Bill Engvall draws on real ‘DWTS’ fever
COMMENTARY
Comedian Bill Engvall starts a conversation by joking about how well he’s doing.
“Oh, buddy, I got it made. If I was any better, I’d be twins,” said Engvall, an alum of the Blue Collar Comedy Tour.
He will tell a different story when he brings his “Just Sell Him for Parts” tour to The Villages on Thursday, May 10.
“I’m 60,” he said. “I’m talking about everything from just getting older, the aches and pains, my experience on ‘Dancing With the Stars.’”
Paired with Emma Slater, he finished fourth in November 2013, the season won by “Glee” star Amber Riley. But his experience on the ABC contest was hardly glamorous.
“I had to have my knee replaced last year,” he said. “Then two weeks after that I got kidney stones. Then three weeks after that I got shingles. I looked at my wife and I said, ‘I don’t even want to go to the doctor anymore. I’m afraid they’re going to look at you and say, ‘Ma’am, just sell him for parts. It’s just not worth it.’”
He was 56 when he danced on ABC, and men that age “are not designed to dance six hours a day, seven days a week for 13 weeks,” he said. “We’re designed to dance once a year drunk at a wedding.”
He learned that stress is a trigger for kidney stones. “I had spent 13 weeks dancing and wondering whether you’re going to get kicked off,” he said. “Shingles just happened to say, ‘Everybody else is showing up for the party. Let’s make our appearance.’”
Despite all that, Engvall says he had a blast on “DWTS.”
“I didn’t get to the finals because of my dancing ability,” he said. “I got to the finals because I realized early on that it’s a popularity contest. The best thing that ever happened to me, I danced with little Emma. Then I’d run over and kiss my 55-year-old wife.”
He and pro dancer Slater were so far apart in age, it was like a father-daughter dance, he said. “I’ve got a great fan base,” he said. “I’d tease them all the time, ‘I know the only reason you people watched — it’s like when you watch a NASCAR race, you were just looking for the crash.’”
He doesn’t keep up with “DWTS” or watch much TV. But he recently officiated at Slater’s wedding to fellow pro dancer Sasha Farber. “It was a nice bow on the whole package,” Engvall said.
On tour, he talks about his marriage of 35 years. “The key there is you’ve got to communicate, you gotta talk,” he said. “But also it requires some mind reading. I’m lacking in that ability.”
He tells a story: His wife attended a lingerie party, came home and threw silky boxer shorts at him. He refused to wear them, angering his wife. So he put them on and sashayed toward her. His wife’s response: “They were for me, Bill, to wear for you.”
He avoids politics in the act. “When people come out to see my show, at The Villages, they’re paying money to be entertained and to feel better,” he said. “No matter how good a political joke I might write, immediately you alienate 50 percent of audience.”
He enjoys acting and showing his range. In “The Neighbor,” he played a kidnapper-murderer. In “Monster Party,” he was an abusive father.
“I do them [those roles] not only for me, but I do them for my fans,” he said. “I don’t want them to get too complacent with me.”
Engvall, a sitcom veteran, said he’d like another shot at television, but adds, “I’m done jumping through the hoops.”
He doesn’t know if there could be another Blue Collar Comedy Tour, which featured him, Jeff Foxworthy, Ron White and Larry the Cable Guy. “I never say never. That was lightning in a bottle,” he said, adding that he lives by the phrase “leave them wanting more.”
For now, he is focused on his “Just Sell Him for Parts” tour. “It’s just a good, clean, relatable show,” he said. “We talk about adult subjects, but in a clean way. You can talk about whatever you want, just do it in a clean way.”