Comedian Brian Regan bringing his observational humor to Pittsburgh for return engagement

Brian Regan was just in Pittsburgh a couple of months ago, but he’s back by popular demand for a “second show” this Sunday.

“Well, I’m excited. … Usually a second show is the same night. They weren’t able to do that. So I was there on Oct. 16,” Regan said in a recent interview. “But, because the ticket sales were really good, then they decided to add another show. So this is me coming back.”

A fixture of American stand-up comedy for decades, Regan has been performing since the early 1980s. His blend of observational humor and physical comedy has proven popular among audiences.

So what can fans flocking to the Carnegie Library Music Hall of Homestead hope for on Sunday night?

“If people like music and people like dancing and people like comedy, come on out because I’m doing one third of that,” he joked.

In his time as a younger comic, Regan would often direct the barbs of his jokes at himself, but things have changed as the 66-year-old has aged. “Well, years ago I did a lot of self-deprecating stuff, and now I realize that I’m not the moron, everyone else is. So I do less self-deprecation and do other-deprecation,” he said.

“There’s a lot more people out there besides me. So that opens up my world of humor immensely,” he added.

The Florida native attended Heidelberg College in Tiffin, Ohio, before pursuing his stage career. It was his university years where he found his voice.

“Well, I was in college and I took a speech class, just, you know, for something to do and I tried to make my speeches funny, just so I wasn’t bored. And I remember one time killing — if you will — in speech class. And it was a very cool experience. And I remember walking back to the dorm after that, thinking to myself, ‘I don’t feel like this when I walk back from biology class.’”

He started doing more and more activities to find the spotlight. He emceed shows, introduced sports players at basketball games for the college and gradually found his place talking in front of people.

“So little by little. I started thinking, ‘Gee, I wonder if I can do this?’” he said.

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After he left college, he headed back to Florida to make a go of it with comedy. “There was a comedy club that opened in Fort Lauderdale right around the time I wanted to really pursue this more,” he said. “The club was called The Comic Strip, you know, like a cartoon. … It gave me a place to start out and try things out. And so I did that for a few years. And then after that, I went out on the road and haven’t looked back.”

Even those humble beginnings in Fort Lauderdale were auspicious. “At The Comic Strip where I started, when I was auditioning, on one of my auditions, I followed a guy named Jerry Seinfeld,” he said.

That was before Seinfeld blew up into the international star he is now — Regan said that they crossed paths a week or two before Seinfeld first appeared on “The Tonight Show.”

“I’ve always looked up to him, I’ve always thought that I liked his approach to comedy. You know, he thinks of a funny idea, but he doesn’t stop there. He then puts scaffolding around it … and he creates a wonderful comedic picture, you know, he puts really good words around good ideas,” Regan said.

He and Seinfeld have crossed paths again. He’s appeared on two episodes of Seinfeld’s Netflix series “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee” and Seinfeld produced his 2018 Netflix series “Stand Up and Away! with Brian Regan.”

Being primarily a stand-up comedian has meant watching the world of comedy evolve throughout his career. Regan is impressed by younger people who managed to break through.

“Well, the world definitely is changing. It’s completely different from when I started. The way I had to be seen was with Greyhound buses. I had to get on a Greyhound bus and go from city to city and audition at comedy clubs and now there’s social media, there’s podcasts, there’s TikTok, there’s all these different ways of doing it. If I were trying to start today, I don’t know if I would be able to figure out how to negotiate my way through it all. I’m fortunate that I started before all of this.“

Between 2017 and 2020, Regan appeared on three seasons of the comedy series “Loudermilk,” which is now available on Netflix. He said that he usually only watches his taped stand-up routines once — usually to study them — but he may have given this series a closer look: “As far as acting, that world is so new to me that I have to confess that I watched most of these episodes twice.”

Brian Regan will perform at the Carnegie Library Music Hall of Homestead on Sunday, Dec. 29. Get tickets at librarymusichall.com.