Quick Take
Santa Cruz County-raised comedian Joe Sib has lived a decidedly urban life despite growing up on a remote horse ranch in the Soquel hills. He returns to his hometown for a show at the Kuumbwa on Feb. 9.
Sometimes, you’re not a product of your upbringing. Sometimes, you simply don’t belong where you’re planted. Don’t believe it? Ask Joe Sib.
Sib is a stand-up comedian from Los Angeles who grew up in Santa Cruz County and is set to perform Friday, Feb. 9, at the Kuumbwa Jazz Center.
He spent most of his childhood in an idyllic setting, a horse ranch in the remote Soquel hills, in a serene and spacious oak-and-eucalyptus environment, surrounded by horses and other animals. And yet …
“I had no interest at all in the woods,” he said. “I had no interest at all in horses or goats. I didn’t want to have anything to do with any of that stuff at all.”
Instead, young Joe — he was known as Joey Subbiondo back then — was focused on a patch of asphalt and concrete at the ranch, a place where his parents and other visitors to the ranch parked their cars. As a kid, he would beg his parents to move the cars so he could skateboard on the asphalt. He decided to organize a local skateboarding contest at the ranch, coercing some of the kids from the area to sign up even though none of them knew the first thing about skateboarding. They were all horse people.
“So I ended up winning my own contest and I got [as a prize] a copy of Skateboarding magazine,” he said. “And that was what really changed everything for me.”
Since those days of rebelling against his surroundings in the late 1970s, Sib, 54, has devoted much of his life to skateboarding and punk rock, as a musician, a record label entrepreneur and a stand-up comic. Despite his decidedly rural upbringing, he has turned into a quintessentially urban person. He fronted a punk band called Wax. He co-founded the indie label SideOneDummy. And he’s been doing stand-up comedy for 15 years.
Sib has a natural tendency toward storytelling, and his comedy mines his life for stories and anecdotes, most notably from the perspective of a middle-aged dad watching his youthful hipness slowly fade — “I just found out that ‘gluten’ was not a metal band from Germany,” he cracks on stage.
He travels to clubs and other venues on the East Coast, in the South and other regions of the country. “There’s a lot of people who are a bit older now, on their second or third marriages maybe, and we’re all just trying to figure out how to hold it together,” he said. “The biggest thing I get from people when they’re leaving my show is, ‘Wow, I could really relate to you.’ And that’s the best feeling in the world.”
As a musician and a comic, he has performed alongside some of the biggest names in the entertainment industry, including Metallica and Social Distortion. But he still holds onto memories of a displaced urban kid in a remote setting, and a punk rocker in a family that was anything but punk rock.
“I remember the Ramones coming to the Santa Cruz Civic when I was a kid,” he said. “I bought a ticket but my mom wouldn’t let me go. And I held that over her head until the very end. She was on her deathbed and I was like, ‘I’m still pissed about the Ramones, just to let you know.’ And she’s like, ‘I respect that. But I still think I made the right call.’”
Joe Sib performs live at the Kuumbwa Jazz Center on Friday, Feb. 9, in a show featuring comics Becky Lynn and DNA. Showtime is 7:30 p.m.
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