Comedian Duncan Trussell talks VR, Pauly Shore, his crack-addicted landlord

Los Angeles-based comedian Duncan Trussell is bringing is his inimitable brand of spiritual, psychedelic hilarity to the Carolinas this week.

Trussell found national fame after a series of unforgettable appearances on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast, and has since appeared on Comedy Central’s “This is Not Happening,” “Drunk History” and Syfy’s “Joe Rogan Questions Everything.” You can hear him weekly on “The Duncan Trussell Family Hour” podcast.

Blending soul-penetrating comedic observation with an inclusive social message, Trussell is on his first headlining national bus tour, along with comedians Mikey Kampmann and Stephen Agyei.

Trussell recently talked with our Johnny Woodard about his Carolina roots, the coming virtual reality revolution, celebrity encounters, and Hindu yogism.

Did you leave North Carolina for L.A. with the intention of becoming a stand up?

Oh, hell no. No way man. I've never been that focused, you know? I just thought it'd be cool to live in Los Angeles. I was going to either live in New Orleans or Los Angeles.

I'd just graduated from college, and when you graduate from some colleges you become somebody who decides to start a career — but the college I went to (Warren Wilson College in N.C.) taught us, “You should go and live life!”

(Warren Wilson) is a hive of super-hippies. They said, “Go live! Just live!” Of course they didn't mention you're $17,000 in debt. “Go live! … Just make your payment.”

I'd inherited like $10,000 from my grandmother. And I went to L.A. and my landlord was a crackhead. Like a literal crackhead, not like 'He's a crazy guy, he's a crackhead,' but a literal crackhead.

So he's jonesing, coming around for rent early?

Oh yes, at one point he actually did come for rent early. I said rent wasn't for another two weeks, and he said, “Well, I guess we just won't have power for two weeks.” He was that level of crackhead. And he started taking me to these hardcore underground raves in L.A. And we started taking so much acid. I was taking acid all the time. We bought a vial of acid. It was a blast.

So right after you got out there, you were taken into this rave culture?

Well, I guess you could say “taken in.” More like “invaded by.” My landlord was invading rave culture because he liked to (meet) girls at raves, and he liked crack. Raves are the perfect place for somebody like that.

He actually ended up leaving the country to go to Europe to try to find a girl he met at a youth hostel. I never saw him again. Leaving me his dog. He put me in charge of the property. One day he's like “I'm going to make you the landlord.” Just crack-head logic.

It wasn’t a pleasant place. At night you could hear rats climbing in the trees. It was a real hell-scape.

Then I ended up getting a job at The Comedy Store because the money had run out.

I got out of there, got a job there, and started hanging out with comedians. Part of the job's benefits are that you get to do three minutes at the open mic on Sundays. In L.A. stage time, in the beginning, is just this precious, precious thing.

Especially at the Comedy Store, right?

Yeah, at the Comedy Store! That's a very precious bit of real estate up there on the stage at the (Original Room).

Did you realize that at the time?

Absolutely. I still remember just coming from North Carolina. I'd never seen a famous person in my life. I still remember when Pauly Shore walked into the office. Because his mom, Mitzi Shore ran the place.

It's hard for me to imagine him actually doing routine office work.

He's a real hard worker, actually. He just came in and I was thinking, “Wow! This is nuts. I grew up in the trailers of Hendersonville (North Carolina) watching your show. Getting blasted on trailer park bong hits and watching your show, and here you are. In the flesh!”

It was wild. That's the beauty of the Comedy Store. It's sort of this vortex of folks like that.

Do you ever get over that? The stars-in-the-eyes thing? I guess I'm asking when you became jaded.

It is annoying to be starstruck, but it's really tough to overcome something like that. Your mind, when it absorbs somebody through TV or movies, no matter whether you want to or not, you're always going to have a weird reaction. It's not the stars' fault. It's your brain that accidentally creates this absurd hierarchy of importance based on whether someone has been inside of one of the hypnotic rectangles around your house. It's really tough to shake that out.

I'll give you an example of the most embarrassing, starstruck moment I ever had. It was when I met (lo-fi pioneer) Lou Barlow. When I first met that guy, who is one of the sweetest people on planet Earth, I came up to him because he's at this show, and I had to tell him how much he meant to me. His music was just life-defining for me. When you find a band you like, it's not just music. You've connected with a zeitgeist that fuels you.

In my mind I wanted to say this: “Mister Barlow, —

“Mister Barlow”!

Because I was raised in the South!

People from other places really don't like it when you do that.

They don't. They really don't. “Please don't try to manipulate me with your formal titles you weirdo.”

So yeah, that was in my mind: “Mr. Barlow, you mean so much to me. I'm so happy you exist. Your music is incredible.”

But what came out was this, literally: “I ju — you are — amaze — … “ And he's with his friends, and they looked at me like, is this an autistic guy? Is this a guy with a mental disorder?

You’re so sensitive in that moment. He could’ve really crushed your soul. How did it go?

He just looked at his friends and went, “OK man, thanks!” He definitely didn't say, “Get the **** out of here.” He was as cool as you could be when some stammering freak comes up to you.

So the starstruck thing is still in me, but that's not a terrible thing. We need that. It's fun.

Here’s a variation on an old question. I know from your podcast that you study the teachings of (Hindu guru) Neem Karoli Baba. Say you could, by some miracle of space and time, sit down with him -- but you only have a short time because, I don't know, the Langoliers are coming — what would you do? What would you say or ask?

I am such a skeptic about these things, I think I would ask him for a miracle. Or to read my mind. Because I'm so insecure.

That's interesting that you want a miracle. The real miracle is that a guy in a blanket in India encountered an apostate acid professor from Harvard and that encounter created massive ripples through our society in the form of ''Be Here Now," which is like the hippie Bible. So just that interaction is miraculous.

I have a picture of him right here actually.

You're carrying a photo of him with you?

I carry it with me on the road, yeah.

My answer is just going to go flying straight into the Land of Woo, because the answer is I don't need to go back to India to visit with Neem Karoli Baba. He is just a representation of something that's inside of everybody. He's just a puppet that we have hung on the potential for human beings to connect with their core nature.

It's something we're currently calling love, which is another label we're hanging on something that really isn't going to get put into any kind of linguistic box. The answer is, if you want to talk to Neem Karoli Baba, or Jesus, or Gandhi, or the Dalai Lama, or Wolverine, or Batman, or any symbol you've hung on top of something that represents the potential of humanity, you only have to go as far as wherever your feet happen to be. That's where you can start that conversation.

That being said, if I got to sit with him I would ask him what he was. I'd like to hear him describe himself. That would be interesting to me. I'd like to ask him where his words came from.

I think that's a question I like to ask myself. This is like a fun question for everyone. If you, the next time you find yourself talking with someone, start paying attention to the place between the impulse to speak and the moment that the words are created.

It's impossible.

Right! Where is it coming from? Where is it coming from?

You're a portal. What's beyond the portal? Can we ever know?

You can know!

Maybe.

You can be it, rather. I think it was a guy from Stanford who released an essay on it. You know if you point a camera toward another camera —

It's infinite regress, right?

Yes! That's what is happening to humans. We're the thing that we think we are, and the thing that is aware of that thing.

So there is infinite feedback between the two?

And that infinite feedback is what creates consciousness.

That's fascinating.

Isn't that cool?

So can we never return to the source, if that's the case? If you're stepping back through infinite iterations, can you ever return to the originator?

Well, in this thought experiment, we have the two cameras. What's behind the camera?

This was my favorite part of college. These thought experiments. I don't get to do these as much anymore.

Well you don't have to have to lose it. That concept of education, so we get taught to be educated via this very formal system that is elementary school, junior high, high school, college. It's hilarious. You go into a class, sit down, and this alleged expert tells you the nuances of whatever your subject is, and you walk out of the class, you graduate, and for whatever reason we think, 'Yep, that's it! I'm done!'

And yet, the general concept that a lot of these philosophers and gurus like to put out there is that this entire dimension is a kind of university. Your life is the curriculum, and at any given moment you're being taught about what it is to be an unlimited thing wearing the clothes of limitation.

Try telling my mom that.

Here's something fun to let jiggle around inside your head. And this is really uncomfortable for a lot of people: Where you are right now is exactly perfect. You don't need to be anywhere else. You don't need to be doing anything else. Nothing is wrong. You're creating this game where you don't quite fit into the universe.

Why is it called the “You Are God” tour?

Like your last question, the bone that I like to throw to my mind to chew on — this idea of “what's behind the camera?”

Behind the projector is, of course, for lack of a better word, God. So “You Are God.” You're God experiencing this finite existence as a being. So really all of us are God. So I'll just call it the “You Are God Tour.” Even if I don't have a lot of jokes about that, at least when people hear it, it will sink in and some people will start believing it.

So you’re a big believer in the coming virtual reality revolution, right? You even speak about it in spiritual terms.

It is a fundamentally religious experience. This is just the very beginning of it. What's amazing about that idea is — here's one of the great problems that has plagued humanity: Some people have religious experiences, and some people don't.

The people who have them go into the world and have to relate this life-changing event. If you look at (Alcoholics Anonymous), the religious experience is one of the fundamental necessities as far as ridding yourself of alcohol, and recovering from alcoholism.

When you look at studies coming from psilocybin research they're doing for smoking cessation (comparing it with conventional stop-smoking drugs), they’re finding that when people are on mushrooms, you can tell they are actually going to quit taking cigarettes if they have a spiritual experience.

Spiritual experiences will change a person's life for the better.

So you think they can replicate this through VR?

Absolutely. I have a friend of mine who has used this new VR app that simulates the experiences of taking LSD. It is some kind of voice warping, kaleidoscopic experience. He said in the midst of this experience he thinks he saw an entity. He thinks he contacted an entity.

Oh, wow. And that's not part of the programming?

No, not part of the programming. The program is randomly generated patterns. We're so advanced in many ways, but we're very limited in our ideas of what is a psychoactive. What is a psychedelic.

For most people a psychedelic is a thing that enters through your bloodstream, not your optic nerves. So the idea that technology can't be a drug is ludicrous. You're just getting the information into your body via different systems, but it's still, when you're talking about a completely immersive experience, that will continue to grow more complex and detailed as computer processors speed up — the inevitable result is a kind of time machine. A time machine where we can enter into a simulation of the past and have conversations with people who were dead.

That's what (respected futurist) Ray Kurzweil wants to do, right? Talk to (a dead parent)?

And who wouldn't want to have a conversation with their mother? I mean, unless they're still alive!

This technology is the nexus of several different technologies. I haven't noticed many people talking about what happens when artificial intelligence begins to create other worlds for us to visit in virtual reality.

So what is happening is a portal is opening up into a new strata of the human experience, which is a place that lives in the cloud, but is a place generated from human consciousness and artificial intelligence.

Any time a new terrain opens for exploration, whether it's a new continent, which isn't going to happen, or we colonize another planet, or whether we open a portal to an infinite array of alternate universes generated in VR by the human mind and artificial intelligence — the spaceship has landed. Now you have to decide, do you want to get on board?

Even the office environment is going to change. The concept of going to an office is going to seem absurd. In less than a decade.

So you can work from anywhere? Someone from Maine can VR-commute to Los Angeles?

And also in Los Angeles, thank God, it's going to redefine auditioning. Because L.A. traffic is probably 50 percent actors going to auditions for ******* commercials.

The interstates are filled with dismayed actors going to and from their terrible auditions. It's a mess. So this is going to be a very environmentally friendly technology. It will help so much of the planet, because of these carbon emissions, especially from the car, will be limited.

Look at ******* rush hour. Rush hour is twice a day. The highways get filled with people who are bringing their meat bodies into a building to do activities that they could just as easily do at home. But because we have this archaic way of doing business based on a pre-Internet age, people still do it like little zombies.

Any time anybody emails me saying, “let's have a meeting at this place,” I always write back: Why don't we do it on the phone? Why don't we do it through Skype? Why don't we do it any other way than sitting together listening to each other burp and fart and eat. Why? This is an outdated modality that has no — there's no reason to do that.

You have one of the most recognizable voices in comedy. As someone afflicted with the Southern accent, I want to ask, what are your thoughts on the Southern accent, and the baggage it carries?

Well, I remember when I went to elementary school in North Carolina, and I remember this awful stupid stigma attached to this accent, which is so beautiful.

This is the problem. We conflate one thing with another unrelated thing. You'll have something amazing, like the New Testament. One of the most psychedelic scriptures on earth. And you have Christian radio, for example. Or fundamentalism, that is a kind of homophobic, frightened — it's wearing the New Testament as a kind of velvet glove over an iron fist.

People who have been pummeled by this velvet glove their entire lives — someone pounding them every day, and calling it Christianity — the moment you bring up Jesus or the New Testament, or anything like that to them, they're thinking “Hell no, not interested man. Are you going to start punching me? Because any time I hear the name Jesus it's followed by talk of how awful I am and that I'm going to hell.”

In the same way, for whatever reason, in the South some people who have a Southern accent also can be total ********. So some people unfairly associate that accent with the *******. Then this stereotype gets brought into movies, and the next thing you know, if you happen to have a Southern accent — and let me say again, I consider it to be the most beautiful accent, I love it! — when you have a Southern accent, misinformed people are thinking, well, here comes the hillbilly!

Now don't get me wrong, I got bullied many times, and the voice of the bully was inevitably this really deep Southern accent, so I get it. It can be the voice of ignorance.

This is your first big bus tour, right? Have you ever toured on a bus like this?

Never. I've never done this before.

Are you excited?

I am so excited. I'm ecstatic. It really doesn't seem fair. Not only do I get to travel around the country in this really nice bus, but I get to do one of my favorite things every night.

For the first leg of the tour I've got Mikey Kampmann and Stephen Agyei. Steve Agyei is this ******** hilarious guy I met at the Denver Comedy Works. He's this guy who I know, without question, is going to be a famous comedian.

I know that sounds a little ostentatious that I should make that prediction, but I will say, I've only made that prediction a few times, and I am always right. So forgive me, but I have yet to be disappointed.

I think that's because I got to work with (Mitzi Shore), who ran the Comedy Store. I've been around, working at The Comedy Store, and you’d see people come in and nobody knows who they are. They pull into the parking lot in a car that's falling apart, and you see them a decade down the road, and they pull into the parking lot in a super nice vehicle.

So her eye for talent is no myth, then?

No myth. That's no myth.

And are your fans finding you now, when you go on tour?

They are now. But early on there were times I was asking, “Who do you think you're coming to see? Why are you here?” I want people to have fun. I mean, you probably all got babysitters. But all comedy is not the same. If you're looking for some kind of non-political, non-spiritual comedy, then that's just not what I do.

Thank the Lord Jesus Christ, my savior, and Neem Karoli Baba, my shows generally are filled with people familiar with me, because of my podcast. They already know what I'm like. This is the wonder of the Internet age.

In the old days you would perform at a place, let's say the Comedy Castle in Detroit, which was one of the most miserable weekends of my life — and I've had cancer!

I can remember going there and being kind of excited because they called themselves a castle. I just assumed the place would be set up like Medieval Knights or something. That place ain't a ******* castle. Whoever decided to call that a castle has never been to a castle. Unless a castle is just some dank warehouse.

It's not their fault. They're a beloved club, I think. When you're just starting in comedy, and touring around to comedy clubs, one of the things you'll do is peel the curtain back from backstage and see what kind of crowd has come to your show. It's a curiosity, right?

At this time I'd just started going on (The Joe Rogan Experience podcast), so my people would start to show up. The freaks, you know? The good people. The principled people.

I remember peering out, and this long table is filled with — it looked like a senior citizens home in the area had planned a night out, and brought a busload of them to this comedy show.

Not your crowd.

Seniors are the greatest people on earth, but to cross that generation gap is not something I can do. I wish I could. But I will never forget that night or that weekend. It was so, so brutal. Apologies to the people of Detroit for those shows, but man, thank God, because of the podcast that doesn't happen anymore. Now we just get the freaks, which is what I consider myself.

Many comedians now are dedicating more time to podcasting. Is it taking them off the road or out of clubs? How has podcasting changed stand up as an industry?

It has actually gotten me on the road more. None of this touring I'm doing would be possible without podcasting.

So it has helped an audience find you?

Yeah, that's the way to say it. If not for podcasting there is zero way I'd have the necessary exposure to be what's called 'a draw.' I'd never be able to bring people to the venues. The whole thing would be futile.

And they come to the venue with your rhythm, and understanding who you are.

That's it. It's the dream of dreams. It really is. The ultimate. I feel so lucky I get to experience that. It's a rare thing to be able to experience, and I can't believe I get to. If there's any indication to me that we're already in a virtual reality simulated universe, it's that I get to be a touring comedian.

That's something I think I would've plugged into a futuristic video game arcade to experience with my friends.

Trussell is performing on March 31 at Music Farm Charleston, and on April 1 at Cat’s Cradle in Carrboro, N.C. For tickets and information about Duncan Trussell’s “You Are God Tour,” click here.

This story was originally published March 31, 2016 at 3:10 PM with the headline "Comedian Duncan Trussell talks VR, Pauly Shore, his crack-addicted landlord."