Covington Arts Council opens season with trio Thursday night

Leanne Morgan is looking forward to a return trip to Andalusia this week.

Morgan, part of the Country Cool comedy trio that will open the Covington Arts Council’s season this Thursday, was here this spring for the Covington County Imagination Library’s Little Black Dress event.

“It was like being with my best friends,” Morgan said. “I picked up my baby child at Sanford and we had the time of our lives. You have a beautiful town.”

Morgan, who performs as a solo comic, and with Trish Suhr and Karen Mills as “Country Cool,” said she was always funny, like many in her family.

“But my husband’s family is not, and boy, did they need me,” she said. “He’s an introvert who likes math. We bred and had these three beautiful children who aren’t introverts and don’t like math. He doesn’t know what to do with them.”

Morgan got started in the entertainment business selling Premiere Jewelry. She wanted to be at home with her children, and support her husband’s business.

“It was just like Tupperware, except you sold jewelry at the parties,” she said. “So I would be standing in people’s living rooms entertaining. Corporate started to notice that more people came.”

That got her invited to entertain at bigger events. Her husband took a job in San Antonio, and that also opened doors.

“Honey, we went to Texas and had a blast. We acted like we were on vacation, and my husband worked like a dog.”

But San Antonio was large enough to have comedy clubs, and Morgan worked at honing her talent. When the family moved to Austin, there were even more opportunities.

Mills said she never expected to be an entertainer, even though she had a reputation for being funny.

“I wasn’t the class clown,” she said. “But people would tell me all the time they remembered when I did Bette Midler, or they remembered when I did Elvis.

“I was going to be a women’s basketball coach,” she said.

After college, Mills was actually drafted into the women’s basketball league, but it folded just before she was to report.

“Then, they didn’t have the support from the NBA like they do now,” she said.

She went to graduate school and tried her hand at coaching, but quickly learned she like to play, not coach.

“My whole identity was tied to the sport,” she said.

She remembers watching comedians who appeared on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.

“I always thought, “I could do that.’”

While delivering jokes, she was coached to learn to write her own material.

“So I took a writing class and got better at it,” she said.

She does corporate work as a stand-up, in addition to performing with Morgan and Suhr. She’s also an ovarian cancer survivor who swears laughter helped her win the battle.

She suggests anyone who thinks she might want to do comedy go to open mic and try it.

The trio’s promotion bills Country Cool in this way: “It’s not redneck; it’s not white trash – it’s country cool. It’s comedy for the masses, because, let’s face it, everybody’s got a little country in ‘em.”

The show is set for 7 p.m. on Thurs., Oct. 26, in the Dixon Center for the Performing Arts on the campus of LBW Community College.

Season tickets for all performances are now available at Harold’s Furniture in Andalusia and at Young’s Florist in Opp, and are $55 each for adults, or $30 for students. Family packages, which include tickets for two adults and two students, are $125.

Single-event tickets are also available at Harold’s, Young’s, and at The Star-News. Tickets are $15 for adults and $12 for students.