Spokane is no joke to Hillyard comic Harry J. Riley

When Harry J. Riley first laid eyes on Spokane in 2000, he had an uncommon reaction.

“I was blown away by this city,” Riley said from his Hillyard home. “My initial take was, ‘Man, this city is huge.’ I was taken aback by how many malls there are here. The other thing is that so many people have trucks but they don’t use the vehicle as a truck like we did where I’m from. People just drive around in trucks in Spokane.”

Riley, 42, who will perform Friday at the Spokane Comedy Club, is from St. Matthews, a one-horse town in South Carolina that was the birthplace of actress-vocalist Eartha Kitt.

“It’s a very small city with two factories,” Riley said. “I remember my aunt would work all day in a chicken factory and come home smelling like chickens. I didn’t want that to be my life for 40 years.”

The military was a passport to a new life and Riley landed at Fairchild Air Force base. “I thought I would do my 20-years in the military and retire,” Riley said. “But after five years in the service I was diagnosed with lupus. I hid it for awhile but when I went to Iraq (in 2005), I got sick and on the way back to America, I knew my military career was over. I had no idea what I was going to do.”

The single father of a teenage daughter gave comedy a shot.

“I always had a good sense of humor,” Riley said. “I tried it and I love it.”

Riley enjoys the freewheeling lifestyle, which is quite different from his military period. “You were a cog in a wheel in the military,” Riley said. “I was fine with that, but the life I presently lead is preferable.”

Riley will deliver two different sets at the Spokane Comedy Club. The first batch of material focuses on his period from 2014 to 2020 and on his life as a parent.

“A lot of it is about raising a child,” Riley said. “It’s a slice of my life that a lot of people can relate to. There was a lot of humor with my daughter growing up. It’s fascinating watching a person evolve. Kids change every day and I chronicled her experience growing up.”

Riley’s daughter is 19 and is studying fashion at a San Francisco university. “So the next set is about me from 2020 onward,” Riley said. “It’s about how it impacted me. It was so hard to say goodbye to my daughter, who lives so far away.”

Some parents of an only child follow their children when they head to college, but Riley’s love of Spokane has kept him in town. “Why would anyone ever leave this city,” Riley said. “I miss my daughter but I absolutely love Spokane. There is so much to do here and the weather here during spring is the greatest. I can deal with the winter since the spring and summer are just the best. I can’t help but laugh at the culture shock I had when I first came here but I’m down with everything here.”

Riley riffs about being raised in a rural town, which had so little. “But it matched my experience since we were so poor,” Riley recalled. “We never went to sit-down restaurants. I remember going to Denny’s for the first time here and it was a big deal for me.”

Much has changed for Riley, who has developed a sophisticated palette. “Now I go for a steak at Churchill’s and Masselow’s,” Riley said. “Life has changed for me and I’ve evolved. I love a great steak and we have some of the best steakhouses in Spokane.”

Riley enjoys taking his comedy on the road but he’ll always return to Spokane.

“I believe this city is the best kept secret in the country,” Riley said. “There is no place I would rather be.”