Comedian Dan Cummins Joins the BRCC Squad
There might not be a more interesting shift into the world of comedy than that of a psychology graduate becoming depressed with crisis counseling work and stumbling upon an open mic night.
“I graduated from Gonzaga with a psychology degree [in 1999] and just didn’t know what to do with my life,” Dan Cummins said. “I wasn’t making much money, between working at a 24 Hour Fitness and picking up shifts as a crisis counselor. The counseling was fulfilling work, but it really made me depressed. I didn’t have the patience for the system, and I just felt like it was a constant exercise in frustration, knowing what needed to be done to help people but not having the resources to do it.”
Photo courtesy of Dan Cummins.
“My first open mic night was just ‘right place, right time,’” Cummins said. “It was fun … fun enough to go back. It didn’t hurt that they were desperate for people to fill the stage, and the guy who ran it started putting me on paid shows within two to three weeks. I did rough bar gigs, the kind that weed out people who don’t want to pay their dues.”
“I was truly hustling — I got brought into clubs for stand-up and then got referred to a comedy manager in LA,” Cummins continued. “From there, I took advantage of all the opportunities I was offered. About four to five years in, I got my first real spot and realized that comedy was legitimately my career.”
Cummins began touring, was given a record deal with Warner Records, appeared on the Late Late Show on CBS, the Tonight Show on NBC, and had his own half-hour special on Comedy Central.
“I got divorced right before I moved to LA, and it was a really hard move because my kids were in Spokane,” Cummins said. “But, for me, the choice was, go to LA for exposure opportunities or stay in Spokane and let your career die. So I started flying between LA and Spokane monthly to see my kids or having them fly out to stay with me so I could be Mr. Mom for a week every month and just taking gigs, stand-up appearances, and even working on reality shows like Duck Dynasty.”
One such reality show led to Cummins meeting his now-wife, Lynze.
“I was at a taping for Nickelodeon’s NickMom Night Out, which I wasn’t taking seriously,” Cummins said. “The show was Nickelodeon’s plan to have nighttime scheduling for moms who had their kids watching their programming before bed and then would just not change the channel and hook them with more adult-based content. Anyway, Lynze was the wardrobe specialist for the show and in charge of dressing the comics, which is previously a position that I had butted heads with at other gigs. So I ignored all her calls before the taping, showed up with a grocery bag with two t-shirts and every other performer had a garment bag with nicely ironed clothes. She hated me, to say the least.”
“At the end of the taping, I grabbed the wrong person’s pants, and it just gave me an excuse to flirt with Lynze,” Cummins continued.
Cummins and Lynze eventually moved to Couer d’Alene, Idaho, so that he could spend more time with his kids.
“The move was obviously scary because it could have been a career killer,” Cummins said. “But we were moving for the right reasons. I actually have the Playboy Channel to thank for making the move possible. I had ended up hosting a morning show on Playboy TV for two years — it ran Monday through Thursday and was an hourlong program. It was actually a nude show, but I wasn’t nude, and that money allowed us to buy a house and be in my kids’ life.”
Photo courtesy of Dan Cummins.
In 2016, Cummins and Lynze got married, and shortly thereafter started a podcast called TimeSuck.
“Creating TimeSuck was really just a ‘Hail Mary’ at that point,” Cummins said. “I felt like I just hadn’t had any luck outside of stand-up, and when we started the podcast, things weren’t looking so good there either. But within a few months, the show just took off, kept growing, and now we run a podcast business.”
During this time, Cummins was featured on a few episodes of Drinkin’ Bros, connected with Ross Patterson, and then became friends with Will XX and was introduced to Black Rifle Coffee Company. Those friendships led to Cummins going to Salt Lake City, Utah, for a tattoo session with Will, before kicking off another tour, which sent him to San Antonio.
“I went in blind to a podcast I had been invited to participate in, without knowing that it was actually the BRCC podcast,” Cummins said. “I showed up in like a t-shirt and shorts, way more casual than I would have been had I known who I was meeting. Luckily, the show was so much fun, and we all just really hit it off. Jarred Taylor reached out about my maybe doing some comedy sketches with them, and that was the kick-off conversation for them sponsoring me.”
“Early on, BRCC sponsored one or two episodes of my podcast,” Cummins continued. “Really, our relationship just continued from that point on. I was blown away by the quality of the coffee — literally, I have a fridge in the office with nothing but BRCC RTD.”
“I’m not a veteran, but we have a ton of veteran listeners on the podcast,” Cummins said. “Our Patreon account donates 20% of everything above the operating costs to charity, and the first charities that we donated to happened to be veteran and first-responder focused.”
Photo courtesy of Dan Cummins.
In December 2021, the partnership was official, and shortly after that Cummins made a visit to the Salt Lake City headquarters and met Evan Hafer for the first time.
“Our [mine and Evan’s] early lives were very weirdly parallel,” Cummins explains. “We grew up two hours apart, our dads were both in the logging industry, one of my college roommates was a childhood friend of Evan’s; the connections just go on.”
Photo by Dayna Monroe/Black Rifle Coffee Company.
“The energy at the Salt Lake City and San Antonio offices just makes you feel like you’re watching something great with so much potential,” Cummins said. “It just feels really special, probably like the feeling you get in a control center before a rocket is about to launch. People don’t realize the diversity within BRCC, and you walk through the offices and you can just see that everyone loves what they do.”
Photo by Dayna Monroe/Black Rifle Coffee Company.
“Artistically, I’m a loner, but there’s truly something so special about BRCC, and I’m such a believer in what they’re doing,” Cummins stated. “As someone who gets to make a living saying goofy, irreverent things, I’m grateful for that ability. I think that veterans are a group that just gets neglected in society, and BRCC goes out of its way to let them be a part of this special community. I don’t know if people really know how great that is. The fact that they want to be working with me is just incredible, and I’m really looking forward to being along on this ride.”
