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Mamma G's Bar & Grill will be hosting, Troy Wagner Memorial Comedy Show on January 31st 8pmTickets will be on sale 12/31/24.
Tickets are $30 each
Seating is limited!!!
Stop into Mamma G's Bar & Grill to buy your ticket as they will go fast.
Proceeds from show will be given to Troy's family to help cover the cost of funeral expenses.
Meet the comedians who were friends of Troy's and wanted to do this show in honor of him and to help out his family.
Michael Thorne
Troy Wagner was the funniest waiter I had ever met when we first came into contact while I was working at the Westward Ho in Grand Forks, North Dakota, early in my comedy career. I want to say it was somewhere around 1994, but putting money on the exact year would be as foolish as how we behaved back in those days and for most of our lives.
Just about every Comic that came through “The Ho” when Troy was working there told him the same thing. “You’re a sick man. You should do stand up!” It was this kind of encouragement for the behavior that had gotten him kicked out of class or slapped by a girl that led Troy to do just that. I don’t remember where he did his first open stage, because I was full-time road dogging it at the time. But our paths crossed more and more as he moved to Minneapolis and became part of a sect of transplant comedians in the community.
We eventually became thick as thieves when he took an apartment above another comic in “Nordeast” Minneapolis where I had grown up. We hung out, partied, and wrote more material than we would ever actually write down and make use of purely to entertain each other. We would meander through the bars of Northeast, “swilling and spilling”, as one of our compatriots dubbed it, and cracking each other up to the point of literal tears rolling down our cheeks and stomach muscles hurting despite none of us doing so much as one sit-up.
It was the kind of behavior that can either make you famous or get you arrested at any given moment. After brushes with both, we lost touch for a while as Troy fell in love and moved to Florida for the better part of two decades, doing MC stints at the Orlando Improv and working for the theme parks there. We would keep in touch via phone and text each other new jokes often.
Whenever he would come back to the Northland, we would manage to put shows together around his hometown of Glenwood and anywhere else we could. I took him along on a company party gig to Madison Wisconsin, where we were paid for thoroughly offending the company’s employees and trashing a hotel room before somehow finding our way back to Minneapolis. Several days later, I opened my trunk for something or other to find a piece of hotel room art in it which I vaguely remember the two of us yanking from its bolted position on the wall. I only wish I had had him sign it and kept it as a memento. But one thing is for sure, I will never forget.
John DeBoer
I first met Troy in the 90s doing comedy at the Westward Ho in Grand Forks. I knew him when he lived in Minneapolis after that and we always got along and had fun hanging out. But it was when we both lived in Florida that we became tighter, and no one could have helped me more when he drove the Budget truck with my belongings from Florida back to Minnesota as I drove in my black Kia Forte. We made Smokey and the Bandit jokes the whole way. He recently sent me a picture of a lawn tractor painted like the black Trans Am from the movie. Never grow up.
We just got to be better and better friends over the last 10 years. Troy would relentlessly text me the most beautifully inappropriate, sick and dark jokes he just wrote to the point where I would tell him, "Send those to Daniel Tosh, dammit!" or "Will you Emcee my funeral?"
He was there as a friend through my sister's death, the long journey of my parents' Alzheimers and then my Dads passing, easing it all with his demented Mystery Science Theater 3000 - like commentary. Recently, he was becoming a caregiver as well and I was privileged to be there for him. His parents were his world.
Troy's last time on stage was with me on my birthday this year at Mamma G's in Lowry. He busted his ass and sold the place out, 120 tickets in a town of 334. He had not been on stage in several years and was a bit nervous, but he didn't hold back and he nailed it. At one point his Mom yelled out, "That's not my kid!" He said, "That IS my Mom, though! Do the math!" I told him he did great, but you could see on his face that he already knew he did, that he was funny.
I read recently, "It isn't the family you're born with, it is the family you choose." Troy was my brother.
John McClellan
I don’t remember exactly where I was when I met Troy Wagner… He was the kind of guy that was on the edge of your social circle until one day you are committing a crime together. And from there on forward your friendship was cemented in felony activity. Please don’t share this with anyone in Florida - That is where most of those escapades took place.
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Event Venue & Nearby Stays
409 Florence Ave, Lowry, MN, United States, Minnesota 56349
