MICHAEL YO digs into his Houston roots
The Houston that Michael Yo knew in the ’70s and ’80s is about as far from the current incarnation of the city as the distance between Conroe and Clear Lake.
The half-African-American, half-Korean comedian and radio personality, who just celebrated his 44th birthday this month, says today’s multiculti metropolis was just a dream back in the days when his heritage was a source of jokes and mockery.
“When I hit school, they still made fun of Asian people by pulling their eyes back,” he says by phone from his current home in Los Angeles. “My mom didn’t want me to learn anything about my Korean heritage because they made fun of her. She wanted me to be as Americanized as possible because she saw the hate.”
Yo, who was born Michael Yo Simmons, has channeled many of his conflicted childhood feelings about growing up black and Asian into his first stand-up special, “Blasian,” which is being released Tuesday on various digital platforms, including iTunes, Amazon and GooglePlay, as well through video-on-demand.
But in keeping with his good-natured, nice-guy persona — which can be heard on his Sirius XM Entertainment Weekly Radio show “The Michael Yo Show” and as a co-host on the new Bravo TV talk show “Play by Play” — “Blasian” is less about the catharsis of rage and more about the celebration of survival, especially of his parents, both of whom figure prominently as subjects in his act. He displays pictures of them as well as himself as a child on stage.
“It’s a thing where not too many times you can do something with your family, and especially on an entertainment level, to kind of honor them,” says Yo, who became a father last year. “I just didn’t want to shoot a comedy special. This is something my son, 30 years from now, can look back at and go, ‘Oh, my God! That was my dad.’... That’s the thing that really moves me about it. It’s almost a living tribute to my family moving on.”
Yo, who says he never talks politics on stage, felt encouraged in his approach after a supporter of President Donald Trump came up to him after a recent Kansas City performance. “My thing with comedy right now, it separates so many people. And I just wanted to come out with something that everybody can watch and get together, no matter what side of the fence you’re on,” he says. “(This Trump supporter) thanked me for not dogging Trump. My thing is, that’s not my comedy. If you ask me about politics, I’ll tell you my views. But when I’m onstage, like Kevin Hart, it’s a relief.
“I just want people to laugh and know that I embrace family, everything about family. And I know my dad’s struggle. I know my mom’s struggle. And I want to put that out to the world.”
Father’s Fifth Ward days
Yo grew up in the southeastern Houston neighborhood of Sagemont, attended Burnett Elementary, Thompson Intermediate and then Dobie High School and Clear Brook High School.
His father was a nuclear physicist, but such a rarefied career position didn’t prevent him from suffering the slings and arrows of racism.
“My dad has always been strong-willed. He doesn’t care. He went through segregation. He went to Oklahoma State, then Iowa State, got a Ph.D in nuclear physics. So he’s always believed education was the only way . ... Because they can’t take your grades away. They could tell you not to play sports. They could tell you, ‘You can’t do this and that.’ But they couldn’t tell you not to be smart.”
But it wasn’t just whites who tried to give his father grief.
“People frowned upon my parents, being black and Asian. My dad’s parents didn’t want him to marry her,” Yo says. “I mean, my dad loved America when a lot of America didn’t love him, and never complained about it.”
While his father taught him about being black, his mother cloaked her Korean culture from him. “I know way more about black history because my dad grew up in the Fifth Ward and I would go on the weekends there,” he says.
Still, his mother said she would take him to Korea one day. “She said she was going to take me for the (1988) Olympics back in the day. … And then her mom died, so she kind of has no reason to go anymore,” Yo says. “So I’m kind of bummed about that. But my plan is to go because I want to see where she was born and raised.”
All of these stories are grist for Yo’s comedic mill, which has not only resulted in “Blasian” but getting the nod from Fox for a sitcom pilot based on his Houston youth.
“It’s a real ‘Modern Family,’ but it’s organic,” he says. “My dad is black. My mom’s Asian. I’m black and Asian. I married a white woman and we have a black, white and Asian kid. So you have every shade in the family.” Houston radio roots
Yo first left Houston when he went off to the University of Arkansas, where he played football for the Razorbacks and “got too many concussions.” He came back to Houston and through Paul “Cubby” Bryant, a DJ friend who worked at KRBE/104.1 FM, got a job as an intern at the station.
“I worked for free for a year, and then I got paid to set up his stuff. Then I was like, ‘Oh, I want to do this.’ I kept working, and they put me on overnight from 2 a.m. to 5 a.m.”
After KRBE, he got jobs at other Houston-area stations — KTBZ/107.5 FM (The Buzz) and KBXX/97.9 (The Box) — and then moved to Austin to be a radio-station music director before relocating to Miami, where he was a DJ for the leading contemporary-hits station Y100. While in South Florida, he also coached Khloe and Kourtney Kardashian to be radio DJs for their show “Kourtney and Khloe Take Miami.”
Living in Miami gave Yo a taste of an urban vibe he hadn’t had in Houston. “I walked down South Beach, didn’t hear a word of English, and I fell in love with it,” he said. “And I just embraced it . ... It’s all about different ethnicities just blending together, speaking all different types of languages.”
Diving in to stand-up
It was through his exposure on Chelsea Handler’s TV show “Chelsea Lately” and his Sirius XM radio show that Yo found people who kept suggesting he try stand-up. “I went on stage for the first time at the Miami Improv. Instead of three minutes, I did 15 minutes just talking about my family. That rush, that feeling. I got off the stage, I called my mom, I was like, ‘This is what I was born to do.’ I love standup comedy.”
“We were very surprised,” says his mother, Kum Yo Simmons, in a separate interview about him becoming a comedian. “(But) we were supportive of him wanting to do it.”
As his family members are such a big part of his humor, it’s good that they don’t mind being the stars of his stories.
“They love it,” he says. “My mom says, ‘Oh, I hate it when you talk about me. Don’t talk about me anymore.’ But then she’ll tell me (more) stories.”
Mom says she approves of him telling stories, though, she jokes, “I think I need to get some royalties.”
Missing the Oilers
Even though Yo now lives on the West Coast, he has made peace with Houston, which he still visits often as his parents are still here. He cherishes the Houston he knows in 2018.
“I love the direction Houston is going,” he says. “I used to go to this club in Houston called Power Tools. It was this underground club, and there was nothing downtown. It’s amazing what they’ve done with that whole area.
“But I still can’t get into the Texans. I’m not going to lie to you. I’m still an old-school Oilers fan. I haven’t let go of the Oilers. It hurts my heart.”