{"id":1273,"date":"2018-03-14T16:28:43","date_gmt":"2018-03-14T16:28:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/visions\/?p=1273"},"modified":"2018-03-14T20:16:20","modified_gmt":"2018-03-14T20:16:20","slug":"the-liberal-redneck","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/visions\/the-liberal-redneck\/","title":{"rendered":"‘The Liberal Redneck’"},"content":{"rendered":"

SOUTHERN PERSPECTIVE MIXED WITH LIBERAL POLITICS LAUNCHES COMEDY CAREER<\/em><\/h3>\n

Even in high school, goofing off with his buddies, Trae Crowder, \u201908 psychology, \u201909 MBA, knew he wanted to be a comedian. He also never questioned going to college and knew he didn\u2019t want to be a \u201cstarving artist.\u201d<\/p>\n

In spring 2016, Crowder took his cell phone and an idea for a video series to the back porch of his Tennessee home and made his first \u201cThe Liberal Redneck\u201d video. In his authentic southern accent, Crowder let the internet know just how he felt about a hot political topic of the time: laws set to regulate the use of bathrooms by transgender people. The video went viral getting millions of views and launching Crowder\u2019s comedy career to new heights.<\/p>\n

Since then, Crowder has done more videos, performed at sold-out venues across the country with fellow southern comedians and tour mates Corey Forrester and Drew Morgan, co-authored the book \u201cThe Liberal Redneck Manifesto: Draggin’ Dixie Outta the Dark\u201d and moved to California where he is working with Warner Bro. and ABC to write a sitcom loosely based on his life.<\/p>\n

A native of Clay County, Tennessee, Crowder was a good student, was encouraged by his family to focus on education and was the first person in his family to graduate from college.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I was (at Tennessee Tech), I knew I wanted to pursue comedy and show business and all of that and start getting on stage, but I didn\u2019t want to be waiting tables while I was doing it,\u201d Crowder said.<\/p>\n

He earned his bachelor\u2019s degree in psychology with a 4.0 GPA.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t want to do the starving artist thing. So, I thought \u2018what is the most versatile degree I could get that would help me get a good job that pays well while I am trying to do this other thing?\u2019 and an MBA seemed like the right thing to do at the time.\u201d<\/p>\n

With his MBA, Crowder was hired by the U.S. Department of Energy in Oak Ridge in 2010. That\u2019s when he moved to Knoxville,\u00a0where he began doing open mic nights while working full-time.<\/p>\n

Thanks to the success of \u201cThe Liberal Redneck,\u201d Crowder has since transitioned to making comedy fulltime work. His videos and his brand of comedy draw heavily from his experiences being raised in the South, but it isn\u2019t all about the jokes. Many of the topics Crowder takes on are heavy-hitting political conversations.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe way I normally describe [The Liberal Redneck] is that it is kind of just me cranked up to 11,\u201d Crowder said. \u201cSometimes people are surprised that it is any kind of character at all, but if I lived my day-to-day life the way I act in those videos, I would be pretty hard to be around. I would be pretty obnoxious.<\/p>\n

\u201cI do have a very stereotypically redneck background, and as long as I have been politically interested at all I have leaned left. That\u2019s all real, but it still is a character because I don\u2019t act exactly that way all of the time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since much of his audience is people who take a similar political perspective to his own, Crowder doesn\u2019t put too much weight into the notion that he is changing the minds of conservative Southerners with his jokes.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have had a lot of people who have told me that I have changed their mind in a different way,\u201d Crowder said. \u201cWhat I mean is somebody in San Francisco telling me that I changed their opinion of people from the South in general.\u201d<\/p>\n

As his comedy career takes a national stage, Crowder says the Southerner in him does miss being in Tennessee.<\/p>\n

\u201cI loved my time [at Tech] and in Cookeville,\u201d he said. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t change any of that. I will always have a soft spot for it wherever I go.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SOUTHERN PERSPECTIVE MIXED WITH LIBERAL POLITICS LAUNCHES COMEDY CAREER Even in high school, goofing off with his buddies, Trae Crowder, \u201908 psychology, \u201909 MBA, knew he wanted to be a comedian. He also never questioned going to college and knew he didn\u2019t want to be a \u201cstarving artist.\u201d In spring 2016, Crowder took his cell […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":1314,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1273","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-16"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/visions\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2018\/03\/Portrait_Alumni_Trae_Crowder_comedian_12OCT17_00006.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/visions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/visions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/visions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/visions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/visions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1273"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/visions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1273\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1274,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/visions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1273\/revisions\/1274"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/visions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1314"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/visions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/visions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/visions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}