Arts & Theatre · Comedy · Comedy

Comedy Gumbeaux

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Arts & Theatre · USComedy GumbeauxHowlin' Wolf · New Orleans

from USD 13.29 Arts & Theatre · USComedy GumbeauxHowlin' Wolf · New Orleans

from USD 13.29

The profile · researched 22 September 2026

Sixteen years of Thursdays: the New Orleans open mic that turned into a ticketed institution

Comedy Gumbeaux has run on Thursday nights at the Howlin' Wolf Den since June 2010, built and hosted by the New Orleans comic, actor and producer Bad Boy RedBean. It now carries a weekly ticketed run through to 17 December 2026, a long way from the free sign-up sheet it started as.

A room that started in June 2010 and never stopped

Comedy Gumbeaux began in June 2010 in the Howlin' Wolf Den, the smaller side room attached to the main Howlin' Wolf hall at 907 South Peters Street in the New Orleans Warehouse District. The premise was simple and has not changed: one night a week, every week, a sign-up mic where local comics work new material alongside touring professionals who happen to be in town. OffBeat Magazine describes it as one of the longest-standing weekly comedy nights in the city, running for over a decade and holding a reputation for consistent quality — an unusual claim for a format that elsewhere tends to collapse within a year or two.

From the start the show reached beyond the parish line. The show's listing notes that since June 2010 it has put up comedians from across the New Orleans metro area and from as far away as Australia, which says something about how the Thursday slot functions: a room that visiting comics look up before they arrive rather than one that only serves the people who already live there.

Its position in the local ecosystem is easy to measure. 504Comedy's directory of New Orleans open mics lists roughly a dozen recurring nights — Bear With Me at Twelve Mile Limit on Mondays, Think You're Funny? at Carrollton Station on Wednesdays, Grave Yard Shift at the VooDoo Lounge on Saturdays and others. Almost all of them are free. Comedy Gumbeaux is the one that charges, and it is the one that has survived longest.

How RedBean got loose

The show belongs to Bad Boy RedBean, who founded it and still hosts and produces it. By his own account on his site, he came into stand-up sideways. He was spending time with Eddie Francis, a DJ at a New Orleans urban radio station; Francis and Rose Bratcher were assembling a comedy troupe and asked him to join. One night at True Brew the bill was short of stand-ups, and the host, Dr Kin Jeong, asked whether he had ever done it. The answer — that he had not, but was sure he could do something — is the whole origin of the career.

The name came out of door work rather than the stage. Bouncing at The Boot and The Metro, he was approached by an underage student trying to talk her way in, who called him "Red Bean". The New Orleans association stuck; he closed the gap between the words, capitalised the R and the B, and kept it.

What followed spread across several disciplines rather than a straight club circuit. His credits include BET's Comic View on television, and the stage shows The Asshole Monologues, The Galitoire Monologues, Let The Brotha Talk and I Love My Kids... But. In film he appeared in Grudge Match alongside Sylvester Stallone and Robert De Niro, and in Shark Lake with Dolph Lundgren. That range matters to the room he runs: the person holding the night together is a working producer and host, not only a comic waiting for a spot.

The format: an open mic that behaves like a showcase

The description the show gives of itself is that it is more than an open mic — and the structure backs that up. The mic is genuinely open, with aspiring comics mixed in among established professionals, but it is curated and hosted rather than simply run down a list. RedBean anchors the night; Nature Boy works as co-host and DJ, which gives the room music between sets and a second voice to reset the temperature after a set that has died. The nationally touring comic Carrey B has also been billed among the hosts.

The Den holds a little over a hundred seats, and the night is built to fill them rather than to serve the comics alone. Reserved tables can be booked in advance — $30 for two people, $60 for four — and the show has taken birthday bookings with guaranteed seating for parties of twelve. OffBeat gives general admission from $10, with an 18-and-over door policy and an 8pm start.

One practical caution for anyone checking listings: the version of the event page carried on 504Comedy still shows a $5 price, a 7.30pm show time with 7pm comic sign-up, and instructions about socially-distanced seating pods and masks — pandemic-era text that has not been refreshed. The show's own site gives the current shape of the night as doors at 7.30pm and the show at 8pm.

Who the room has seen

The drop-in list is the reason the night has a reputation beyond Louisiana. Tiffany Haddish, Hannibal Buress, Baratunde Thurston and the actor Mark Valley have all performed at Comedy Gumbeaux, a roll call repeated consistently across OffBeat's write-up and the show's own material. RedBean's site extends the marquee to include Craig Robinson and Lavar Walker.

None of those appearances were advertised in advance, which is the point. The show's own promotional furniture counts its guarantees in threes — sixteen-plus years of laughs, Thursday every single week, New Orleans — and then lists possible surprise guests with an infinity symbol rather than a number. A weekly room in a city that every touring comic passes through eventually accumulates that kind of history without having to book it.

The trade-off is that the bill cannot be published. Anyone buying in advance is buying the room and the hosts rather than a named headliner, which is the deal a long-running showcase offers and the reason its regulars keep turning up.

Where it stands in September 2026

The show is currently mid-run. TicketSmarter lists Comedy Gumbeaux dates at the Howlin' Wolf running from 24 September to 17 December 2026 — the full weekly sequence of Thursdays through autumn and into the middle of December, with no break advertised. Fourteen dates are on sale.

Pricing on the secondary market has drifted well clear of the door. TicketSmarter puts the average resale price at $42.77; Vivid Seats gives a starting price of $21 and an average of $41.63 against a general admission that begins at $10 at the venue. That gap is worth knowing about — the show's own page still points at $10 admission and the Howlin' Wolf's own ticketing.

Alongside the weekly night, RedBean maintains a separate calendar of special appearances and touring bookings through his own site, and audio from the show is posted to a Comedy Gumbeaux SoundCloud channel under the Life Happens banner. The engine, though, remains the Thursday: sixteen years in, the show's entire proposition is that it happens again next week.

The show, now

A Thursday at Comedy Gumbeaux runs in the Howlin' Wolf Den, the roughly hundred-seat side room rather than the main hall, with doors at 7.30pm and the show at 8pm; the calendar file the show issues blocks out 8pm to 10pm, while ticket sellers put the running time at between 60 and 90 minutes and up to two hours. The bill is not published in advance. Bad Boy RedBean hosts and Nature Boy works as co-host and DJ, cutting music between sets, and the line-up rotates weekly through local comics, regional acts from across the Gulf South and whatever touring professionals are in the city — which is how Tiffany Haddish, Hannibal Buress, Baratunde Thurston and Mark Valley have all ended up on stage there. Staging is minimal: mic, small stage, table service. Admission starts at $10 at the door, with reserved tables at $30 for two and $60 for four, and the room is 18-plus; resale sites average around $42. Tripadvisor reviewers describe it as a fun, upbeat showcase of up-and-coming local and regional comics and single out both RedBean and Nature Boy as the strongest things on the bill — with the honest caveat that an open mic means the quality moves set to set, and the draw is the room and its hosts rather than a named headliner.

Researched from offbeat.com · badboyredbean.com · badboyredbean.com · 504comedy.com · 504comedy.com · ticketsmarter.com · vividseats.com · tripadvisor.com