If laughter is the best medicine, then Travis Wallace is a healer.

The Greenville native has been cracking people up with his antics and wisecracks for years. During his youth, his spirited and comical routine was free, but now he does it as a livelihood.

Just as Garrison Keillor lures listeners with his quirky, impromptu stories about Lake Wobegon on “A Prairie Home Companion,” 33-year-old Wallace engages audiences with colorful reminiscences about Greenville and Moosehead Lake. Using his own original material, steering clear of vulgarity, he makes a living cranking out one-liners and generating belly laughs.

Speaking of Maine, the 1989 Greenville High School graduate quips, “It’s a tough state to live in; keeping up with the Joneses means you have three cars up on blocks.” And of his hometown: “Greenville, Maine, is the only place I’ve ever been where it is cool to take a girl parking in a clear-cut, in her skidder.”

Material comes naturally to Wallace.

“Life is fun, a lot of things just come to me,” reflected the Maine-born comedian who lives in Madison, N.H. “People are the same no matter where you go, but what’s special about Greenville is you know all the characters and you know all the crazy people.”

Wallace recently was in Greenville to autograph copies of his latest CD, “Tourist Season,” at the Shaw Public Library. The day before the signing, he recalled how he always has made people laugh from a young age and how comedy seemed a natural path in his life. At age 5, his parents tell him, he would hike himself up on top of a case of beer in the Long Branch Lounge of his family’s former Lake Moosehead Hotel in Greenville Junction. From that perch, he could reach the cash register, punch the no-sale button and scoop out fistfuls of coins to put into the jukebox, much to the delight of bar patrons.

In his senior year at Greenville High School, Wallace performed as Eugene in the musical “Grease” and his decision to become a comedian was cemented.

“I walked out on stage wearing a 1950s tweed jacket and nerdy glasses and the place erupted in laughter and I hadn’t said a word yet,” he recalled. “I think from that moment I was hooked.”

Despite his love of entertaining, the practical-minded Greenville High grad figured he would need a day job to support himself, so he applied and was accepted at Bentley College in Waltham, Mass., where he majored in accounting. He was doing fine in his studies, earning dean’s list recognition, until he discovered the college’s theater group his second year. His grades began to slip, he joked, at the same time his money from home ran out.

After leaving Bentley, Wallace returned to Greenville, where he waited tables and did impressions of the 1992 presidential candidates to entertain his customers. The general manager of a Lincoln radio station was amused by the waiter’s impersonations of Bill Clinton, Ross Perot and George H.W. Bush, and asked him to record a few sound bites for the station.

Seizing the opportunity, Wallace did the spots and eventually landed a job as an on-air personality at a Skowhegan radio show.

“I enjoyed that [radio],” he said. “But I couldn’t hear the laughter, there was no interaction.”

Wallace later left radio and started working in Boston comedy clubs.

“When I started out as a comedian in Boston, I was absolutely awful,” he confessed, adding that he still managed to pack the house. With determination, he has continued to work his way up the ladder in the comedy world and has performed in some well-established comedy clubs, including Comedy Connection at Boston’s Faneuil Hall and Dick’s Comedy Shop in the theater district.

Wallace, now married and father of two girls, works as a “humorist,” but no longer does stand-up in clubs because of the offensive language.

“Anyone can go on stage and say the ‘F’ word and get laughter from certain people, and I choose not to do that,” he explained.

The Greenville native serves as his own agent, booking gigs and renting theaters to perform his one-man shows. “I’m a bit of a control freak,” he said. He and his wife, Tina, a comic in her own right, are now working on a two-person show that will be ready by November.

In his latest CD, Wallace used Greenville as a setting and drew from the local characters he knows. In the style of an old-time radio play, Wallace and his friends do a humorous reenactment of Thoreau’s expedition to the Maine woods. When Greenville residents hear the CD, he said, chuckling, he plans to lay low in New Hampshire.

While he draws on his hometown, Wallace strives to keep his jokes universal and not limited to a specific audience.

“I do make references to Greenville and Maine,” he said. “But you don’t have to have visited here to understand the show.”

Wallace said the humor he writes takes careful thought.

“I have jokes that took years to produce,” he said. His wife pipes in, saying their home is scattered with scribblings on tiny scraps of papers with ideas for future shows.

“I strive to be able to write like Garrison [Keillor],” Wallace said. “Somebody’s got to take over for the guy and I’m willing to move to Minnesota.”

Travis Wallace’s new CD, “Tourist Season,” is available at Mr. Paperback stores and Moosehead Lake region shops. Diana Bowley can be reached at 876-4579 and dianabdn@downeast.net.