The comedian Nate Bargatze, who in April broke the attendance record at Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena, performing in front of nearly twenty thousand people, speaks in a light Tennessee drawl and moves carefully around the stage.
The comedian Nate Bargatze, who in April broke the attendance record at Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena, performing in front of nearly twenty thousand people, speaks in a light Tennessee drawl and moves carefully around the stage. He often tucks his right arm behind his back, a little like a country preacher. This gentle affect flows into his material, through which he probes the modern condition of a certain kind of American man: emasculated, slightly bewildered, not an asshole. “Anything I say up here does not come from a building of education,” he explains in “Hello World,” his well-honed Amazon special. “This is all stuff I’ve overheard at Target or Lowe’s.” He marvels at the hard work of digging a hole, recalls sheepishly talking to the various contractors who work on his house, and, in a very funny extended bit, explains his family’s lawn-care situation. “The guy that we have that mows our yard,” he says, “she’s my wife.”