If you have kids and a spouse, chances are Dude Dad has popped up on your social media.
Dude Dad, also known as Taylor Calmus, is a comedian and content creator with nearly 8 million fans across social media platforms.
He’s written three books and hosted his own TV show, “Super Dad,” on the Magnolia Network. He’s one-fourth of the “Husbands of Target” video that went viral in 2020, along with fellow content creators Penn Holderness, comedian Charlie Berens and Myles Montplaisir.
Dude Dad Live: On Thin Ice will perform at 7:30 p.m. Feb. 3 at the Genesee Theatre in Waukegan and 7 p.m. Feb. 4 at the Rialto Square Theatre in Joliet.
Calmus grew up in South Dakota and lived in Los Angeles for 10 years learning the entertainment industry. He moved to Fort Collins, Colorado, to raise his family with his wife, Heidi, who is a frequent collaborator in his videos.
If you’ve seen his videos, you’ve got an idea of what his standup routine is like, he said.
“It’s like a standup comedy version of those with a lot of visual aids,” he said. “We push the envelope a lot further than we do in the videos in terms of content.
“It’s an 18-plus show — but if your kid shows up, they’ll either not know what we’re talking about, or they’ll be embarrassed. Because there’s a lot of marital stuff in it. There are a few surprises along the way and it’s very visual. It’s a whole lot of fun.”
He had dreamed of being a standup comedian. Building up a fan base thanks to his viral videos made that dream possible, he said.
“I think the really cool thing about doing a live show is that you get to see the people and hear them react to your comedy instantaneously,” he said.
“Whereas the videos, once it becomes a business, it’s still fun but … it’s all very transactional and you don’t have that relationship with the audience that you do with a live show. So it’s really been a lot of fun to get out and meet people and be there in person with them.”
The show is a good date night opportunity, he said.
“I think the big thing is, it’s really relatable,” he said. “Most of my show is about my kids and my wife.”
One caveat of doing this tour is that Heidi and their two youngest children come along — and they only stay out for a weekend and then come home for three weeks.
“I didn’t want to do the show unless Heidi came with me,” he said. “I just don’t want to be out performing and running all over and have her back here by herself with the kids. I don’t think that’s fair.
“So our tour kind of looks a different from a lot of peoples’, we don’t get to leave for a month or two at a time. We go for a weekend, then come back for three weeks. Then go for another weekend. It takes a lot longer, but this way I’m not absent.”
Calmus was working in Los Angeles trying to make it as an actor.
“It was about seven years in trying to break into the industry and I’d had some success but not enough to provide for our family,” he said. “And then we got pregnant and that’s when a match was lit underneath me and I thought, ‘I gotta be realistic about this.’
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“And that’s when I started Dude Dad as a way to stay creative even if I had to stop pursuing the Hollywood dream. It was just a hobby. I was like, I’ll start making videos specifically about fatherhood because I saw it as kind of an untapped market. There were a lot of mom blogs and vlogs but there wasn’t really anything for dads.
“I hit it at the perfect time and it resonated with a lot of people and I figured out the format that worked for me to get the thing to go viral. It was taking off and I started looking at that and thinking, this is our future — let’s dive headfirst into it.”
Do something you love doing and would do even if you don’t make money off it because chances are you won’t, he said. If you don’t care about making money, you’ll still have fun.
The first video to go viral was their first-ever pregnancy announcement, titled “Cop pulls over his own wife.” A cop pulled over Heidi for riding solo in the carpool lane when surprise — she’s not alone.
“The next one that really popped off was my Rube Goldberg gender reveal,” he said. “A Rube Goldberg is like a chain reaction machine, where one thing sets off another thing that sets off another thing. I made one of those from the very top of our three-story townhouse to our garage and at the end it revealed that we were going to have a baby girl. That was a big turning point for us — when that happened.”
Because he makes content about family life, he’s forced to hold himself accountable as a father, he said.
“I want to make sure if I’m putting myself out there in a certain way that I am also showing up that way at home,” he said. “It also forces you to think about this stuff and talk about it. All the videos that Heidi and I make about our marital battles and our spouse fights — those are all real fights that we’ve actually had.
“Those videos are like a weird therapy session for us. A lot of times I write those videos so I have to write her point of view. So it forces me to think how she’s thinking and understand her point of view. Because the best content comes from a place that’s real and not fabricated.”
Audiences can expect to make it a date night, he said.
“Get a sitter, get Grandma and Grandpa to watch them and have a night to yourselves to … laugh and be refreshed.”
Dude Dad: On Thin Ice
When: 7:30 p.m. Feb. 3
Where: Genesee Theatre, 203 N. Genesee St., Waukegan
Tickets: $20-$50
Information: 847-263-6300; geneseetheatre.com
When: 7 p.m. Feb. 4
Where: Rialto Square Theatre, 102 N. Chicago St., Joliet
Tickets: $35-$45
Information: 815-726-6600; rialtosquare.com
Annie Alleman is a freelance reporter for the News-Sun.