Art Work 

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Comedy, like any creative form, isn't for anyone expecting things to be easy. Maybe you're able to make a career out of it; most never do. More than 10 years into doing standup comedy, Travis Tate is taking a step that feels like the one comedians take when they're aiming for the big time: recording a live set for an audio/video "special." But it's also just another example of him putting in the work just out of love of doing it.

It took quite a while for Tate—who lives in Grantsville, with a day job working for the U.S. Postal Service—to make his way onto a stage for the first time. He got married in 1995 when he was just 17 years old; by the age of 18, he and his wife already had their first child. It's not exactly the ideal scenario for deciding you're going to be an artist.

"I did put it off for a long time because, when you're 18 and you've already got a kid, you need to get a job," Tate says. "The responsibilities definitely slowed me down."

In 2011, however, he finally took a shot for the first time at stand-up. "I used to talk about it all the time," he recalls. "My wife said, 'Just go to an open mic, or stop talking about it.' And I did well enough, I didn't get completely discouraged. ... If I'd started when I was younger, I don't think I would have been mature enough to deal with the disappointments."

Tate acknowledges that there was a lot he had to learn when he first started, particularly when it came to developing a stage presence. "It took me a long time to feel comfortable being on stage," he says. "I think I was always good at writing and doing the math of a joke in my head, but I was not a natural performer, at all. Some people you see, and they're just natural, and I was not that way."

So the answer, as he describes it, was work: observing other comedians; thinking about the way facial expression, body language and intonation affect delivery; developing a set through a process of trial and error. "I would try a joke one way, and it didn't work at all. Then, the same exact words with just a different tone, would click," Tate says.

When it comes to his voice as a comedian, on the other hand, he thinks he's always felt most comfortable making his own life as a husband and father the focus of his material. There too, he recognizes that the specifics of when he got started—and the fact that he didn't start out sooner, or younger—had an impact on finding that voice.

"In the early 2000s, there was that 'morning show' style of humor, which is a lot different from now," Tate says. "I might have gotten caught up in that, which is not the kind of comic I am at all."

Similarly, he thinks it had an impact that he was beginning his stand-up career at the time when social media was exploding, leading him away from one potential brand of comedy. "That was when Twitter was really starting," he says. "Topical jokes were really hard, because 100 people might have already made a similar joke on Twitter.

"My voice was just being me. ... My oldest son has Asperger's; I have two gay kids. I'm making fun of myself. But I end up talking to people all the time after shows [about those subjects]. When you make that connection with somebody, that's an emotional thing."

Being able to make those connections is what makes comedy a kind of art, a word Tate initially rejects with some self-deprecation. Mostly, he's spent his 11 years in comedy doing local shows, traveling out-of-town occasionally, barely breaking even financially. It's never been about a wild ambition to be a star. "I think for me, the type of personality I have, I was setting small, achievable goals," he says. "I was never like, 'I'm gonna get a Netflix special.' I just wanted to have three actual good minutes of material people will laugh at. Then I wanted five minutes. Then I wanted to get a weekend show. I don't know if there's a right way or a wrong way, but I didn't want to make these big plans."

For now, there's recording those shows on July 22 and 23, a do-it-yourself operation where he hasn't sold it to a distributor, or planned anything beyond getting it up on YouTube. "I've got a good hour than I'm very proud of," Tate says. "If I can sell it, even the audio if not the video, that would be great. But if not, I want to put it out there."

And at last, he is willing to consider that along with the work, there's a little bit of that "a-word." "Standup can be so juvenile and silly and dumb. But anything you put that much time into, and sacrifice time with your family, it has to be a little bit of an art to make it worth it."