Comic to Know: Ali Musa, the Austin Impressionist Who Survived the Juggalos

Ali Musa came to Austin in 2021, the year the city's rents began doing a very convincing San Francisco impression, so he was in good company. The Velveeta Room's bio says he has more than fifteen years in, has opened for Joey Coco Diaz and Doug Stanhope, and was an official performer at the 2024 and 2025 Gathering of the Juggalos. That last one is the credit I'd put on the business card. Most comics spend their lives trying to win over a crowd that doesn't like them. Musa went to a five-day festival in an Ohio field run by Insane Clown Posse's record label, where the crowd doesn't like anybody, and they had him back the next year. I've been to weddings that couldn't manage that.

Before Austin there was Tucson. IMDb says he grew up in Arizona as a Libyan American class clown, and in 2020 the Tucson Weekly's Best of Tucson named him Best Comedian. The write-up called him "the hardest working comedian in Tucson," said he hit every open mic in town, ran a Sunday mic of his own at the County Line Lounge, and could work clean, which the paper noted climbing comics tend to overlook. His best material, it reported, concerned his dad, Mexican food and a southside Circle K. In most cities that's three subjects. In Tucson it's one evening.

Then came the bucket. Kill Tony, Tony Hinchcliffe's podcast, now records at Joe Rogan's Comedy Mothership on Sixth Street, draws names from a bucket and gives each comic about a minute, which is also how long Sixth Street gives you before it tows your car. A fan-run episode database logs six Musa bucket pulls between September 2021 and December 2024: first as a visitor from Tucson doing Ben Shapiro and Stone Cold Steve Austin, later as a local doing Alex Jones, Katt Williams and a bit about driving for Uber. IMDb credits those appearances with several viral clips. Impressions are the oldest trick in the business, and it says something about the age that the people most worth impersonating now are mostly men who yell into microphones for a living. Musa does them as a public service, so you don't have to hear the originals.

Here's where to see him. On Saturday, Nov. 14, he headlines the 8 PM show at the Velveeta Room, 521 E. Sixth St., doors at 7:30. General admission is $20 plus a $2.25 service charge, and a handful of reserved front-row seats go for $25, for people who'd like to be close enough to turn up in the act on the drive home. The Velveeta gives no refunds, only credit toward a future show, a policy the club has in common with most marriages. The rest of the week he hosts a weekly podcast, The Ali USA, and on Mondays there's always the Mothership bucket, which, like the Lord and the lottery, promises nothing to anybody.

Austin likes to tell itself the comics come here because of Rogan, the way a rooster believes he brings up the sun. Some do. But a man who had already worked every mic in Tucson and held a field of Juggalos was going to be standing up somewhere. A town gets the credit for whoever's on its stage, which is the one thing Austin has never had to pay full price for.