The master sucker gets sucked

Growing up in a small town, it can be difficult to see past the city limit signs and recognize opportunity.

For years, movies and TV shows have perpetuated the idea that the only hope for someone in rural America to “make it big” is to scrape together some cash and get out as quickly as possible.

As country music artist Hal Ketchum put it in his hit song “Small Town Saturday Night”: “Lucy, you know the world must be flat, ‘cause when people leave town, they never come back.”

With the help of modern technology, quick wit and an army of curious listeners though, Dan Cummins - a Riggins, Idaho native and renowned comedian - is proving you don’t have to leave the place you love to follow your passion.

Cummins, AKA the Master Sucker, is currently reaching a six-figure audience with his podcast “Timesuck,” which he records from “the suck dungeon” based in Coeur d’Alene.

For those who have not tuned in, each episode of “Timesuck” has Cummins covering, or “sucking,” a different listener-chosen topic each week.

His no-holds-barred style of fact-based storytelling and dark humor, combined with an intriguing topic, creates a program that does what your high school teachers or college professors wished they could do — make learning fun. Part of the podcast’s appeal is that the topics can vary wildly, giving both the listeners and Cummins a nearly endless supply of possible content.

“That’s what I like about ‘Timesuck,’” he explained. “When the only criteria is that the subject matter needs to be interesting, you never run out of subjects.”

With “Timesuck” listeners around the globe, multiple comedy albums made and venues across the country booking him for performances, it is safe to say Cummins has come a long way from growing up in a town without a stoplight.

Born in Grangeville and raised in Riggins, he graduated from high school in 1995, then went to Gonzaga University and graduated with a B.A. in psychology in 1999. It was at Gonzaga that he would meet his now ex-wife and mother of his two children.

Cummins and his new family lived in Spokane Valley until roughly 2010 when he moved to Los Angeles following his divorce. It was in these years before the move that his career as a comedian would begin to flourish, albeit slowly.

Reminiscing on his humble beginnings, Cummins says the first stand-up comedy shows he did were held at the now closed Season Ticket sports bar in Spokane, located across from the Spokane Arena.

“At the time they had like a little corner of the sports bar, kind of like plywood, walled-off to make a little comedy club, then it had banquet style chairs that sat roughly 120 people.”

Looking up to comedic giants like Dave Attell, Bill Hicks, George Carlin and Doug Stanhope, Cummins said he began to develop his own unique style that simply stressed, “Does it feel genuine and funny? Do I like it, and If I like it, does the audience like it?”

This got him more and more attention while in Spokane, but those already in the industry would stress that a move to a bigger city was needed.

“Things kept going better and better stand-up wise,” he explained. “...It was interesting to get late-night spots in Spokane because it would confuse LA comics and New York comics who thought that those were the only two ways you could do it. (They would say) ‘You have to move to LA! You have to move to New York! That’s the only way to get a manager! That’s the only way you can move up in the ranks!’ So I was like this anomaly.”

Due to some traveling he did in college, his move to Los Angeles wasn’t as big a culture shock as it would have been for most, at least not until he experienced the professional environment.

“It wasn’t necessarily a culture shock city-wise. It was a culture shock career-wise,” Cummins said. “I would write during the day, do my shows at night, and work hard on the craft of comedy, but there was no networking to be done.”

Because he was already investing a lot of time in his children, his day-to-day work, and the rest of life, Cummins found it difficult to mesh with the LA “comedy second, networking first” mentality.

Combine this with higher-ups in the industry pulling him in several different career directions and it was an easy decision for him to move back to Idaho to be closer to his kids.

For a year, Cummins bounced back and forth between California and Idaho as he worked to finish out a contract with Playboy Magazine while also getting settled in Coeur d’Alene with his new wife, Lynze.

It was in early 2016 that Cummins seriously approached the idea of doing a podcast for the first time.

He recorded an episode of what would become “Timesuck” in September 2016 and shopped it to potential podcast companies in the hopes of getting out of what he considered to be a lull in his career.

Initially, only two companies would meet with him because he didn’t have any “heat” at the time.

After getting turned down by both, Cummins decided to take matters into his own hands.

“It kind of just fired me up. I was like, ‘You know what, f*** these guys and I’ll do it myself,’” he said.

“I paid a friend of mine who was artistic enough to build a website and a basic logo design, and talked to some podcast friends in Florida — ‘A Mediocre Time with Tom and Dan.’”

With the knowledge he acquired from them, Cummins threw “Timesuck” online with little advertisement and little social media mention.

After roughly two weeks with the help of sponsored ads on Pandora, the podcast had started to accumulate a following and ideas for future episodes came flowing in.

Now in the top 20 podcasts in the world for listeners on the Patreon platform, Cummins is humbled by the following his once small project now has.

“Everything that has been happening has come from the fans,” he said. “I started to get emails from podcast companies that had no interest in me before.”

This accomplishment is even more impressive when one considers that Cummins attributes his move back to Idaho as a reason for the success.

“It flies in the face of all reason. Moving to Idaho should not be a good entertainment career decision, but it has been the best one,” he explained. “If we got a place in LA because of (future) projects, it would be a secondary place. I have no interest in ever moving back to LA, New York, any of that kind of stuff. It’s like ‘Why?’ I wanted an audience and I can have that in my favorite part of my favorite state.”

Cummins, who sports a sizable Idaho tattoo on his left forearm, says that in addition to spending time with his family, he enjoys living in the Coeur d’Alene area because of the multitude of outdoor recreational opportunities that the wilderness and lakes have to offer.

“I love that my commute from work is less than two minutes,” he added.

In regard to “Timesuck” specifically, Cummins loves that he can work on a project that he truly feels contributes to a wide-range of people’s lives in a way that feels genuine.

“What I love about it is that I worked on some projects in LA that were paychecks, but that I artistically didn’t like — vapid, meaningless projects that just contributed to the mind-numbing, dumbing-down of the masses, which I think media does with America sometimes.”

At the same time, being based in Coeur d’Alene also allows Cummins to send a message to those back in the big cities.

“I think being based in Idaho is inspiration for people. I remember growing up in Riggins just thinking that nobody really gives a s*** about you. You’re in this small town and the media just makes fun of people in little towns and little states,” he said. “That motivates me to take this as far as I can from Coeur d’Alene partly as a big f*** you to LA and industry people in LA who just laughed, ‘Idaho!? What are you doing!?”

Using his story as proof, Cummins hopes that he can inspire someone who may be in the same position that he was and shine a light on a place that he hold close to him.

“The little Riggins kid in me is excited to think that maybe some other kid in some other town hears this and sees that it’s successful, so that inspires him or her to do something cool in their little town,” he said. “It would be nice to bring publicity to what I think is the most beautiful state in the nation and show that there’s a lot more here than taters and skinheads.”

With the help of his wife Lynze and audio producer Joe Paisley, Cummins releases a new episode of “Timesuck” every week to satiate his audience’s cravings for irreverent humor and knowledge.

To learn more or listen to an episode, visit www.timesuckpodcast.com.