Gittin’-R-Done Southern comedian Larry the Cable Guy successfully branches out

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Dan Whitney embraces being the redneck id of the fly-over states.

You may know Whitney better by his professional name: Larry the Cable Guy.

Currently the hottest name of the Southern comics from the Blue Collar Comedy Tour, Larry the Cable Guy has already sold out the April 28 show at the Augusta Civic Center, but seats remain for the added show May 1.

In a recent phone interview, Whitney opened with what he’s known for: a one-liner. “I saw a vision of the Virgin Mary in my potato salad. It’s going to be a good day.”

One-liners are his bread and butter, and Whitney’s proud of that, if somewhat defensive.

“What I do isn’t stupid,” he said. “I challenge anybody to sit down and write one-liners for a stand-up act. I do it all the time, and I’m good at it.”

So who are the fans of Larry?: “It’s not a Southern thing or a country thing,” Whitney explained. “It’s anybody who likes to laugh.”

He pointed to a recent visit to “Live with Regis and Kelly,” when host Regis Philbin asked about his fans: “All the audience started to clap. It’s comedy for anybody.”

Those that don’t get Larry are “intellectual snobs that think they’re more educated than the rest of the country,” Whitney said. “And that’s fine with me.”

Hollywood has taken to Larry, however, as the film “Larry the Cable Guy: Health Inspector,” which cost $3.5 million to make, earned $12 million in its first two weeks of release.

“We wanted to make people laugh, and it did,” Whitney said. “It was a funny script, and I was able to ad-lib and rewrite it, to do whatever I wanted to do with it. Fans like to see you try something different, and they pull for you.”

Next up for Whitney is the Pixar animated film “Cars,” to be released June 9, in which he voices Mater the tow truck.

“That was one of the funniest things I ever did,” he recalled. “I made a lot of good friends at Pixar.”

So how has becoming a movie star changed Whitney’s life?

“Absolutely none,” he said, calling from the Lincoln, Neb., airport after visiting his sister and nephews. “I’m spitting into a dip cup and wearing cutoff camo sweats. As [comic] Colin Quinn once said about us, ‘The paparazzi are never hanging out at the Myrtle Beach Go-Karts.'”

Whitney has become quite the multimedia hyphenate. His most recent comedy album, “The Right to Bare Arms,” debuted at No. 1 on the SoundScan comedy charts, No. 1 on the country charts and No. 7 on the Top 200 charts, went gold and earned him a Grammy nomination. His book “Git-R-Done,” released Oct. 26, 2005, debuted at No. 25 on The New York Times best-seller list.

“I never thought I’d even have a movie, or write a book,” he said. “By writing the book, I did come up with new material I could use onstage.”

Whitney has been accused of having homophobic and racist elements in his act. He has had a war of words with comic David Cross (“Arrested Development”).

In Rolling Stone, Cross was quoted as saying, “He’s good at what he does. It’s a lot of anti-gay, racist humor – which people like in America – all couched in ‘I’m telling it like it is.’ He’s in the right place at the right time for that gee-shucks, proud-to-be-a-redneck, I’m-just-a -straight-shooter-multimillionaire-in-cutoff-flannel-selling-ring-tones act. That’s where we are as a nation now. We’re in a stage of vague American values and anti-intellectual pride.”

At the time, Whitney replied, “The only people who are uptight at my shows are politically correct white people. They have to take in the social implication of the joke before they can laugh. Just lighten up!”

Whitney, 43, grew up on a pig farm in Pawnee City, Neb., then moved to Florida at age 16. It was there and at a Bible college in Georgia that he cemented his Southern roots.

He started doing stand-up in the mid-1980s, then in 1991, he began doing radio comedy, calling into stations as various characters. Larry the Cable Guy was the character that caught on.

Whitney teamed up with Jeff Foxworthy, Bill Engvall and Ron White on the Blue Collar Comedy Tour, which led to a series of concert films on Comedy Central (the next one airs June 4) and “Blue Collar TV,” which ran for two seasons on The WB.

But the stage is Whitney’s main forum.

“I try to make a positive impact on people,” he said. “It’s good that people can enjoy silliness. That’s what keeps you going, a positive response from people.”

Whitney spends his downtime at his cattle farm in Sanford, Fla. So don’t expect Larry the Cable Guy to go Hollywood anytime soon.

“I’ve got the same friends I’ve had for years,” he said. “I don’t surround myself with people in this business. I’m so far removed from show business, it’s just ridiculous.”

Tickets for the 7:30 p.m. May 1 show are available at the Augusta Civic Center box office or by calling 626-2400 or Ticketmaster at 775-3331 or www.ticketmaster.com. Dale McGarrigle can be reached at 990-8028 and dmcgarrigle@bangordailynews.net.