Before he finished Toll Gate Grammar School, he was an accomplished drummer. By his midteens, he had become a fine electric bassist and guitarist as well, busy playing with a number of bands and jamming with musicians from all over this part of the country
By: John Tredrea
It wouldn’t surprise anyone who’s known Jamie Kilstein for long that he would land in one of the performing arts.
Before he finished Toll Gate Grammar School, he was an accomplished drummer. By his midteens, he had become a fine electric bassist and guitarist as well, busy playing with a number of bands and jamming with musicians from all over this part of the country.
Now 19 and still based in Pennington, Mr. Kilstein recalls a conversation that helped push him into the profession of stand-up comedian he been pursuing for two years now, at big-city venues all over the country from New York City to San Francisco and at such established closer-to-home spots as the Stress Factory in New Brunswick and Catch A Rising Star, in the Hyatt in West Windsor.
"I always did music when I was a kid," Mr. Kilstein said. "I love it, and, what can I say, I like to be in the spotlight. One day a few years ago, Brady Weston and I he’s from Pennington, too, he played drums in a band we were in together were watching some stand-up comedy on television. In between all the laughing we were doing, Brady said something that got me he pointed to the guy on television and said, ‘what he’s doing is really, really hard.’ It was a few days after that that I started doing stand-up myself."
Mr. Kilstein’s first gigs were at New York City clubs that offered an "open mike" to stand-up comedians new to the trade. "That was tough in some ways," he recalled. "So many people are eager for stage time that sometimes you have to bring a number of people to the audience before you can get time on the mike. Then I found the Stress Factory in New Brunswick. I’ve worked there about 20 times or so in the last year five-minute spots at first. Up to 15 minutes most of the time now. It’s where I’ve honed my material."
The differences between playing music for an audience and doing stand-up for them?
"No heavy equipment to carry that’s a relief," Mr. Kilstein quipped.
But there’s another side. "When you’re playing music, you have all these instruments kind of between you and the audience," he said. "And you have the other guys in the band with you. You find yourself thinking that, as long as you hit the right notes, they’ll like it. You just tend to make that assumption a lot of times. But in comedy, there’s no way to assume anything, because they either laugh or they don’t, period. And there’s no big load of drums and keyboards and guitars and amps between you and them. There’s just the one little microphone. It’s pretty daunting, but I like a challenge."
Mr. Kilstein says he gets his material "from observation. Like a lot of comedians, I think I’m pretty quick at spotting hypocritical or self-contradictory behavior in people. If I see something like that, I feel the need to share it with a roomful of strangers in a way that’s funny. I’ve always loved to make people laugh. I’ve always dealt with stuff by laughing, by turning bad things into good things, in my head anyway, by laughing at them."
A few Tuesdays ago, Mr. Kilstein did a 10-minute routine at Caroline’s Comedy Club, in Times Square in New York. "That was a big opportunity for me," he said. "I thought it went really well. My parents came to see me, which was great. They’re going to have me back there again soon, so that’s something to look forward to."
Mr. Kilstein describes his comedy as "edgy. I wouldn’t call it dirty, not at all, but it is edgy. Basically, I like to get people to laugh at stuff they wouldn’t normally. A comedian I really liked and who influenced me quite a bit was Bill Hicks. He was about to jump into the national scene when he died of cancer. I liked him because he was edgy. He didn’t do comedy about hackneyed themes like men-and-women and food on airlines and all that stuff. He questioned religion and abortion, things like that. Because he was that way, he bombed a lot of times. But, also a lot of times, he really killed ’em. I admired that courage he had. When I started, I only talked about stuff no one would disagree with. But now I get into politics and issues like stem cell research, trying to present my opinions to people in an edgy, and hopefully funny way. I’m really happy with the way things are going lately."
His schedule was looking busy. Just back from working at Caroline’s two weeks ago, he was getting ready for a weekend-long job at Bananas, a club in Hasbrouck Heights. Scheduled for the following Friday was a job at the Boston Comedy Club in Greenwich Village in New York.
"I’m glad I started young. I’m a fan as much as I am a performer."
Looking ahead, he summed up his hopes and ambitions with nine words: "I just want to keep telling jokes, that’s all."

