Tracy Morgan: Back from the edge and returning to stand-up comedy

NEW YORK -- A gruesome highway accident followed by months of pain and rehab. That's no laughing matter.

Not unless you're comedian Tracy Morgan, who's mining this ordeal for laughs with his "Picking Up the Pieces" stand-up tour. After its warm-up phase, the tour officially launches Feb. 5 at the Horseshoe Casino in Hammond, Indiana, and continues through May.

Among other dates, he will perform three shows in New Jersey, including a New Brunswick theater about 20 miles from where the accident occurred.

"I'm in a good place in my life," Morgan said during a recent phone conversation. "When I first got back on the stage, I had to work on my confidence. But I wasn't scared. I wasn't nervous. I was excited!"

It was June 7, 2014, when a Wal-Mart truck slammed into the limousine Morgan was riding. The crash killed a friend and fellow comedian and left Morgan with broken bones and brain damage. He was in a coma for two weeks.

"I was basically knocking on The Door," he said, but added with gratitude, "I came back. That's the spirit moving me."

But still it held no promise Morgan, who has long scored laughs in concert, on "30 Rock" and "Saturday Night Live," would be able to perform again.

On the "Today" show in June, in his first public appearance since the accident, Morgan sat clutching a cane and, with a tear streaming down his cheek, acknowledged he wasn't "100 percent yet."

"When I'm there, you'll know it," he said. "I'll get back to making you laugh, I promise you."

He made good on that promise three months later with a surprise appearance on the Emmy telecast.

By then, he had made good on a promise to himself to wed his fiancee, Megan Wollover, on his own terms: walking her down the aisle with no cane.

In October, he returned as guest host of "SNL," where he had been a cast member from 1996 to 2003.

"I felt so good going back home to 'SNL,"' he said. "It was like the first day I was there many years ago. That first time was crazy, but to have the opportunity to have the feeling all over again -- wonderful, man! And I said, 'I want to (tour) again.' That was the end" of any doubts.

He admitted to doubts during his long convalescence and therapy.

"I remember being visited by a good friend I've known all my life, and I said, 'Why did God let this happen to me?' And with the meanest look, she said, 'Never question God!'

"I said, 'I'm sorry.' And she said, 'OK, baby. That's all right.'

"Tough times don't last. Tough people do," Morgan said. "We're all here, 'cause we're tough."

Morgan, 47, has made amusing use of a lifetime of tough challenges, including a harsh childhood and health issues that included a kidney transplant in 2010.

So it's no surprise he's dressing his latest wounds in humor.

"The accident was a setback, but, you know, in my world, a setback is a setup," he said. "You use things that happen in your life that weren't funny -- tragedy turned inside out. If you don't laugh about it, you'll cry about it. And I'm tired of crying.

"But comedy doesn't just come from pain," Morgan added. "It comes from joy, too."

Chief among his joys are his wife and their 2 1/2-year-old daughter, who, as Morgan spoke, could be heard chiming in with, "Mickey Mouse, Mickey Mouse," as she addressed Mickey's image on her iPad.

"Now you see what's important and what's not," Morgan said. "I've learned a lot, man. I learned about life, about the things I used to stress out about, things we worry about on a day-to-day basis but aren't important -- not when it comes down to life and death. I talk about all that onstage.

"But I talk about things that are happening right now, too. I look back. But I look forward, too!"