Mac Rating: 5.00 | Votes: 1 | Date: 03/07/2026 01:11:00

The owner came home to finish a circle forty years in the making: he started as a bartender at Albuquerque's legendary Laffs Comedy Caffe in the 1980s, built a Texas comedy empire, and in February 2025 brought it back to the city where he learned the business. Hyena's Comedy Nightclub Albuquerque, at 2100 Louisiana Boulevard NE in the Winrock Town Center, is New Mexico's newest major comedy room. Randy Butler's history gives the club its pedigree: managing Laffs in its heyday, he watched Jerry Seinfeld, Dana Carvey and Ellen DeGeneres pack Albuquerque shows in the era when one Tonight Show set made a career. His Hyena's clubs in Fort Worth - running since 1994 - and Dallas built the model the new club imports: touring professionals booked for craft, supported by a developing local scene. The venue follows the brand's downstairs-den formula: an intimate basement-style showroom at the growing Winrock development in the Northeast Heights, designed - like its Texas siblings - to put the comic close to every table, with a full bar and weekend-anchored programming of national headliners, rising road acts and local showcases. The opening carried expansion ambitions: Butler and his partners announced plans for as many as 15 more Hyena's locations, with Albuquerque the first outside Texas - and the club's arrival restored a dedicated stand-up room to a city whose scene had been running on one-nighters and rented stages. Practical notes: shows run weekends with select weeknights, most performances are 18-plus, and Winrock Town Center's restaurants, cinema and free parking structure surround the club - the Uptown location sits just off Interstate 40 at Louisiana Boulevard. The room's local impact was immediate and practical: Albuquerque comics gained weekly support slots and emcee work alongside national headliners - the apprenticeship structure that one-nighter towns cannot offer - and the city regained a club where agents and bookers actually route talent. Butler's stated model gives local performers the same development ladder his Texas rooms built, betting that New Mexico's next generation of comics will come up through the Winrock basement the way Texas talent came up through Commerce Street.