Nate Bargatze had barely four hours of sleep when he took the stage at the Ford Accelerate conference at Michigan Central Station in Detroit.
It was about 9 a.m. on Sept. 30 and the comedian was there to co-host the second-year of the event with Ford Motor Co. CEO Jim Farley. Bargatze is the new face in a Ford ad campaign touting the advantages that Ford vehicle owners get by using Ford's dealership service lanes rather than third-party service centers. Ford Accelerate is a gathering of hundreds of business and community leaders who discuss ways to get more people interested in skilled trades jobs, such as auto service technicians.
"I don't even know what time it is," Bargatze told the Detroit Free Press a couple of hours after he welcomed the crowd.
His handler remarked that it wasn't yet noon. "It's not noon?! It could be four, five ... I don't know. We got in late last night because I had a show in Mississippi and then ... it was four hours sleep. But I feel great. It's been fun."
The ride for Bargatze, 47, has indeed been fun — and a lot of hard work.
He rose from humble roots in Old Hickory, Tennessee, a factory town about 15 miles northeast of Nashville known for its DuPont plant. He is the son of a professional magician and Bargatze worked as an appliance mover, a pizza delivery driver, a parking valet at Nashville International Airport and a water-meter reader before a buddy pushed him to try his dream of stand-up comedy.
Bargatze said it took years of overcoming nerves and persistantly working his way up from small comedy shops and stand-up on cruise ships to reach his success today. He's hosted SNL twice — once in 2023 and again in 2024, gigs that he said gave him a lot in common to talk about with Farley, whose cousin was the late comic Chris Farley.
Bargatze also hosted the Emmy's last fall, starred in his debut film "The Breadwinner" released earlier this year, and performed to a sold-out crowd in August at Little Caesars Arena in Detroit as part of his "Big Dumb Eyes World Tour" this year. But last year he performed on a cruise ship again, he said, noting, "It all comes back to cruisin', right? It's full circle."
It's a tremendous achievement for a guy who walks into a conference room upstairs at Michigan Central Station, where a small group of reporters wait to talk to him, donning black Docker's-like pants, a black sweater and a casual gray zip-up jacket — an outfit he could have bought at any Kohl's store. When people ask to take a picture with him, he replies with a mild-mannered and sincere, "I'd love to." Yeah, nice guy. He is not necessarily a crack-up in regular conversation, but he is good-humored and down to earth, confirming the authenticity of his every man image.
Even his love of Ford vehicles is real — he drives a 2021 Bronco with a manual transmission, noting, "My daughter wants this Bronco, she's 14. So I want her to learn how to drive a stick shift. I think it'll help with (not) texting (when driving) because you got a lot going on."
Bargatze is so enamored with Ford that he said he held off entertaining any other commercials to first see if he'd land the Ford campaign, he said.
"I haven't done really commercials at all, and it's because I was kind of waiting for this one to see if I could get this, basically, because it just made a lot of sense," Bargatze said. "I don't really want to be just like on a bunch of commercials. I want to really believe in the product. I want something to hopefully grow and hopefully this is a very long relationship."
Finally, he gets a pickup
Bargatze's relationship with Ford is growing, at least in his garage. His success has earned him the car he has wanted since before he learned to drive: a pickup truck.
Bargatze ordered an F-150 Raptor R in Shelby Green, he said. The Raptor R is a high-performance, off-road truck with a supercharged V8 engine.
"I've never had a truck and I've always wanted a truck," Bargatze said. "I mean, I really have always wanted a truck, because ... my aunt had like a Ford Ranger, and that was the car I was supposed to get when I was able to drive. But then she got it got in a wreck. So I never got it. So finally, now."
Beyond the cars, Ford as a company appealed to Bargatze's roots of growing up in a town where the DuPont plant was the main employer.
"I came from a plant town, and it was a DuPont plant," he said. "Everybody there worked at that place, and their dads worked there, their grandfather … I loved that that is … the American dream of just kind of you had this job with a reliable company. So, Ford is that to me."
Bargatze said he aspires for his business, The Nateland Co. based in Nashville, to be somewhat like Ford. The Nateland Co., which Bargatze launched in 2023, is a content company focused on family-friendly shows for audiences of all ages. Bargatze will produce stand-up comedy specials, sketches, scripted episodes for film and television and more, according to Deadline.
"As we grow and build stuff, (I) want people to have jobs, and I hope that they can work there for as long as they want or they can work there, then go do other things, or whatever," Bargatze said.
Bargatze's safety net if comedy failed
Bargatze never went to college, he worked in service jobs instead, which is why he ties the Ford vehicle service commercials he does to Farley's push to get more people into the trades — because both promote efforts that show the value of a secure job.
The Alliance for America's Skilled Trades, a coalition including Ford, Google, and BlackRock, released a national report the week of Sept. 28 highlighting critical labor gaps. It showed the U.S. needs to fill 1.7 million skilled trades job openings annually through 2035. Yet, just 55 workers are produced for every 100 needed. Farley has called the shortage "a crisis."
Bargatze said there has to be more awareness around the value these trades jobs offer, not just for society, which is critical, but for people. For example, it was his job as a water-meter reader that allowed him to dip his toe in comedy. The job was "the safety net" he had where if comedy had not worked out, he believed the water department job would still be an option for him, he said.
Also, as the world expands its use of AI, no one knows where any jobs might go or develop into, Bargatze said. These skilled trades jobs offer people the chance to learn a skill they will own no matter how AI changes things, he said.
"I used to do a joke that like, 'Your mechanics and plumbers are about to become your doctors,' " Bargatze said. "We don't know. Everything's changing so much, and I think it is a very secure place to get started and somewhere that, as I did, I read water meters, but I went down this path of comedy. But that's what I would have been doing, if, you know, I didn't get into comedy."
Bargatze's foray into comedy
It was his friend, as well as a co-worker at the water department, that gave Bargatze the shove in to comedy.
"I always wanted to do stand-up comedy," Bargatze said. "I didn’t really know how to start and I was working at the water company and had a buddy that kind of wanted to go to Second City in Chicago. I just needed a person to be like, 'Yeah, let's go try this.' And I do remember a guy that we worked with that was like, 'You should do it.' "
Second City is a well-known improvisational and sketch comedy theater and school that launched careers of many famous comics such as Chris Farley, Bill Murray, Tina Fey, Mike Myers and Joan Rivers to name a few. Bargatze was about 22 years old at this time and already had some familiarity with show business from his dad.
"He was a teacher and then he did magic. So I was around entertainment," Bargatze said. "I did shows with him growing up a little bit, and he always did comedy in his magic."
But beyond that brief show business stint with dad, Bargatze's jobs growing up were average-Joe jobs. He delivered appliances, was a parking valet at the airport where he said he liked to listen to "rich peoples' " Sirus radio when parking their cars and he delivered pizza for Pizza Hut.
"It was great. I remember going to one house and they wanted me to go buy them beer and they give you extra cash" to do it, Bargatze said "You're like, all right, I don't know these lunatics. You know? But, you've got (an extra) $20 in your pocket, you go, 'Yeah, I'll do it.' "
So comedy was a true challenge. He said it is something you have to just go on stage and start doing.
"I took a comedy class when I first started just because you do," Bargatze said. "It's not going to teach you how to be funny, but it's like you're nervous and you're scared and you don't know what to do. So you just want to go be around people that are also scared and nervous."
Getting over stage fright
He said the fact that he had to be at class every Wednesday forced him to keep at it, "like, it was just going there, and it's just kind of getting the nerves to kind of just calm down, and then you get comfortable."
From there he started doing open mic nights at local comedy clubs and constantly trying to hone his material and delivery. Once he mastered it, he felt like he, too, had a skilled trade of sorts.
"I talk about in stand-up, I talk about an act. If you have an act, if I have an hour of material, that I can rely on then it's like, that's something that no one can take from me," Bargatze said. "I have this hour. So you have something to give to people when you're selling tickets, something to perform. Again, going back to the trades, where if you know how to build and take apart a car, you have an act, you have something that you can use."
About five years in to comedy, Bargatze said he started performing on cruise ships and while it was good work, it wasn't his ultimate dream. But it gave him confidence that he could do comedy.
"Worst case scenario now, I'm gonna do cruise ships, but I'm gonna do the thing that I wanted to do," Bargatze said. "Then you say, 'Now that gives me the chance to go leap and try to go to that next level' until you finally start finding marks that you just can kind of set, and your marks get higher."
Why he's a giant fan of Detroit
Meanwhile, Bargatze's buddy also spent some time in comedy, but ultimately returned to the water department to take a job doing public relations there, he said, laughing at the idea that water needs PR.
Bargatze leans back in his chair in the small conference room and glances out the window. The last time he saw Michigan Central Station up close was about a decade ago, he said.
"I saw this building when it had no windows, there was no anything and I took a picture of it. I was like, man, that's crazy," Bargatze said of the long-abandoned train depot in Detroit's Corktown neighborhood before Ford bought it in May 2018 and spent close to $1 billion renovating it and reopening it in June 2024. "It was like so crazy to see and so then even to be in here now, is surreal to me, just because I saw it like it was."
Bargatze said he's been coming to Detroit for a long time and has been through the "whole comedy circuit" here from the small comedy clubs, to the Fox Theatre and finally Little Caesars Arena. But he's been through a lot of cities in his career and admits he forms bonds in some, more than others. Detroit is one of those he feels a connection to.
"I love Detroit. You know, you're a city that I think everybody roots for," Bargatze said.
And, eventhough he said he is not a Detroit Lions' fan, he still wants them to win.
“I'm a Titans fan, but don't worry, we'll step out of the way for you guys this year," Bargatze joked. And, he said if the Lions did win a championship, "Dude, that would be so awesome. Like, you just get excited about how excited the city would be for that and so, yeah, you play on a lot of people's heartstrings in Detroit. And so I'm a, yeah, a giant fan."
Jamie L. LaReau is the senior autos writer at USA TODAY Co. who covers Ford Motor Co. for the Detroit Free Press. Contact Jamie at jlareau@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter @jlareauan. To sign up for our autos newsletter. Become a subscriber.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: How Nate Bargatze worked the trades before rising to comic fame
