A December to remember

SANTA ANA PUEBLO — It’s been two years since Quezada’s Comedy Club opened in the Santa Ana Star Casino Hotel, and the namesake couldn’t be happier with how things are going.

Steven Michael Quezada, the local comedian and actor behind the club, returned to the stage this month to celebrate its two-year anniversary. “I can’t believe it’s been two years,” he said. “I probably could have never dreamed … the lineup just keeps getting bigger and bigger.”

In fact, he said, the club regularly sells out seats to four shows per weekend.

“Most comedy clubs are about 100-150 (seats),” Quezada said. “We’re a 300-seat comedy club, and our slow nights are 150, which are sell-outs at most comedy clubs, but even with the 300, we sell out most of our weekends.”

Even in December, which he said is typically a slow month, the shows were selling out, including the New Year’s Eve show with fellow comedian and actor David Koechner approaching sell-out.

“It was built for comedy, and we put enough seats in it to really draw the bigger names,” Quezada said. “We just thought if we do it right from the get-go, that’ll give us an opportunity to really grow. I can’t tell you how many big-name comedians are calling now. They’re all standing in line to come play at my club.”

Quezada said he’s very involved with the scheduling of acts with full say over who comes in to perform with collaboration and booking being done in house, sometimes using the connections he’s built during his career in show business. But that’s not all there is to getting an act to come.

“I’ve been doing comedy for a long time — I’m an old man — and so you know, even if you them, if you don’t have the right venue, they’re not going to come.”

That’s not the case at Quezada’s, he said, noting that many times as soon as a comedian completes a weekend showcase “they always call Monday and go, ‘When am I coming back?’"

For those attending shows at Quezada, it’s more than a show — it’s a night out with the club offering food and drinks.

“That’s how comedy shows are supposed to be. It’s supposed to be a night out, and I’m very grateful that we’re able to keep it affordable,” Quezada said. “That really helps us draw people in, because we’re not trying to gouge people. … I want us to have a venue for people who don’t want to go to a bar but still want to go out.”

He also attributed the club’s success to the management and staff at the casino, calling the manager a “kind caring human being.”

“His staff loves working for him, and I love partnering with him,” Quezada said. “When you put a great casino together with such a great staff, you build a beautiful comedy club.”

While the club has garnered big names in the past — including Quezada himself — it’s also about building opportunity for New Mexican comedians.

“We’re not really known as a comedy state,” he said. “When I started out doing comedy, I had to travel a lot because we didn’t really have any opportunities here. … I don’t want to leave out the local comics; they were so crucial to the success of this comedy club.”

In fact, looking forward, he wants to find ways to expand the club’s shows and opportunities for local acts and building on the club’s Friday-Saturday show schedule.

“I would love to do a Thursday night show, or at least a local Thursday night kind of thing to really promote local comedians,” Quezada said. “I decided to do this because I really wanted to help local comedians because they don’t normally get a chance to work with big headliners and build a resume and try to build a career.”

One possibility is even an open-mic night on Thursdays to “find new talent and really try to foster comedy out of New Mexico," he said.

He also works to give back to the community with his annual Steven Michael Quezada Celebrity Golf Tournament each year to raise money for Serenity Mesa Youth Recovery Center, saying kids are “near and dear” to his heart and the center “does the work that we need.”

“Most people are looking at our homeless problem and our drub problem the wrong way,” Quezada said. “We can’t arrest our way out of it, because that hasn’t worked. So prevention, intervention, those types of programs, let’s get the kids when they’re young and try to get in the way of that happening at an early age.”

He also said he’s looking at some other sponsorships going into the next year. 

“Something always has to be bigger than you,” Quezada said.

But as the club moves into its third year, Quezada wants to continue to build on the success it has had in the first two years. 

“We just want to continue to be successful. We’re going to keep trying to get the biggest names that we could possibly bring in, and we’re going to mix it with the up-and comings,” he said. “I just want to sustain it for a long, long time.”