Fairfield arts center to host ‘Baby Boomer Comedy Show’ Saturday

FAIRFIELD – Looking for a night of wholesome, clean comedy?

Then look no further than the Baby Boomer Comedy Show to be performed this weekend at the Fairfield Arts & Convention Center. Comedian Kent Rader will make his debut in Fairfield with a 90-minute stand-up routine of “good clean fun” at 7:30 p.m. Saturday.

Rader’s act includes hilarious bits about his family, work, dieting, aging and do-it-yourself projects, “all without resorting to crass language or distasteful jokes,” according to a news release about the show.

Rader is 63, so he’s on the tail-end of the Baby Boomer generation. He got the idea to call his act the Baby Boomer Comedy Show so his audience would know “this show is appropriate for them.”

“They know it will be stuff they can relate to,” he said. “People my age grew up with clean comedy. I have nothing against profanity, I just don’t think it should be used as a punchline.”

Rader said that, like a lot of Baby Boomers, he grew up watching comics like Johnny Carson.

“Even to be on at 10:30 at night, you had to be clean,” he said. “Richard Pryor, as dirty as he was, could pull out all the profanity from his show and still kill on Ed Sullivan. George Carlin was the same. He grew up in an Irish Catholic family, and he could take out all the profanity and still be funny.”

Rader said he is good friends with comedian Chris Rock, who told him that he writes all of his jokes clean to start with, because that’s the only way he knows they’re truly funny.

Comedy was not Rader’s first profession. After growing up in Kansas City, he spent the first 17 years of his adult life working in accounting, and as a CFO and CEO at hospitals. He decided to change careers, and began doing financial programs for home care associations across the country.

“The material was so dry, I began telling stories to liven it up,” Rader said. “That led me to do corporate speaking, and about three or four years into it, I decided I needed to be funnier.”

Rader started performing at comedy clubs, and before long he was selling out theaters. Now he performs in 30-40 theaters a year, with about five weeks of comedy clubs where he performs 5-7 shows a week.

Rader said he’s looking forward to performing his first show in Fairfield.

“It looks like a beautiful place, and it’s got the perfect sized auditorium,” he said.

Call Andy Hallman at 641-575-0135 or email him at andy.hallman@southeastiowaunion.com