Joe versus The Edinburgh Fringe!

steveharrison35
Jul 20
7 min read

Updated: Jul 21

Article By Steve Harrison

From growing up in the sun drenched Santa Cruz, California to touring the world fronting punk band Wax, forming a record label and publishing company and then hurtling into a successful comedy career and finding yourself supporting Metallica on tour, why put yourself through ‘the mill’ to perform a comedy routine at the Edinburgh Fringe for 30 days straight?

We ask the question of the amazing Joe Sib, an enigmatic and spirited individual, skater, performer and comedian who has constantly forged his own path, that has eventually brought him to Scotland for the world renowned ‘fringe’.

But let’s put the punk scene and comedy to one side for now, let’s talk skateboarding!

One mention of the legendary ‘Bones Brigade’ skateboarding crew of California, we could have talked for weeks about a mutual admiration for the scene from the late 70’s well into the 80’s.

‘Oh, dude. Bones Brigade is everything. That team, you know, everybody from Stacey Peralta, you know, I loved his era of skating, the whole dog town. Like, so for me, I'm sorry, like, I can't even control myself. As soon as you say Bones Brigade, I start interrupting.’

Laughing out loud he continues!!

‘Okay, I'll tell you. So here, this is the craziest thing. So for me, growing up, I grew up in Santa Cruz in the mountains, small beach town, northern California, and I grew up in the middle of nowhere.’

‘At that time, my parents, they had horses. We lived in the country, and I wanted nothing to do with it. At one point, I bought a skateboard, a small skateboard, and I would skateboard on this one patch of cement. That was the late 70s, and my dad, I remember would drive me to and from school and at one point we were coming back out to the country and I saw this area where there was an incline it was behind a fence and I was like wow I want to skateboard on that because I had seen in magazines that's what people were doing, and I remember my dad one day said grab your skateboard and we were gonna go skate there and I go but dad it's on the other side of a fence!’

‘Like people always say, oh man, it must take balls to do standup. No, it takes being delusional’

‘The first time I ever bombed into an area I wasn't supposed to skate, I was with my dad. Skateboarding became everything to me. I was fortunate enough that in the 80s, my dad lived next to Winchester Skateboard Park. For you, that's not going to ring a bell, but the person that came from that skateboard park, the person that I grew up with was Steve Caballero. And I was there, I was there when Stacey Brooks would come and see him skate.’

‘I was there when there's a famous photo of him doing a frontside invert in the keyhole there. And I was there for that photo shoot.’

‘I mean, Steve Caballero, basically watching him, you know, cause he had already turned pro at that point and being able to be on the sidelines and watch him.! And also, I remember being there and all of a sudden you're like, oh, wow, who's this young girl skateboarding? Oh, that's not a girl, that's Christian Hosoi. That was when Christian Hosoi had the long hair.’

‘Yeah, so I got to see Christian Hosoi. I got to see obviously Steve Cavallaro. And then all of the other great skaters that were skating there, Bob DeNike, who was the president of Santa Cruz skateboards. And then at that point in San Jose, there were skateboarders like Corey O'Brien, Gavin O'Brien, these are all guys that Corey O'Brien, obviously he went pro, he rode for Santa Cruz, but those were the guys I was hanging around with.’

‘And then the skateboarding scene in my hometown, just by chance, Northern California, San Jose, was just such a hub for, because Steve lived there, and then what ended up happening, other skateboarders that had grown up, whether it was Jeff Grasso or John Lucero or all these guys, they would come to San Jose because we had such a great skate scene and we had a great music scene. So I just grew up thinking everyone's city was like this.’

‘But the Bones Brigade, for me was so instrumental because I loved the Bones Brigade. About two years ago, the Bones Brigade did a reunion and they had a dinner where Stacey interviewed each guy and I was the comedy to bring them on the stage. So it was a full circle moment for me because Tommy Guerrero, Lance Mountain, Rodney Cullen, and then you know obviously you and then you have Mike McGill, Steve Caballero and Tony Hawk.’

‘These guys they were everything to me and I'm so grateful because over the years I've become friends with Mike McGill. I grew up with Steve, so him and I are super tight. Lance Mountain, you know, I've been able to be friends with him. I've met Tony a few times. He was just super cool.’

The admiration for that era that influenced Joe is absolute and I totally get it!

And so to the Edinburgh Fringe! With an expansive comedy career that includes the significant highlight of supporting Metallica on tour as an opening comedy act I wanted to know why Joe had decided to take on ‘the fringe’?

‘It's addiction. With comedy for me, I was just telling someone about it this morning, is that I've never done drugs. I've just never been one of the, I just never went down that road. I know what an addiction is because I literally travel around the United States, around the world chasing laughs. I'm always chasing a laugh. I'm always trying to write a new bit. I'm always trying to do a new bit on stage.’

‘So that idea of people are like, oh, it's just something you do. It's like when you do standup, if you truly love standup as much as I love standup, it can make you to weird things’ Joe Laughs…...’ Like people always say, oh man, it must take balls to do standup. No, it takes being delusional.’

‘You have to believe in yourself so much that it's weird. And not an ego thing, but the fact that I think I can go to Edinburgh for 30 days and do a show about how skateboarding and punk rock changed my life and how it put me on the path for me to think that. You have to be delusional. Anytime I tell someone I'm doing fringe, they're like, oh God!..... Man, they just right away, they tell me how it ruined people's careers, marriages, how there's people that went over there to do it and then they've never been seen again. I don't know. I don't know.!’

‘I was just kind of like, screw it. I just want to do it. And also, at this point in my life, I figure if it goes terrible or if it goes great, what I do know is I'll get another great hour of comedy out of it…..So I'm going over there. I'm going over there to make friends, meet people. And also, if not now, when?’

On the preparation for 30 nights in the same venue, I asked whether or not it was the same approach as if he was on tour?

‘Yeah so I mean you know that that in itself could be weird you know? Usually I'm in the same venue for four nights not 30 yeah so you know, I feel like it could be fun and you know and if it isn’t I'll make it fun. I just hope that, you know, because the show that I'm doing, I think, you know, with the world that we're living in right now, it's definitely a 40, it's about, it's a 50 minute break from the heaviness and the intensity of the world that we're living in’

‘Like think about going to my show, you're going to the spa or you're going to the gym or you're just laying, you're just gonna be laying by the beach and you're just gonna take it in and you're just gonna, for one second not be thinking about everything else going on in the world, how it's affecting your kids, if your kids are gonna be okay, if you're gonna be able to pay the bills, if your marriage is over…. it's not this show, it’s just for you to come and go, oh my gosh, I remember when I loved music that much…..I forgot I loved music. Oh my God, I forgot. Even if you don't like punk rock, it's not about punk rock. It's not, it's sure, the skateboarding and the punk rock, there'll be photographs of all of that, but even if you're not, if you're like, I never was into that, this show will remind you of what you were into when you were a young kid. Whether it was fishing, or baseball, or football, or any of that stuff.’

Joe continues ‘This show is to remind you of when you loved something so much that you felt it could change the world. And somewhere along the way, we lose that. Everything's coming at us, and especially now, with everything going on in the world, it's hard to remember the core of who we are and what we love, and what made us who we are. And this show, this show is just me ringing a bell going, hey, check it out.’