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Big Funny

Jeff Foxworthy

DreamWorks Records · Album · 2000 · 43 min

Observations on marriage, daughters, and living in a house full of girls.

Jeff Foxworthy steps back from his trademark catchphrases on Big Funny, turning his attention toward life in a house dominated by women. The 2000 live album leans into domestic observational comedy, focusing on everything from his wife and two young daughters going through an alarming amount of toilet paper to the realities of how men are quietly trained by their spouses. It is a deliberate shift toward longer stories about his family, moving away from quick rural punchlines.

Recorded in November 1999 at Indiana University, the 43-minute set marked Foxworthy’s debut with DreamWorks Records. At the time, he was already the best-selling comedy recording artist in history and was preparing for the launch of the massive Blue Collar Comedy Tour. The performance captures a working comic adjusting his material as his home life changes, rounding out the set with stories about strange sights on the highway and the oddity of using a telephone in the bathroom. The album closes with “Blue Collar Dollar,” a musical track featuring Bill Engvall and Marty Stuart. The release earned a Grammy nomination and reached number 15 on the Billboard Top Country Albums chart.

The set list

3 bits
  1. Jeff Gordon Enunciates

    A vocal impression mimicking how difficult it is to understand the unintelligible post-race interview comments of stock car driver Jeff Gordon

  2. I'd Thought I'd Heard Every Redneck Thing

    Acknowledging that it might be time to move beyond his famous redneck routine while presenting new examples

  3. Women Want to Talk

    Skewering the gulf between male and female communication styles in marriage

How it plays

Tone
Good-natured, gently poking fun
On stage
Droll, good-natured, relatable everyman observer of family life
Pace
Rapid-fire, joke-after-joke delivery
About
family life, marriage and in-laws, gender differences in communication, child-rearing, redneck culture

What the critics said

Steve Huey of AllMusic noted that while family life and marital differences are well-trodden territory, Foxworthy's droll delivery makes the hour well worth the time for his fans.

Summed up from reviews, articles and listings. Sources: en.wikipedia.org, allmusic.com, open.spotify.com, amazon.com, nytimes.com.

Details

Released
Taped
1999, Indiana University Auditorium
Runtime
43 min
Where
DreamWorks Records (album)
Topics
Before
Totally Committed (1998)
After
The Good Old Days (2022)

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