Trae Crowder, Corey Ryan Forrester and Drew Morgan present ‘The Liberal Redneck Manifesto: Draggin Dixie Outta Dark’
With over 50 million views on YouTube and Facebook, Trae Crowder has become one of the most popular rednecks in the entire world, along with fellow rednecks Corey Ryan Forrester and Drew Morgan. Together they will be at Gotham City Comedy Club on October 20 as part of their “wellRED” tour. Their book “The Liberal Redneck Manifesto: Draggin Dixie Outta Dark,” will be available on October 4.
I spoke with the rednecks, three of the funniest guys that I have ever encountered. Actually, they are more like anti-rednecks, supporting the LGBTQ community to the highest extent, as well as Black Lives Matter, Hillary Clinton and transgender bathrooms, in the most humorous possible way. These guys are sure to make a difference through their very unique comedy, which I urge anyone reading this to see!
What prompted you to go on YouTube and get 50 million views?
Trae: I had been thinking about that for a long time, making those videos. But I was always like, “Well, I had to buy a camera, learn how to edit videos and all this stuff.” It had to have production value. It felt like a higher barrier to enter. But then for some reason when I trashed the transgender bills going on in North Carolina, I saw this other video that went viral amongst the more stereotypical rednecks, like guys from my hometown and stuff. All it was was this young preacher in Carolina out in the woods by his truck just yelling at his phone about Jesus striking down perverts. Not funny at all, just fire and brimstone. I saw that, and I realized, this right here is what I’m trying to satirize, and it don’t need to look fancy. I could just do it exactly that way. So that’s what I did. The first one that was about Tennessee trying to make the Holy Bible their official book. It got 70,000 views on Facebook. That was unreal. Then I did the transgender bathroom one about four days later, and it ended up getting 20 something million, and that’s what kicked all this madness off.
Are you all friends?
Corey: Oh, yeah. We have been friends and have done comedy together, and written stuff together, for six or so years now.
Trae: But we also are similar comedically to where it made sense to package it together in like a thematic type comedy tour. But yeah, we were friends already.
Were you childhood friends?
Corey: No, we met each other doing comedy. It’s weird kind of, because we all grew up in basically the same kind of place, but not together. Like in three different really small, really redneck, Southern towns.
Where did you all grow up?
Trae: I grew up in a place called Celina, Tennessee. It’s in the middle of nowhere. I graduated high school with 50-something people. There’s no traffic lights in our town. Other than that, there’s nothing worldly about it.
Corey: I grew up in Chickamauga, Georgia, about 12 minutes south of Chattanooga, Tennessee. We are known for having the second bloodiest battle of the Civil War.
Drew: I grew up in Sunbright, Tennessee. Trae and I figured it out one time, we grew up 60 miles apart, but there’s no direct route, because were both in the middle of nowhere. Similar to Trae, I graduated high school with 43 people. I had a town that was actually smaller than Celina. He and I were both valedictorians of our high school class. We both had to run to college, and run to graduate school, just to get out of that area. Then after we did all that and accomplished all that, we realized it’s not what we wanted to do.
What kind of a reaction are you getting from those rednecks who aren’t liberal?
Trae: Well, not great ones.
Corey: Seething hatred.
Drew: I would say mostly hatred. A lot of people accusing Trae’s video of being fake. But I will say that people who know us… The thing about rednecks is that we’re very, very, very tribal, so people who knew us already, already liked us. Even if they disagree with us, they are super happy that we are making money.
Trae: My friends that I grew up with, that are those kind of rednecks, I’ve known them for my whole life. They’ll tell me they don’t agree with literally anything I say, but I’m proud of you brother. So that’s cool. But the other ones that I don’t know, they send me all kinds of terrible messages. They are definitely not fans of it.
Corey: We had some people come in and say that we were Hollywood actors that Obama hired to help Hillary out. We wish we were. We would be making more money.
Drew: This guy on Twitter, whose profile claims that he’s an ex-cop from Brooklyn, accused Trae of being a liberal Jew, and that they were paying him to put across this message.
No death threats?
Trae: I haven’t had anybody message me and say they were going to kill me, but people have threatened my wife.
Corey: I made one post after the police shot somebody, and someone just commented on mine and said: “Sincerely, I wish it was you that had gotten shot.” If it was one of my comedian friends, I would’ve thought it was hilarious, but it wasn’t. It was just somebody who said, “You should be dead, you liberal piece of crap.”
Drew: People tell me they want me to die all the time. Mostly men.
You guys support the LGBT community. How are you being received by the community?
Trae: I’ve been received very favorably. We get a lot of people from the community at our shows. Every show we have, they have been really awesome about it. Black Lives Matter, that group specifically, definitely, have gotten words of support on the Internet. We get a pretty eclectic group of people at our shows.
Trae, when are you running for president?
Trae: Soon as all this goes away, I guess.
Who are you all voting for?
Trae: I’m gonna vote for Hillary.
Corey: I too will certainly vote against Trump, and for Hillary. Literally, me voting Democrat in Georgia, it doesn’t even make sense for me to leave my house. But if we are by some miracle a swing state, which excites me, I’m voting for Hillary.
Drew: I’m pretty resolved Trump will win Tennessee so I may vote third party, but I’ll probably vote for Hillary.
Trae, when you get up there and do a YouTube video, do you actually write it out first, or does it just naturally flow out of your mouth?
Trae: A big part of what we try to do as comedians is try to give that illusion that it works that way, but no, they are definitely written. It depends on the subject, but it usually takes a couple hours for me to work on them.
Who wrote the book?
Trae: All three of us wrote that, pretty much equally. Drew was like the point man on the book, as far as organizing it, dealing with the publisher and editors and stuff like that. He took the lead on it. As far as the content in it, we tried to split it as equally as we could.
Is the book funny or serious?
Trae: Both. It’s both. We tried to make that clear to the public. A lot of the subjects we knew we were going to be covering in talking about the South—the way it is and the way we wanted it to be, some of that stuff like racism and poverty, drug abuse—we told them, “Look we’ll make jokes, it will be funny, but some of the stuff is just inherently going to be pretty heavy and pretty dark.” It has serious elements to it, but we try to make it funny obviously.
Who thought of that great title?
Drew: I did.
You guys should do like a rap record. Do you ever consider doing that?
Drew: We’ve been dreaming of this before we met each other. I don’t know how you knew.
People like books, but not everyone has time to read them. They will listen to a record, though. So you guys are touring. What can your audiences expect out of you?
Corey: Rib-splitting laughter. Most people I feel pretty much come in and are on our side; if not, we are gonna change the hearts and opinions of people. They can expect a good time. A good and unique, new perspective from our experience. They’ll be made to understand all rednecks are not prejudiced, bigoted, ass-wipes. There are some of them who are compassionate, with empathy, without talking about trucks and Walmart.
Drew: Another thing they can expect, since we are kind of new to the world, we have over 20 years experience between the three of us with stand-up comedy. Trae and I have been doing stand-up comedy for seven years, and Corey has been doing it for over a decade. We are very funny. We know what we’re doing. We’ve been doing comedy before all of this. We were all already well on our way to having careers. So I’m saying all of that to say we are all great stand-up comedians. That actually surprises a lot of people.
Corey: A lot of people come up to us after shows and say, “I didn’t think any of you would be funny, but you are.”
When the tour is over and you go back to your hometowns, are you going to be celebrated or hanged?
Corey: Like Trae said, all our boys who already loved us as friends, they are celebrating…absolutely. Especially me, they are so glad that this worked out for me, because I didn’t go to college. I went straight to doing stand-up. But the people on the fence about me are going to hate me after this.
Trae: Drew and I, we moved from our hometowns. I live in Knoxville, and so back there, it’s pretty good. It’s a city. I don’t know if people realize it, but cities in the South are OK. When you are getting out in the rural areas, that’s when you start running into the negative stereotypes that people picture in their heads.
Drew: The book just makes the people who already didn’t like me mad, because I got something from it.
Is there anything else that you would like to promote?
Trae: Aside from the book and the tour, the week beginning October 17, we will be hosting a morning show on Sirius XM radio. It is on the channel that they’re setting up specifically for pre-election coverage. So it’s actually not a channel that exists right now. We will have the Liberal Redneck Hour—working title.
Will you be doing election coverage?
Corey: That is kind of the idea of what we’re doing. There are multiple shows on there, and basically for that purpose. We are going to be on one of them. So that is sort of the idea.
Are you planning to tour internationally?
Corey: Yeah, we would love to do that.
If you could say anything to your fans, what would you say?
Trae: I would just say thank the fake Lord for them. They have changed my life tremendously, and I really, really appreciate them for it.
Corey: I can’t add anything to what Trae just said. That’s exactly how I feel.
Drew: I always say to the fans in the South: Thank you, we need you. I always tell ‘em, “Dig in, don’t stop being you.”
Trae Crowder
Twitter: @TraeCrowder
Facebook: TraeCrowder
Corey Forrester
Twitter:@coreyfcomedy
Facebook: CoreyRyanForrester
Instagram: @Coreyforrester
Drew Morgan
Twitter:@averagedrew
Instagram: @Theaveragedrew
