Secret's out: Frigolette's show in Little Rock features coffee and comedy

It's late March and comedian Dan Frigolette is in Schenectady, N.Y., visiting family and working on a van.

"I'm trying to turn my grandma's old van into a tour bus," he says.

Should all go well, the 36-year-old will pull up to Guillermo's Coffee House in Little Rock today for the latest stop of his Comedy's Best Kept Secret Tour. Adam Gabel and Little Rock's Jay Jackson will open the show.

"I've had a loose idea of putting a tour bus together for a while," he says. "I was going to buy an ambulance, but the timing was never right because I'm traveling so much."

When his grandmother decided to move into a retirement community, it freed up her wheels, and Frigolette started looking into that #vanlife for touring and as a studio for his podcasts.

"I need to come up with a good, catchy name," he says. "The podvan?"

Frigolette, a regular on the New York comedy club circuit, got into showbiz about 15 years ago.

"Once you acknowledge what you care about, you go immediately after it," he says.

He has appeared on the Bob and Tom Show, HBO's Boardwalk Empire, The Following, The Wendy Williams Show, The Artie Lange Show and others.

He has an adventurous spirit when it comes to places he performs. His first comedy album was recorded in front of a bunch of naked people.

"I said 'I'm going to record this and see what happens.' It was a wild and fantastic show."

The result was 2017's Naked and Amused: Comedy at a Nudist Colony. (He kept his clothes on.) "There was something about the inclusion that these people have created in their community that I got attached to," he says.

That off-the-beaten-path approach to comedy extends to this latest tour, in which Frigolette is performing during the day at nursing homes, including at least one in Little Rock.

That show won't be open to the public, but Frigolette says he was inspired to book shows like that by his grandmother.

"We pretend like we need to protect the elderly from content," he says. "Comedy is always a conversation, and I want to see what it's like to talk to the elders of this country comedically. It will be interesting to see if our reference points match up."

Frigolette's material ranges from kid-friendly to grown-ups only. His public Guillermo's set will be the latter. The retirement center homes will be PG-rated, he says.

Offstage, he hosts podcasts, including Porn Stars Are People, where he speaks with adult entertainment performers about their lives away from work.

"It seems a lot of people in that industry are always asked on podcasts to be experts in the tawdry," he says. "I thought that was disrespectful and I wanted to do something the opposite of that."

Opening act Gabel won a 2016 Make Me Laugh comedy contest in Albany, N.Y., that Frigolette produced.

"He did a tour with me the year after he won," Frigolette says. "I've asked him to come aboard a couple of different times since then. He has really funny. It's a good vibe."

Weekend on 04/11/2019