Craig began doing standup in 1993 by hitting the grueling, bumpy comedy circuit road and cultivating his craft in whatever crappy bar or club would have him. Shortly into the new millennium, shock radio kingpin, Howard Stern, took Craig under his massive, media wing. The Mt. Vernon, New York son of deaf parents made frequent, freaky appearances on Stern, blowing listener minds with his uncanny impressions of notorious celebrities like Christopher Walken, Gene Simmons, Gilbert Gottfried, Tracy Morgan, Sam Kinison, Al Pacino and Metallica drummer, Lars Ulrich. This platform lead to Hollywood, but not like you’d think.

“I never really had an agent, all my TV roles appeared from people who were supporters of mine,” says Craig. “One of Howard Stern’s writers got me the guest part as Miranda’s overweight glazed donut eating boyfriend on Sex in the City. Someone from the show called and said, ‘we heard you talking about your relationship this morning and we think you’d play a really good insecure guy for a storyline we’re developing.’ My impression of Al Pacino on Stern was heard by one of the Family Guy writers. All of a sudden, I’m in a recording studio with Seth McFarlane. Peter Griffin says, ‘This is crazier than when Al Pacino was a slum lord Laundromat attendant.’ They cut to me and I’m riffing the classic Pacino line from …And Justice for All (great Metallica record by the way) at this wall of broken washing machines, ‘You’re out of order! And you’re out of order!’”

In 2004, Craig’s unique ability to sound like famous people led to a co-starring role on CBS’s hit sitcom, King of Queens. Kevin James character hires Craig as the new delivery driver who keeps his fellow employees in bellyaching laughs. Hollywood has known some venerated impressionists – Rich Little, David Frye, Frank Gorshin, Will Ferrell, Darrell Hammond and Frank Callendo, to name few. While they’re all laudable in their parroting prowess, Craig takes impression a step further. He just doesn’t mirror the sound, cadence and mannerisms – he literally channels the individual into a speaking-in-tongues-esque out of body presentation, frighteningly precise without the aid of a single prop. He just doesn’t do Adam Sandler, he becomes Adam Sandler, every character nuance a laser sharp reflection of the original. Craig owes this phenomenal gift to the force majeure of his birth and childhood environment.

“Neither of my parents could hear, so I couldn’t learn how to talk by listening to them,” he recalls. “I learned words and sentences and sounds by copying the voices I heard on television.” Raised in a household of silence and gesticulation, Craig’s childhood was profoundly marked by his media consumption of 70’s and 80’s Zeitgeist. That unique upbringing held him in good stead as he tested his first audiences when he discovered the joys of being the class clown. Craig is a living, breathing, mimicking product of pop culture and his career is an authentic, modern day grassroots destiny play. 

Craig Gass will make you laugh, weep, choke, recoil and most importantly, recognize that the faults, flaws and freaky behavior that we all possess, do not define us but rather, unite us. “We all have way more in common than we do that divides us,” he delivers as the Dave’s crowd prepares to depart their favorite shit hole post performance. It’s the perfect postscript for a funny man standing at the crossroads of superstardom – or sitting on the bus stop of professional oblivion. Either way, we’ll be right up front, cheering and jeering.

You know him as: