After selling out The Wilbur theater in Boston, headlining in Las Vegas and spending years touring on the stand-up circuit, Brian Glowacki sees his next show at the Dreamland as a homecoming. “I grew up in the Dreamland before it was redone, when it was a sweat box and it was haunted,” Glowacki said. “It means something to me to come home now and do that theater.”

Glowacki, who grew up on Nantucket “digging holes and filling them back in” for the family business in the mounds of sand known as “Glowackiland,” has always had a knack for stand-up, whether he knew it or not. In school, he said, he was the class clown. He and his friends took turns taking playful jabs at each other, and he learned to be quick on his feet and to take a joke. While the Nantucket of his childhood did not provide him with an outlet as a stand-up comedian, growing up on the island did teach him the tricks of the trade. Now that he’s coming back to the Dreamland for a show on August 2, Glowacki said that training has prepared him well.

“I think it comes from how I grew up with my friends on Nantucket, when all we did was make fun of each other,” he said. “Hecklers don’t bother me now because they’re not as funny as the friends I grew up with. You had to be quick on your toes or you would get laughed at in my group of friends. I didn’t know that would be the training for what I was going to do with my life. It was just us all busting on each other all the time."

"I've had years where I’ve done almost 300 shows a year, and I still come home and my friends are quicker than me and make fun of me,” he continued. “I haven’t sharpened the axe quite enough to come home and hang out with my old friends.”

Glowacki moved to Boston in his late 20s as an escape from Nantucket, not necessarily seeking a career in comedy. His introduction to the artform came through watching HBO’s Def Comedy Jam growing up. Stand-up comedy, he said, was a completely different world. “They might as well be on Mars,” he said.

Then came a chance comedy class in Boston. Glowacki signed up and immediately decided he would pursue a career as a full-time comedian. There was something about the storytelling and about saying his absurd ideas out loud to an audience that somehow made sense to him. The connection he felt with his audiences was instant. The feedback he received on his jokes happened in the moment. And as someone who grew up quick with a comeback, that world felt right.

Three years ago, Glowacki lived a lifelong dream of headlining The Wilbur in Boston. It took years on the road to get there. He had tours where he would only come home for a few days over a span of several months. There was a toll to that lifestyle. “I could be in Oklahoma for a weekend, but then come home and my family’s different,” he joked. “I did that for months and months and months, for so long."

"My eyes are open to funny experiences, and now I can’t turn it off,” he said. “I’ll see something or have an interaction with my wife and say, ‘I have to write that down.’ Some things are just too good. I think that’s when I’m at my best when I’m observing, when my eyes are open a little wider. It’s a fun line to walk.”

“The things that I find funny are the shared experiences that we all have, like slipping on a banana peel,” he added. “That’s the basis of all comedy. But it can also be in a relationship—it can be how as a father, I slip on a banana peel every day trying to raise these kids. It’s fumbling through your second or third or fourth marriage.”

While Glowacki said he’s trying to see more of his family and enjoy the simple things in life as opposed to spending weeks on end on the road, he still keeps busy. He also plays guitar, and will be performing music at the Brotherhood of Thieves and Cisco Brewers this summer. He’s also working on a comedy special.

“I feel like I can pick and choose now and do the things I want to do and still be able to raise my family, and get home and go fishing every now and again,” he said. “I want to watch my kids grow and not have this marriage fall apart, hopefully. There isa trade-off to that. Maybe I could be farther in my career, but my kids wouldn’t know who I am. I try to straddle that line all the time.