Dusty Slay: The Neighborhood Guy Tour

Purchase Tickets Dusty Slay: The Neighborhood Guy Tour You can take the boy out of the trailer park, but you can’t take the trailer park out of the boy… stand-up comedian Dusty Slay grew up on Lot 8 of a mobile home neighborhood in Opelika, Alabama, with a love for both classic country and rock and a career history peppered with jobs like waiting tables and selling pesticides. Now the Alabama native with the “We’re having a Good Time” attitude is hitting cities all across the country playing comedy clubs and selling out theaters filled with fans eager to imitate his signature Wave.  The trucker hat, long hair and mustache, flannel shirt and oversized glasses aren’t affectations to cultivate a stage persona as the B-side of a 1970s Bob Seger track—it’s just Dusty.  As a young boy, growing up in a trailer park, Dusty never felt like he was poor. He didn’t even know folks were better off than him until he went to school and was the only kid whose home address said “Lot 8 Moore’s Trailer Park”.  In his comedy he reflects, “We never felt poor, we just didn’t have everything growing up. Like instead of ice cream, my mom would just pour milk into a bowl and then she’d call us in the room and say ‘welp, you’re too late!’”  Raised by a single mother with two daughters from a previous marriage, Dusty’s unique family home was never lacking for warmth or love. His father, always present in his life from the very beginning, made sure to show him the simple joys of boyhood adventure. “We never had real pets growing up, we just had prisoners of nature. A dog would wander up, we’d chain it to a tree. Now he’s ours.”   As he came of age and started joining the workforce, Dusty had many jobs. He had multiple stints as a dishwasher and waiter at restaurants and food chains like Papa Johns, Jim Bob’s Chicken Fingers as well as a couple tours with Western Sizzlin’ and the historic Hyman’s Seafood.  He spent 8 years as a pesticide salesman selling to hardware chains like Lowes and Home Depot. “A lot of people would come up to me and ask weird questions like, we want something that’s gonna kill the insects but not harm the environment. I’d say well, ‘How bout a shoe’. Cause I’m selling pesticides here.”  In 2001, Dusty bought back his childhood home, the trailer that he grew up in.  At this time he made plans to join the army, but an untimely arrest for marijuana possession disrupted those plans.  Later that September terrorists attacked the World Trade Center in New York and months after the country was at war.  “Everything happens for a reason” says Dusty. After a few years of improv classes, in 2008 Dusty was inspired to try his hand at stand-up comedy where he found his true calling. He won the Charleston Comedy Competition and was named Charleston City Paper’s Stand Up Comedian of the year in his then hometown two years in a row. In 2014 he made the move to Nashville and made Comedy a full-time gig touring comedy clubs all across the country.   The Nashville ...