No politics, all funny: ‘Daily Show’ comic Josh Johnson brings the laughs to Kansas City
If you think you know comedian Josh Johnson as a “Daily Show” writer, correspondent and political funnyman, yes, he’s that. But a lot more.
I admit I came to the Midland Theatre Saturday night for the first of two shows he performed to hear him talk about foolishness in the D.C. beltway and celebrity scandals, but he did not deliver that.
Still, he did not disappoint on his Flowers Tour.
Johnson elicited guffaws from the quite diverse audience with stories ranging from raucous, scary bachelorette parties in his native home of New Orleans (he now lives in Chicago, with another funny story about that) to friends who shouldn’t be dating, to the sad and hilarious story of men badly trying to make new friends.
While I kept waiting to hear a zing on the news of the week, as seen in his highly viewed TikTok shorts, he instead talked about the girlfriend of a friend of his who, while criticizing another woman, kept calling her “dumB” — pronouncing the hard B, like “dum-Ba”.
Johnson was so stunned, he said even apologized.
“Excuse, me, what?”
When she repeated that the woman was “dum-Ba,” he went on to wonder what other words she mispronounced.
Johnson is a fairly deadpan comedian, especially when talking politics or news scandals of the day, but not as a storyteller. His facial muscles got a workout telling the story of how he inadvertently looked at a person on the bus in his current home of Chicago, which hilariously turned into apologies for “I’m not STARING,” and then, through a series of misadventures, “I’m not FOLLOWING YOU” to “I’m not CHASING YOU.”
His personal stories began with these series of eccentric people and weird situations, and he brought it home with his realization that men don’t know how to make friends or talk to each other like women do. He described a TikTok trending prank where men call their buddies at bedtime for no other reason than to wish them sweet dreams.
IYKYK, but even if you didn’t, Johnson made the crowd laugh revealing the reactions of the unknowing and sometimes concerned friends on the other end of the line, wondering why they are receiving these odd calls:
“Uh, what? Hey, dog, YOU GOOD? ARE YOU GOOD?”
The show included two opening acts I didn’t expect: a funny comedian named Mandel and a dance troupe called The Flower Girls, a nice buffer to Johnson’s comedy. Mandel starting the show joking about our curious Kansas City state line, great barbecue and meeting both the “whitest” white people and the “Blackest” Black people in the same city.
The Flower girls, dressed in bright costumes of fashionable gardening gear and props, danced to popular music. The audience loved both and gave a standing ovation at end of the night of entertainment.
Johnson described on his Instagram channel why he named the tour Flowers: “The Flowers Tour is about giving as many metaphorical, and literal, flowers to the world as possible. We’ve all heard of giving someone their flowers that we admire, but what about each other, and people we haven’t even met yet?”
He posted in March how resellers had bought up tickets months before a show and how he refunded 900 tickets in that one show to release them to real people. Apparently that’s an ongoing issue for some entertainers. He said he’d continue to add shows “as I figure this whole thing out.”
When my friend and I left, there was a long crowd snaked around Main Street for his second Midland show of the night. Johnson certainly has fans in KC, and I hope they got the tickets at the real and not inflated prices.
This story was originally published June 2, 2025 at 10:00 AM.
