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EXCLUSIVE: Comedian Gary Owen reminisces on his first set, doing crowd work ahead of Jax show

(Paul Mobley)

JACKSONVILLE, Fla — Comedian Gary Owen is coming to the Bold City later this month. You can see Owen at the Florida Theatre on December 27. The stand-up comic sat down with WOKV’s Chase Bunker ahead of his upcoming Jacksonville show to talk about using the military to get into comedy, reminisce on his first-ever set, and working with actor Michael Jai White.

“I just remember the Navy recruiter came to my trailer, I grew up in a trailer park, and I was like, wait a minute, this could be a way out. They’re going to fly me out, and then eventually, I figured I could get to California, and at that age, 17, I thought the whole state of California was Los Angeles. I didn’t know there were other cities. So the whole thing was if I could get to L.A. I could start doing stand-up. So the Navy was basically my way of getting to California, and that’s what happened. I got stationed in San Diego, and that’s when I started doing stand-up,” says Owen.

You can hear Owen reminisce about the first time he did stand-up comedy, where he went to do comedy, and redeem himself on a viral clip with comedian Andrew Schulz in the full interview.

Tickets for Gary Owen are on sale now.

You can listen to more of Chase’s interviews in the Chase Chats section.

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Chase Bunker

Chase Bunker, News 104.5 WOKV

Chase Bunker is a reporter and evening anchor for WOKV. Chase comes to Jacksonville from sister station WDBO in Orlando where he worked as a producer and a fill-in reporter and host.