There’ll be a couple of clues that Louie Anderson is “one of us” when he takes the stage Sunday at Country Inn and Suites.

For one thing, his Minnesota “O”s will be fully intact. “O yah,” he said during a phone interview from Los Angeles. “Ubetcha.”

And the second clue will be his comfort on stage, just a guy talking to a group of friends who can relate to pretty much everything he’s talking about: “Family, family, family; food, food, food; and how hard it is to get older.”

At 55, Louie’s had his share of life experience. Having been a stand-up comedian, writer and film and television performer for 30 of those years, he’s seen and done a whole lot most of us can only imagine. The money, the chicks, the fame, the limelight, the Emmy Awards ... it’s a far cry from down-home Midwestern

living, that’s for sure.

But you’d never smell any of it on Louie. He’s warm, he’s gracious, he loves the idea of sharing a story with an audience and feeling a connection, and, yes, he’s funny, too. Come Sunday, he will be among his people and will be able to slow down his act and test some new material on the southern Minnesota audience.

“I might do a half a second quicker delivery on the East Coast than I do in the Midwest,” he said. “In the Midwest, people want a real performance. On the East Coast, they want punch line, punch line, punch line. I want to tell people something they’ll really enjoy and something in their lives that will mean something to them.”

A lot of his new material he first tests out in conversation after noticing something unusual about the world.

“Like, have you ever noticed, at the airport, when they make you take your shoes off ... have you ever wondered if they mop the floors?”

Having grown up in the Twin Cities, Louie’s always loved coming home to the Midwest to do shows. This week he’s been performing with his friend and fellow Minnesota-grown comic Scott Hansen for a few shows in Minnesota and Wisconsin after finishing up a stint in Las Vegas.

Touring with Scott in Minnesota brings back a lot of memories. His career began in Minneapolis in 1978 at age 25 when he declared at a comedy club that he was just as funny as all the comics he and his friends were watching. So they dared him to perform. Working as a counselor for troubled children at the time, Louie took the stage and proved he was right.

“I was always interested in helping people because it came naturally to me,” he said. “What happened was, when I was up on stage, on some level, I went, ‘This is really the same thing (as helping people).’ ... And people would always laugh when I would talk, anyway. I’d say I was being serious, and then they’d laugh harder.”

Louie gave up his career as a counselor and worked in Minnesota clubs without pay just for exposure. His observational humor and unique voice caught on, and he started performing in the college circuit and then in clubs in Chicago and Kansas City. Winning the Midwest Comedy Competition and befriending comic Henny Youngman further boosted his career, and after moving to California and auditioning at the Sunset Strip Comedy Store, he was hired as a regular featured performer.

But it was his appearance in 1984 on “The Tonight Show” with Johnny Carson that catapulted Louie into fame. Carson called Louie out for a second bow, which was rare, and all kinds of doors started opening for his career.

“Doors, windows ... yeah, absolutely,” he said. “From my era, it’s the single thing that, if you did well on (‘The Tonight Show’), your life would be changed forever. ... I went from making a few hundred dollars a week to making a few thousands dollars a week.”