Comedian Phil Keeling has reached a new plateau in his career with the release of his comedy album “Conquuistadork.”
“We recorded it in front of a live audience at Muse Arts Warehouse down on Louisville Road on Feb. 17,” Keeling says. “We advertised the hell out of it to let everyone know it was a big deal.”
In making the album, Keeling broke new comedy ground. “I’ve done a lot of research and as far as I can tell, this is the only comedy album produced, recorded and released in Savannah,” he says. “It feels terrific.
“I’m very happy with it,” Keeling says. “As good as you get, there are always going to be bad shows between the random luck of the draw and nerves.”
Fortunately, everything was just right that night. “If it was bad, I would have rescheduled,” Keeling says. “I might have given it another couple of months.”
A good audience helped. “There were a lot of people who are fans and friends,” Keeling says. “But there were a lot who clearly had never seen my act before.”
Keeling used his best material in a one-and-a-half-hour show that was edited down to an hour for the album. “I’ve been working on it for quite a while,” he says. “There were a few things I slipped in that are relatively new jokes. It was a good combination.”
In his act, Keeling does both storytelling and joke telling.
“I’m mostly a joke teller,” he says. “About 75 percent is jokes. But in private life, I’m definitely a storyteller.”
An Army brat, Keeling was born in Frankfurt, Germany, on an American military base.
“My parents met in Savannah and married in Richmond Hill,” he says. “I had an aunt and uncle who lived here at some point.”
But Keeling arrived independently to earn his master’s degree at the Savannah College of Art and Design. “I was 23 or 24 when I moved here and my dad wanted to take me to Savannah for the first time.
“He’d point out places and say, ‘I did this here,’ and ‘I did that there’ and ‘I met your mother there.’ It was neat. I never had that.
“Most places we lived we’d never lived there before,” Keeling says. “We were constantly creating memories, but we never focused on nostalgia.”
Before becoming a comedian, Keeling worked a number of different jobs.
“I was a high school English teacher for two years in Savannah,” he says. “I worked at a Men’s Warehouse selling clothes. I was literary director for a small theater. I sold flooring in Pittsburgh, and right now, I’m a concierge at a bed and breakfast.
“I’ve run the gamut of different kinds of jobs, none for a terribly long amount of time,” Keeling says. “I’ve been looking for myself in a weird way. It probably wasn’t that I was looking for myself as much as I was looking for a job I didn’t dread going to.”
That dream job is being a comedian. “They say the common thing about comedians is that they’re terrible at everything else,” Keeling says.
“I’ve always been a funny guy. I was always a goofy kid, mostly weird. My family was all really funny. We grew up joking around.”
Keeling’s sense of humor is definitely blue. “I make dirty jokes,” he says. “Inappropriate is a word that gets thrown around about me a lot.
“My family is very supportive,” he says. “My mother in particular is supportive of me being a comedian, but at same time, she’s horrified.”
In his act, Keeling says his mother stalks him on Facebook. “I remember I called my mom and said, ‘Listen, there are going to be videos of me online. I don’t think you’re going to want to watch those.’
“A couple of days later, she sends me a list of YouTube clips,” he says. “All she had written on it was, ‘These comedians don’t have to cuss to be funny.’ But we talk a lot and she inevitably asks, ‘When’s your next show?’”
Keeling became a comedian because of his writing partner, Lee Keeler, who now lives in Los Angeles. “We were at SCAD getting our MFAs,” Keeling says. “I’d always been a writer and actor, and everything I did well was comedies.”
Although Keeling knew he could write funny dialogue and screenplays, he’d never considered doing standup. “We went to the open mic at the Sentient Bean and Keeler said they never had enough people.
“He said to write 15 minutes of jokes and just do it. Nowadays, so many people come out to this thing, if I don’t get there really early, I’m not going up. But that’s great.
“There’s a real scene for comedy in Savannah that’s kind of emerged and it’s really cool to watch it happen,” Keeling says. “It’s exciting to know I was at the beginning of it.”
Ten years from now, Keeling hopes to be on the road. “I’d love to be a working comedian,” he says. “I’m not one of those people in this for fame and fortune. What I would like to be doing is paying my bills by telling jokes.
“If I was on the road doing clubs, I would love that,” Keeling says. “If I could write for a show, I would love that.”
“Conquistadork” is available on amazon.com, iTunes and CD Baby. “I’m going to have some physical CDs by the end of the month,” Keeling says. “I will be selling them at shows.”
Why “Conquistadork”? “Initially, that was a pen name,” Keeling says. “I was an editor for ClassyHands.com, a comedy site with funny videos, essays and movies.
“Keeler wanted me to write a weekly essay. I was unemployed at the time, and one of the themes I kept hearing was that if you’re trying to get a job, they’ll Google you.
“If they see anything that could reflect poorly, they won’t hire you, so I needed a pen name,” he says. “I went with ‘Conquistadork.’”
It’s a name that fits, Keeling says. “I’m a nerd, I’m a geek, I’m a dork,” he says. “It’s almost like calling myself a conqueror of dorks.”
Although he’s recorded the first comedy album in Savannah, Keeling doesn’t think it will be the last. “We’ve got some unbelievably talented people here,” he says. “I’m the first guy to do an album and I think now that I have, it’s only a matter of time before the rest of them do it, too. There’s a lot of great material here.”