Nate Bargatze grew up in Old Hickory, Tennessee, a Nashville suburb, and built a standup career around his measured drawl and relaxed observations of ordinary frustrations. While employed as a water-meter reader, he and a colleague resigned to chase comedy work, arriving in Chicago during 2002. They secured positions at a neighborhood tavern and joined classes at Second City, the renowned improv theater that trained numerous Saturday Night Live performers. After several months he withdrew, concluding that solo standup better matched his goals.
He then shifted to New York City, where he refined his delivery through repeated club appearances over the following years. Appearances on Late Night with Conan O’Brien arrived in 2008 and again in 2009, boosting his profile. Victories at both the New York Comedy Festival and the Boston Comedy Festival in 2010 led to a Comedy Central Presents half-hour in 2011. His first album, Yelled at by a Clown, appeared on Aspecialthing Records in September 2012 and climbed to number two on the Billboard Comedy Albums chart. Additional late-night slots on Conan and The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon followed, and he portrayed himself in an episode of Marc Maron’s scripted series Maron during 2014. His second release documented the Comedy Central hour Full Time Magic and came out on Comedy Central Records in spring 2015, reaching the top of the Billboard comedy chart.
