Connect
To Top
Local Stories

Story & Lesson Highlights with Kevin Bennett

Avatar photo

We’re looking forward to introducing you to Kevin Bennett. Check out our conversation below.

Hi Kevin, thank you for taking the time to reflect back on your journey with us. I think our readers are in for a real treat. There is so much we can all learn from each other and so thank you again for opening up with us. Let’s get into it: Have you stood up for someone when it cost you something?
Doing the right thing often doesn’t come with direct rewards or accolades. The right thing, especially when the world is not aligned with doing what is true, honorable, or good, is something that will generally make you a pariah. For years. I’m not alone in understanding this. Mark Twain understood, he said: “In the beginning of a change the patriot is a scarce man, and brave, and hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot.” Any time you really stand up for something or someone, it’s going to cost you something. And here’s the kicker: the person or community for which you stand may not even be thankful. Perhaps some in the community will be. But they might not be. So in short order, the answer is: yes. I’ve stood up for persons and things when it costs something to do so. And I don’t have what I’d like to, and what I could have, by not standing up for what was right in the moment. But I always sleep sound at night, there is a roof over my head, and I have never wanted for food, water, or any of the things needed in life. The secret is, life is a season. The days are a passing train. We’re pilgrims, riding that train from one horizon to the next; but it’s only a night and a day. The destination is the point of the trip. So if the passengers on the train are mad at you for something you did in preparation for the destination, what’s it matter? You’ll be where you are destined soon, and you’ve deposited good for when you arrive where you’re meant to be.

Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
Generally I’m an entertainer, but I’m increasingly a “Jack of all trades”. I went to college on a scholarship for theatrical performance–transferred from a forensic scholarship once I made it to the department. I finished my BA in theater in March of 2008, and worked in the coal mines of Wyoming–Belle Ayr specifically, of Foundation Coal at the time–to pay off what remained of student debt. By Autumn of 2008, I had the remainder of collegiate expense paid with mine money, and moved to Colorado, where I thought I might pursue a career in standup comedy. Now, I prayed over it and flipped a coin. Heads, I take what money I saved after paying off college to L.A. and try to find a role in the film industry. Tails, Colorado. It came up tails (I believe–this was 17 years ago; I can’t remember exactly which way it went, only that it was a binary choice: 1, CA, 2, CO). I moved to Fort Collins and immediately gave up on comedy in Colorado, all I could find was some drunken dive in Denver with karaoke at 5 PM and nobody there. Indeed a comedy scene existed, but I wouldn’t find it for three years. Instead I worked as a telemarketer with cons and ex-cons just out the halfway house, and I worked on several novels, one of which was eventually published (The Thief and the Sacrifice). I had a bad breakup, managed to get a Driving While Ability Impaired (DUI-light, basically), and had to take the bus from Fort Collins to IBM’s campus between Longmont and Boulder in January. It hit -20 one morning while I was riding my bike from the apartments to the bus station. Had to leave by 4:20 in the morning to make the bus stop by 4:45; but the bus was always late. It was a rough month. In February, an old friend of mine by the name of Reese Jenniges told me about a comedy opportunity at a place called Hodi’s Half-note. I went the following week, and found there were two open mics in Fort Collins. I started hitting them up every week, and by the end of 2011, I had enough material for a feature set. By November of 2011, God gave me French Accent, which is my present comedic persona. By December of 2011, I was payed $20 for my first gig in a little Greeley dive. From February to May of 2012, I went on the road with a mid-level con-man, who I didn’t realize was such a person until I was several weeks out of Colorado doing dive bar comedy shows. I learned enough that, by June of 2012, I was a headliner. I wasn’t a good headliner, but I had the material and experience to make that dog hunt. I followed that hunt through 2015, working as a substitute teacher and donating plasma so I could take any gig without losing income. I needed my own schedule. In 2015, I discovered SEO content writing–that’s: Search Engine Optimization. This allowed me to work as needed and take all the gigs I could. By 2016, I purchased (again over a prayer and a coin-flip) a 1978 Dodge Honeybee for $2,200, which I fixed up for another $3,800. I lived in that thing for nine months, then came back to my home town in Wyoming, sold it, and saved money working SEO until I could buy a 1999 Winnebago Rialta, purple, which I picked up for $12,000 after taxes, and sold for, I believe, $13,500 in 2021. From 2017 to 2020, I lived in Los Angeles. I did as many standup comedy events as I could, and traveled from San Diego up to San Francisco. In 2018 I auditioned for AGT after I was “scouted” at an open mic off Hollywood Boulevard at Hooter’s–before they decided to go bankrupt in a rebrand. It was one of the last shows before that happened in January 0f 2018. My audition was televised by June of 2018, and comedy opportunities picked up substantially. By either the end of 2018, or the end of 2019, I did my first interview with Bold Journey.

2020 marked a huge change for me. Los Angeles imploded. It’s still imploding. Long before COVID-19, I said Los Angeles was Detroit, Michigan, they just didn’t realize they would be subject to that economic implosion. I likened L.A. to a chicken running around with its head cut off. I told a few people, they would nod, not really agreeing or disagreeing–I think they saw the same thing. I did not foresee COVID-19 specifically, but I was well aware a disaster would result in serious circumstances. When COVID-19 hit, I knew it was time to go. Again I prayed over a coin and flipped it to be sure, God told me to hit the hills. I went back to Wyoming, was embroiled in local politics against the vaccine and other things for a while, and I lived with family for about a year and a half. It was just untenable to live full-time in an RV in L.A. anymore.

In January of 2021, I was looking for houses all over the country, because the housing bubble hadn’t hit yet, and there were deals everywhere. I was already thinking about properties in Georgia, Alabama, and Tennessee (Atlanta, Huntsville, Chattanooga), and the timing was right; so I did indeed attend the march on Washington January 6th, 2021. I was there, there was no insurrection. I did see half a dozen men pretending to be supporters of Trump, who were either antifa or feds, I’m not sure which. They were trying to rile people up. One man had army fatigues and an earpiece, he was yelling that: “It’s all for nothing if you don’t take the capitol! You drove all this way for nothing!” That was on the steps of the capitol building.

What a lot of people don’t realize about 1/6/21 is the distance involved from the ellipse, where the speech of Trump took place, to the capitol building. It’s about a mile, there are two streets you can take, one is more north than the other, they come together diagonally at the capitol. There were so many people there that day, well over a million–as many as five million–that it was hard to move. I had to climb in one of the trees at the edge of the grass by the Washington Monument just to see the jumbo-tron. Also, there were only six or a dozen porta-johns behind the ellipse for between 1 and 5 MILLION people. The event was deliberately under-managed, and that has come out as regards Pelosi. I left halfway through Trump’s speech to head to the capitol building because I knew it was a mile away, and I really needed the restroom. Well, when I got to the capitol–it took a half hour to an hour to walk–it was already overrun. Whatever happened there that knocked over French barricades etc., it happened well before Trump finished his speech. There’s a problem of physics otherwise. It looked, to me, like the poor planning that left six to twelve porta-johns for over a million people was at play here: they just didn’t expect so many people to turn up. That’s what I thought, anyway. There was a cherry-picker machine with a man in the next at the back of the capitol. Those things move less than a mile an hour. The event was supposed to take place at the front of the capitol building, not the back, where scaffolding was set up ahead of the 2021 acceptance speech for Biden. The media knew what was going to go down, and where. I didn’t. I just thought everything was disorganized.

There were two more porta-johns at the capitol building, and there were about a thousand people in line. I figured I had done my civic duty by then, headed to the subway, found a long line there but it moved faster, and took the train back to my stop near the hotel I booked three miles from downtown D.C. Now I’ve just glossed over these events, but I tell you, I didn’t know there was violence until everybody’s cellphone signal returned in the subway. I saw disorganized confusion on a cold day in January where nobody could take a whiz. I didn’t see an insurrection. Well, now we know definitively there wasn’t one.

I spent the next two weeks looking at houses in Georgia, Alabama, and Tennessee, before driving back to Colorado and returning the rental car. (They wouldn’t let me rent it in Wyoming because my driver’s license was from Colorado.)

Ultimately, I couldn’t find a house I liked, could afford, or that was in good enough shape to make an investment on, so back in Wyoming I started the search up again. My focus was on Montana, Wyoming, Texas, Colorado, Nebraska, Kansas, New Mexico, Utah, Idaho, and South Dakota. Ultimately I prayed over a coin when I had three properties to look over in South Dakota. The prayer was, I would make an offer on the best of the three properties I had narrowed down–this was in August of 2021. I followed through, and by November sold my RV. That was the down payment on the property I ended up securing, and I’ve been living there ever since.

I assumed, coming from Colorado to Los Angeles, to Wyoming, to South Dakota, that there would be no opportunities for music or comedy or anything of the sort, so I resigned myself to simply existing, building equity, and figuring out my place in the world. However, I was blessed. Through a local open mic music night in Lead, I was able to connect with the boys from the band High Rise, and through them, I was able to connect with locals who currently run a band called The Elevens. I also have completed three novels, which are as yet not published traditionally, and I’ve begun doing work as a wedding DJ, as well as selling rare used books. I still do standup comedy, and am blessed with a gig every month–sometimes two or three in the same month. It’s not like it was in L.A., where I would do six to ten shows a week, half of those paid. But what I’m paid for shows out here, where there’s more demand and less supply, far exceeds what L.A. was paying. The same is true of music. I played in bands when I lived in Fort Collins, and we had booked gigs. Those gigs seldom paid the entire band more than $100 or free drinks for the night. In South Dakota, that’s what individual players can expect to receive in the band–if their band is any good. I’ve also become involved in local film work, and have down three commercials and one or two music videos for a local production company–605 Media and Entertainment. I worked the streets in Deadwood, South Dakota for a summer in 2023–which was fortuitous; in 2023 AI stole my SEO job, and represents one of the reasons I’ve had to branch out in to 7 monthly revenue streams. Also in a bit of irony, when I was in L.A., I got a background part in the Deadwood movie. I had never lived in Deadwood, SD; and in fact, I don’t think I had ever even been there. Now I live right nearby, and was one of the street performers for their annual “old west” show. There’s a play called “The Trial of Jack McCall”, and I played multiple parts in this production through the summer of 2023.

As of now, I’m working on book for of “The Liminal Era” series (book one is “The Library Tree”, book two is “A Strange Man and His Cat”, book three is “The Color of Time”, and book four is “Domino Men”. I have an idea for book five, I have to finish book four first). This series is self-published by myself, and I actually bind and distribute individual copies as well. Think of it as a farm-to-table book. I own rights on all my work, and I sell it piecemeal. Beyond that, the bands, sporadic comedy gigs, and doing DJ work at weddings, I also do gig economy work as I can to fill the gaps. Generally God has taken care of me through the madness. I haven’t landed where I intended, but my “bold journey” is still continuing, and I’m adding new chapters month by month. Tonight I play a show at Crow Peak with High Rise, the reggae band I’ve been playing with since October, 2022.

Okay, so here’s a deep one: Who taught you the most about work?
My father. That guy never quits working, and he thinks he’s lazy. He isn’t, he has simply learned to make his hobbies productive; to an extent. He was a deep sea diver for the navy before becoming a mud engineer for the “oil patch”, and getting shipped up to Wyoming, where he would eventually become a pilot, and run his own small business, which I still help with to this day. Him and my mother never stop; they’re very goal-oriented, type-A workaholics. And I’ve seen the fruit of their labor. I don’t work half as hard, but I should. Well, these days, I’m a lot busier than I expected to be where I am!

Was there ever a time you almost gave up?
Yes. My first RV had an old radiator which I replaced in Wyoming in 2016, about May, before heading to the west coast. It turns out there was a thermometer in the radiator from an 80’s Dodge, and mine was from 78. So the threshold of the thermometer was higher than the ’78’s design parameters. Accordingly, it wouldn’t let in coolant soon enough. So I drove from Gillette through Montana to Portland to San Francisco to L.A. before I figured out what the issue was and got that fixed. In the meantime, the battery isolation unit was installed backward in Montana after the original unit failed, so I had to deal with the RV just…flat dying. I thought I figured out the carburetor under the cowling inside the cab, but it turned out I just revved the engine enough to charge one of the batteries. I broke down in some podunk town with “deer” in the name before Missoula. I was towed to Missoula, had the batter issue, made my way to the tri-cities area of Washington, where I was hosting a place called Joker’s for two weeks. Had to install a new water pump for the RV’s shower there. Lost my tires in Portland, had to get new ones. Lost my brakes in Eureka, California, had to work SEO three weeks to get new ones. From there I made it to San Francisco in August/September 2016; right before that city rotted off the branch. There I could drive in the traffic no longer than 30 minutes before my vehicle began to overheat. I was there about a month–prime comedy was in San Francisco at the time. There was a place called The Brainwash Cafe, where there was booze, laundry machines, arcade games, and a comedy open mic every single night of the week. I soon was noticed by the man running it, Tony Sparks, who put me up on a few paid gigs in the area.

When I left for L.A., it was raining like crazy, and I took wrong turns over mountain passes without windshield wipers on the way down. I had to use shoestring to keep the wipers working. I don’t even remember the pass I went through. The RV wouldn’t do more than 55 if it felt froggy anyway.

When I finally made it to L.A., I had the issue with the thermometer, and now I had a solenoid going out, and the alternator was going out, so I would have to roll under the RV and bang it with a wrench to jangle the magnets inside. If I put it in reverse and didn’t hit the gas right, the RV would die, and I’d have to roll under and bang the alternator to get it started again. Basically, all this culminated in my RV going dead somewhere in a neighborhood of Pasadena about midnight, the first night I made it to L.A. I was downright wore out–it was about October, I started my journey in late May/early June, and just about every single day there was some issue with the RV. And I had to keep writing SEO and trying to find comedy–which, somehow, I did anyway. Grace of God, I’m sure of it. At any rate, I remember falling down, having a panic attack of sorts, and deciding I was done. I made it to L.A., I might as well just head back to Wyoming and say I gave it the ole’ college try. So I prayed over a coin. “God, heads I go back and say that was just some fun frivolous late 20s/early 30s nonsense, tails I stay and keep on keeping on.” It came up tails. So I stayed in L.A. till the end of November, came home for Christmas, went back out there in that old RV in 2017, came back for a few months, got the better RV, and by 2018, I was auditioning for America’s Got Talent. Basically, after I had that meltdown, a day or two later I learned I just needed a new thermometer on the radiator, and that solved the lion’s share of my problems.

I’ve written a memoir that goes over day-to-day details, and again, I’m only glossing over it here. That was the closest I’ve ever come to giving up. I was alone in L.A., first night I had ever been there, with an RV that pretty much didn’t work, less than $2k to my name, and no hope. And it could have ended up a lot worse. Thank God I didn’t break down in Van Nuys!

Sure, so let’s go deeper into your values and how you think. Where are smart people getting it totally wrong today?
Smart people trust in expertise in a faith-like way. There are no real experts. It seems like there are, but really we’re all just toddlers crapping our pants in the preschool of life. Some of us know to use the toilet, some of us could care less. Really, though, life is kindergarten, death is first grade, and everyone here is investing in crayons. You won’t even get to use them all that much in first grade, and by college, they’re out entirely. Yet here we all, little toddler tycoons, stacking up crayons until the whole room is empty of them save our fat coloring box, and giving them out like the king of kindergarten to the other kids. Listen, the biggest Bezos billionaire on the planet is just stockpiling crayons. Money and wealth are frivolous. I’d like to see Bezos take his Amazon crayons to the world beyond death, wouldn’t you?

Smart people get degrees that are limned in a culture of “expertise worship”, which is totally unjustified and stupid. It’s not that you shouldn’t give credence and respect to someone who has mastered a trade. But you shouldn’t think of them as the undiluted authority on anything. Haven’t you been to a mechanic, you, who knows barely anything about cars, and caught them about to spend $1,000 on diagnostics for an issue you’ve already identified? And this can happen when such persons are in earnest. I had to replace an alternator on a 2015 Chevy Spark. Well, it wasn’t going out. There was a hose that had a rip in it from a recent freeze that was starving the engine of air, and causing the symptoms I experienced when trying to accelerate. However, the vehicle had 150,000+ miles on it, so the alternator WAS going to fail, it just hadn’t as yet. The expert, who works with cars all day, didn’t realize I just needed an $80 fix. He was in earnest, I was in earnest, we both missed it.

Now think about how much more dire this reality is when it comes to medicine. COVID-19 vaccines were a bad mechanic’s solution to the wrong problem. Masks were depriving the body of oxygen, necessary in providing macrophages (white blood cells) the “oomph” they need to go after viral cells. Schools were shut down and children isolated at precisely that time when socialization is fundamental to psychological development. Economies crashed, forcing the third world into America. Crime went through the roof in major cities and is still causing record trouble. Why? The “smart people” trusted the experts.

Even a fool is thought wise who keeps his peace. The race doesn’t always go to the swift, or the battle to the strong. Smart people put too much faith in their “expertise”. Everybody needs to pump the brakes and be Berean about all we encounter. As the Russians put it, trust, but verify. The thing is, nobody likes to think, even if they’re smart. It makes sense. Who wants to check Einstein’s math? Yet it must be checked. We’re all just toddlers in the playpen of life, death the transition into our real destinies, these days a fleeting fart in the metacosm. Smart people need to quit having faith in mankind and expertise, and instead set their eyes on the great artist who painted this universe in the first place. But academia is rooted in chasing a particular folly: this idea that we aren’t responsible for our own choices, owing to pragmatic materialistic cosmology. That’s just a red herring, folks. I’ve seen it firsthand on the road. Who we are, and our destinies, aren’t even imaginable in this prologue to true life.

Before we go, we’d love to hear your thoughts on some longer-run, legacy type questions. If immortality were real, what would you build?
It is real. The legacies that are built into eternity are those built between people, particularly as those people are in line with the grand cosmic vibration of existence. The universe is a painting. It’s a song. It’s a novel. It’s a video game. It’s a simulation, if you sill, but I don’t like that last word as it invites the reader to suppose things we do here have no future consequences. The reality is, life is kindergarten, death the first grade. We are progressing toward our eternal selves. The only thing to build, then, is that which will transcend this mortal coil. And what stands through after the shucking? Relationships. Relationships with the painter of reality, relationships with others who have been painted into this simulation. Money won’t follow, books won’t, music could though; if those with whom you have relationships remember the tune in the hereafter. The only currency in eternity is that of though, memory, and relationship. Accordingly, our mandate is to build treasure in heaven, as the saying goes. First, that requires alignment with the will of the creator Himself. You can’t align yourself with an idealized cultural version of this person. You must align yourself with the maker as He is, which is to say, a distinct intelligence with individualized personal attributes that is knowable in reality. Beyond that alignment, there is no possibility of building anything in eternity; as existing apart from that divine creative force is being conscious in a sea of dead lightless static.

Immortality is real, it’s found through Christ, and you can begin investing in eternity today through what you do on this earth, and who you do it with.

Contact Info:

Suggest a Story: VoyageDenver is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you or someone you know deserves recognition please let us know here.
Related Items

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

More in Local Stories