In the latest installment of our occasional conversations with Fort Worth newsmakers, MONNA, CEO of Claws Out Media and Entertainment, spoke with arts and culture editor Marcheta Fornoff about getting into stand-up, running a business and her upcoming album and documentary. Claws Out Comedy won Fort Worth Weekly’s reader’s choice and critic’s choice for best comedy open mic night in 2022 and critic’s choice in 2021.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. For the unabridged version, please listen to the audio file attached to this article.
MONNA: My name is MONNA. I’m the CEO of Claws Out Media and Entertainment, and I am the producer of Claws Out Comedy Records.
Fornoff: Tell me how you started in comedy.
MONNA: I first got into stand-up comedy when I was in my early 20s. I performed at Morty’s Comedy Joint in Indianapolis. I had the opportunity to perform on a show, and my first six minutes of stage time ever was when I was 20 years old.
Fornoff: And from there, you went on to build your own empire.
MONNA: That is correct. Yeah, I moved from Fort Wayne, Indiana, to Fort Worth, Texas, when I was 22 at the very end of 2014. I started doing comedy in DFW in 2015, and so everything that we will talk about today has been done since 2015.
Fornoff: And so Claws Out Comedy regularly has an open mic night at Twilite (Lounge).
MONNA: Yes, we have the STFU Open Mic that has been running for four years, and it’s been rebranded under Claws Out after we became a business, which is exciting.
Fornoff: Talk to me about being a comedian yourself and gaining steam with your own career, why you wanted to start organizing open mic nights for other comics in the area.
MONNA: Open mic nights actually fell into my lap, so I produced my first open mic at Houston Street in Fort Worth, and that was because it was given to me by another comic who ran it. And then because I ran an open mic, people were like, ‘Hey, do you want to run another open mic?’ And so before the pandemic, I was running four open mics a week all over DFW, which is a bit much for someone to be doing.
I don’t want to say the pandemic was nice, but I will say I would have never stopped doing anything. I would have been running 12 open mics a week. I would just say yes to anything anybody presented to me, so it was an opportunity to step back and refocus on a lot of things personally and professionally during 2020.
And so that’s why at the end of 2020, I recorded my debut album, “Unstable.”
Fornoff: It’s not only open mics, but your media company also records comedy albums for yourself and other comedians. Talk about (why) in a world where album sales are not always super reliable, you decided to invest in that and why it’s important for comic(s).
MONNA: I knew in 2020 that my goal was going to be to record an album. The weekend that I was supposed to record was mid-March 2020 – (there) was a big reason why my album recording didn’t happen that weekend.
I was actually supposed to be helping produce the first Fort Worth Comedy Festival, and I was going to record my album that weekend and had everything set up. And then the universe said, ‘No, we’re going to have a global pandemic instead.’ So I knew that I still wanted to do that because every year I set up a professional goal for myself. In 2020 I was to record an album because I wanted to demonstrate that I had 45 minutes to an hour (of material).
When the pandemic hit, I was like, this is also going to be my signal to the world that I’m not quitting. A lot of people stepped back from performing during that time and they’re like, ‘You know what? Comedy is not that important to me. I’m going to do this. I’m going to do that.’ And I was like, ‘No, this is very important to me. And here’s my album about it.’
I also started performing more online. I did a couple online virtual shows, and I decided that if the world was going to be shut down, I was going to start figuring out what TikTok was all about and becoming more into social media. And so I got a brand deal with BetterHelp, which was actually one of the sponsors for “Unstable.” So for a while, if you downloaded “Unstable,” you got a discount code for online virtual therapy services, which was really cool.
But I think that albums are a way to document a chapter of your life, and I’m really, really glad that I did “Unstable” when I did because then I had to do “Unprecedented” because everything that I talked about on “Unstable” changed. I talked about my dad’s cancer, I talked about bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder, I talked about living in a bad neighborhood, I talked about my boyfriend. I released that album on 1/1/21 and then a few weeks later, my dad died, I got engaged and then we bought a house and moved and I got diagnosed with PMDD. So “Unstable” is cool because it documents a chapter of my life that in just a few weeks wouldn’t have been relevant to me anymore. Like, I don’t know what would have happened to those jokes that I think are funny and mean a lot to a lot of people if I hadn’t recorded them.
So I think that recording albums is something that comics can learn more from musicians. Musicians have this kind of fearlessness when it comes to putting their content out into the world. And comics feel like we’re not worth anything unless we have an hour that’s on Netflix, which isn’t true. We have this really cool opportunity in the world that we live in to put our thoughts and feelings and stuff out into the world. I think that it’s important to do that because you don’t know what those thoughts and feelings might mean to someone else, and also they might not mean as much to you in the near future.
So I think that it demonstrates to a lot of bookers that you have the (set) time. There’s a lot of value to producing an album because even though people aren’t really buying content and owning it as much anymore, which is an entirely different conversation we can have, you can still see that people are listening to you. You can also document the data of where people are listening to you. So as far as tracking your live performances, you can go in and track your analytics and say, ‘Wow, people really liked my album in Kentucky. I should probably go to Kentucky.’ There’s a lot of value on the back end for digital marketing and strategy to having your album out in the world.
Also, you know, we get so caught up in things being perfect, but albums just show a little chapter of your life and it gives the opportunity for so many more people who may absolutely love you and be a fan to find you. And I think comedy is all about connecting. While there’s value in going to support live comedy, there’s also value in connecting with people globally. Because why wouldn’t you want to do that?
Fornoff: You’re talking about maximizing digital opportunities, which you’ve done yourself. You’re also helping other comedians figure out how to harness the Internet, which can be intuitive for some people and really horrifying for others, and sometimes both.
MONNA: Yeah, well, I always tell people social media and the internet is a tool. And like, you can use a hammer to build a house, but you can also hurt yourself with a hammer. You have to know how you’re using the tool that you’re picking up.
There is a lot that comes along with being a person online, especially being a woman online. That’s something that I’ve experienced myself. But for Claws Out Comedy Records, I saw the benefits pretty early on and just the idea of creating passive revenue for yourself while putting something that you’re proud of out into the world. That’s unmatched, and I wanted to help my friends do that as well. Everyone who signed on with my media company in the first year that we’ve been in business are people that I really believe in that I wanted to help because I think that they deserve all of the good things that are coming to them through these albums.
Fornoff: Mm hmm. We’ve talked a little bit about albums, and I know that you have some video projects that you’re pivoting to and including a documentary.
MONNA: Yes, so we are making a documentary about the “Sorry for Your Loss” tour that I just went on a few weeks ago. I had to go back to my hometown of Fort Wayne, Indiana to do legal mediation with my stepmother concerning my father’s estate. And because I was dragged back to my hometown where I hate to go, I planned an entire tour around the date. I set all of those shows up in about two weeks.
And (I) decided that if I was going to have trauma, I was going to make it a tax write off, which is the exact Claws Out energy I strive for everyone to have. If we’re going to have trauma, let’s throw a little glitter on it.
And I’m so glad that I did things that way, too, because the legal stuff and the family stuff and grief and loss is always very, very intense and stressful. The anxiety that comes along with getting the law involved is a very heavy burden, and so the fact that I got to do comedy around the thing that was stressing me out made me really happy. So the trip had a lot of very, very high highs and very, very low lows. Like, you know, it’s not great to be able to go to your childhood home but not be allowed to enter it. But also I got my first standing ovation. So give a little. Take a little.
Fornoff: Throwing the glitter on it.
MONNA: Yeah, throwing the glitter on it definitely helps.
Fornoff: And so that will come out May of next year?
MONNA: We’re looking for May of next year for the documentary project. And then in the interim, I’m going to go ahead and record my third album. I want to wrap up my “UN” trilogy. We have “Unstable,” “Unprecedented” and then there’s the sister coloring book that goes with called “Millennial Trash,” and then I’m going to record “Unfiltered” in December of 2022.
Fornoff: Is there anything else that I didn’t ask you about that you want to mention or you think it’s important to know?
MONNA: I think that a lot of the albums that are coming out are really important to listen to. “I Know, Right?” by Latrice Wilkerson is currently streaming on all platforms and she is so, so funny. Ruth Banks is coming out next, which is called “Screwed.” Ruth’s album is so bold and so brave and she talks so confidently about her physical disabilities and her Autism and her struggles with work, life and romance. And I think that it’s really, really a powerful album.
I’m really, really excited to just be the megaphone that amplifies these local voices because there’s so much talent in DFW. I’m excited for more people to be able to hear that, and Claws Out is always about mental health and advocacy and making sure people don’t feel like they’re too much or not enough. I think that a lot of these albums and being able to stream them for free, you know, is a good way to stay positive. Paws-itive.
Fornoff: Pun intended.
MONNA: Pun always intended.
Fornoff: Excellent. Thank you so much for your time.
MONNA: Thank you so much for having me. If people have any other questions or want to dig through stuff, there’s always monnacomedy.com and clawsoutcomedy.com.
Marcheta Fornoff covers the arts for the Fort Worth Report. Contact her at marcheta.fornoff@fortworthreport.org or on Twitter. At the Fort Worth Report, news decisions are made independently of our board members and financial supporters. Read more about our editorial independence policy here.
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