We Speak Comedy

Sheryl Underwood Puts 68 Cities on Notice With the I Need A Job Tour

Published

3 days ago

November 12, 2026

Sheryl Underwood. Photo via Wikimedia Commons.

Plenty of comedians talk about owning their own stage. Sheryl Underwood is literally doing it, at scale. The Little Rock native has rolled out the I Need A Job Tour, a 68-show run presented by her own company, Pack Rat Productions, stretching from November 13, 2026 all the way to April 24, 2027.

The tour opens Friday, November 13 at the Cincinnati Funny Bone in Liberty Township, Ohio, then moves through rooms across the country, including Helium Comedy Club in Portland on November 20 and a holiday-week stop at Helium in Indianapolis on December 26. It is the kind of routing that only comes with decades of knowing exactly which rooms love you, and Underwood has spent those decades earning it.

Her résumé is one of the sturdiest in stand-up. Underwood first broke through in 1989 as the first female finalist in the Miller Lite Comedy Search, a milestone that opened doors for a generation of women behind her. Daytime audiences know her as a longtime co-host of CBS’s The Talk, where her comedy timing became a daily fixture. And she has kept her stand-up edge sharp in the streaming era too, appearing in 2026 as a roaster on Netflix’s The Roast of Kevin Hart.

What makes this tour a story is the structure as much as the jokes. Pack Rat Productions is Underwood’s own shop, which means the I Need A Job Tour is a veteran comic presenting herself, booking herself and building an asset that belongs to her. In a business where even famous names often work for somebody else’s banner, Underwood is spending the season working under her own. Sixty-eight shows deep, that is not a side project. That is the job, and she is doing it exactly the way she wants.

We Speak Comedy

Gary Owen’s No Hard Feelings Tour Opens Sold Out in Detroit and Runs 63 Dates Deep

Published

3 days ago

November 12, 2026

We Speak Media

Gary Owen. Photo via Wikimedia Commons.

The first weekend of Gary Owen’s No Hard Feelings Tour is already a statement: two nights at the Sound Board at MotorCity Casino Hotel in Detroit, November 13 and 14, and both are sold out. From there the run keeps going, 63 dates in all, stretching to May 7, 2027, with Rochester, Buffalo, New York and dozens more cities in between.

Owen’s story remains one of stand-up’s great unlikely launches. The Cincinnati native started doing comedy in 1995 while stationed with the US Navy in San Diego, and was named Funniest Serviceman in America, a title that sounds like a punchline until you realize it launched a thirty-year career. He built his audience the slow way, on the road and on club stages, until he became one of the most reliable theater draws in the business, the kind of comic promoters call when a big room has to fill.

That reliability is written all over this routing. Sixty-three dates is not a victory lap; it is a working comic’s calendar, the schedule of a headliner whose fans show up in every market, every time. The sold-out Detroit opener says the demand is not slowing down, and a tour that runs from November into next May says Owen has no plans to slow down either.

Thirty years on from those first sets in uniform, the No Hard Feelings Tour is Gary Owen doing what he has always done, showing up, night after night, city after city, and leaving audiences convinced the trip was worth it. Detroit found out first. Sixty-two more rooms are about to.