest, he said.
“His spirit feels like it's in the room because he was here for the very first one when there were just four comedians coming back to town,” Snodgrass said. “Every year it's gotten slightly bigger, but Kenny was the person who cultivated the community.”
Always a helping hand
In 2013, Snodgrass left Springfield to pursue his dream of stand-up comedy in Chicago, he said. DeForest, also living in Chicago at that time, was one of the first people to help Snodgrass get his feet in the Windy City comedy scene.
That wasn't uncommon for DeForest, Snodgrass said. DeForest always helped any comic in any way he could, he said.
“He would give you advice, he would give you stage time, he would talk to you like you were the only person in the room,” Snodgrass said. “He was so clever, wise, he really knew how to be so many things at once.”
The two eventually made their separate ways to New York and remained close. Kenny saw comedy differently, Snodgrass said, and it was part of what made him so successful.
“Over the last decade, he had become more like a mentor than like a friend,” Snodgrass said. “In my experience with him, comedy was rarely, if ever, competitive. It was just about being as good to yourself and others as possible.”
Truckload of comics
At the end of the 2000s, DeForest had just graduated from Drury University and was known for hosting impromptu comedy shows anywhere in Springfield where people would let him, Richele said. The comedy scene in Springfield at that time was bleak, Richele said, as there wasn't a single club devoted to stand-up.
It was at one of these impromptu shows, at the now-closed Electric Cowboy, that Richele met DeForest. Richele said he was taken right away by DeForest.
“His smile, his charisma, his personality,” said Richele, smiling. “Nobody was a stranger when it came to Kenny, you immediately became his best friend within 15 seconds of meeting him.”
In the early 2010s, DeForest was a budding comic trying to make it in Chicago. But he never forgot about his hometown.
Around that time, DeForest would bring a “truckload” of comics from Chicago to Springfield to host one of his infamous impromptu comedy shows, Richele said.
He did a few shows at Prima's Mexican Restaurant in Chesterfield Village, Richele said. Snodgrass said he saw DeForest host a show at Patton Alley Pub in downtown Springfield around 2013. The comics would come in for a Saturday night, crash at DeForest's parents' place, then drive back to Chicago on Sunday, Richele said.
“It was a big deal,” Snodgrass said. The comics were “unknown names to us, but the current killers in Chicago.”
Those shows formed the basis for a stand-up comedy scene to grow in Springfield in the early 2010s, Richele said. Eventually, the shows gained in popularity enough that DeForest moved them to the Gillioz Theatre, Richele said. Snodgrass said he remembers DeForest performing at The Mystery Hour with Jeff Houghton around that time.
“Most of us wouldn't have thought comedy was an option, out of Springfield, had (DeForest) not blazed that trail himself,” Snodgrass said. “And then he was the person that would come back, multiple times a year, and do these incredible shows at his home club.”
Years later, when Richele was trying to form a comedy club in Springfield, DeForest would be the first show he promoted, Blue Room co-owner Mollye Richele said. Since then, every Thanksgiving weekend meant DeForest was headlining at his hometown club.
“He really believed in the Springfield scene and he really believed in the Blue Room and that you can be from a small town and really be something in comedy,” Snodgrass said.
His last show at the Blue Room
Just weeks before the bicycle crash that ultimately took his life, DeForest was headlining at his hometown club, making Springfield laugh just as he had for more than a decade.
When DeForest performed at the Blue Room, he was known for including as many other comics as he could, said Josh Wingo, a Springfield-based stand-up comedian who knew DeForest through the Blue Room.
“By the end of it, there would be like 20 guest spots,” Wingo said, adding that many of the comics were completely unknown. DeForest added them to the setlist anyways.
“He felt like somebody you had known for years,” Wingo said. “He's always been that way. He always made you feel comfortable.”
Corbin LeMaster, a stand-up comic who has known DeForest for about five years through the Blue Room and performed at the Homecoming show, said DeForest wasn't like other nationally recognized comics who came through to headline the club.
“Most of them are assholes, to be honest,” LeMaster said. “Kenny wasn't like that. He spoke to each of us like we were a comic, as if we were in New York or L.A. or wherever.”
Wingo said he saw DeForest make notes through other comics' routines at the Blue Room.
“He watched everybody's set and wrote down names of who he liked and why he liked them,” Wingo said. DeForest was “thoughtful” when he “didn't have to be.”
In the decade DeForest and Snodgrass spent performing in Chicago and then New York, Snodgrass said he learned one thing above all else from DeForest.
“He was a big pay-it-forward guy,” Snodgrass said. “If you want to carry on Kenny's legacy” then “you be kind to people, you provide opportunities for people, you pay it forward in whatever way you can.”
“‘Be more like Kenny' should be the Springfield Motto.”
Editor's Note: The photos used in this story were provided by Karen Knuth Photography. To see more of her work covering Springfield comedians, click here.
