Growing up queer in a religious household in Missouri, Zach Noe Towers learned how to navigate two distinctly different worlds at once. That experience has paid off for the now-lapsed Catholic, as he’s shot to fame as one of the few gay male comics to successfully build a fervent straight audience.
He’s traveling the United States as the opening act for comedy star Fortune Feimster, providing a wilder onstage persona that grabs their attention and sets the stage for the more mainstream headliner. He’s also the host of the popular Netflix-sponsored, sex-positive podcast “After Hours” and was on E!’s “Nightly Pop” series as well as a regular on E!’s “Dating #No Filter”—and he’ll take center stage September 7-9 at Zanies while headlining five big shows.
“My parents never held their beliefs over my head due to being queer, but I think I saw a lot of hypocrisy right away in the Catholic Church and I would call it out on som†e things I didn’t really see eye-to-eye with them on,” says Towers. “I think that’s the gift of being queer. You have to ask questions about yourself and the world around you to see where you safely fit in and I saw early on that if I could make people laugh, I could distract them from seeing that I was different or queer-specific.
“If I could make a room of adults laugh, I think I presented value and kind of distracted them at the same time. Ultimately, it’s so much fun to make people laugh. Comedy was a safe space and it also made me feel good.”
While he didn’t perform standup until after he moved to Los Angeles to pursue acting in TV and movies, the St. Louis native found his artistic calling as a performer in the city’s Muny youth theater program. He found theater to be “such a safe, comfortable, nourishing environment for any creative kid, but specifically queer kids who were afraid to follow their passion. It probably saved my life growing up in Missouri in the nineties.”
Towers started doing standup over the frustration he shared with countless fellow actors in landing auditions, even for commercials. He saw it as a way to “feed the beast” of his performing ambitions and wound up falling in love with it.
His passion project is the “After Hours” show, “because I’m sex-positive and there’s a lot of humor to be had in sex.” He humorously discusses the topic with his famous comedian guests, who range from “RuPaul’s Drag Race” champion Bob the Drag Queen to straight comics like Taylor Tomlinson and Mark Normand, while also spotlighting sex in the news and media and taking listener calls.
“I’m really trying to hit every walk of life on this show and really broaden the conversation about sex,” he says. Yet he’s also learning how to broaden his act as he experiences the huge crowds that Feimster draws on her tours.
“Fortune has been a friend and a big supporter for years now with me and she is going out on a limb, putting me in front of her fans and I love her to death for knowing that I love dirty jokes and I like to think I present the world with quality dirty jokes,” he says. “But I also am in the process of learning from her that my audience could be much bigger, much faster if I maybe tone down the wild factor in my material. If I make it a bit more digestible for everyone, I could probably entertain more people and that’s the goal at the end of the day.”
Towers is thrilled to put those lessons to work during his weekend at Zanies, where he expects to perform for predominantly straight crowds.
“A lot of my fans are straight women who bring their boyfriends. And honestly, when I get a straight guy coming up to me after a show and saying ‘Man, I didn’t know what was gonna happen, but I really loved that,’ I feel especially accomplished because I can talk about explicit gay scenarios with jokes that are accessible to everyone, whether they’re gay or straight. One of my favorite weekends ever was at Zanies, where every show was better than the last and I cannot wait to come back and perform there.”
Zach Noe Towers performs September 7-9 at Zanies, 1548 North Wells. Tickets are $30. Call (312)337-4027 or visit zanies.com.
