By Nick A. Zaino III Globe correspondent, Updated August 17, 2022, 4:01 p.m.
Bill Burr figures he started building his audience in fourth grade. Back then, he wasn’t thinking Netflix specials recorded at venues like Red Rocks and Royal Albert Hall, or becoming the first comedian, on Sunday, to headline Fenway Park. Stand-up comedy was still several years in his future.
No, in fourth grade he was just a kid at Lieutenant Peter M. Hansen School in Canton trying to entertain a couple of friends. “I was making them laugh because that’s what I always did to connect with people,” says Burr, speaking from his Los Angeles home. “Then other kids saw them laughing and then more kids would come over and wanted to listen.”
An insecure kid, Burr wanted to stop when people started gathering. But his friends wouldn’t let him. “I got it to the point where I had like all the boys in the class listening to [this] crazy story. And I just feel like my comedy career was that same thing; it started off with, like, two people.”
Burr’s days of playing to small audiences are long gone. He regularly sells out theaters and arenas, has nine specials on Amazon and Netflix, the latest of which, “Live at Red Rocks,” was released in July, and he hosted “Saturday Night Live” in 2020. The Fenway show could put him in front of nearly 38,000 fans at once, topping the roughly 20,000 who saw him during his then-record string of 19 sold-out shows at the Wilbur Theatre in 2015.
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