As we noted a few weeks ago, Hannibal Buress is staying busy these days, possibly fueled by a steady diet of McGriddles and apple juice. Hannibal’s hour-long special, Hannibal Buress: Animal Furnace debuts on Comedy Central this Sunday. Also debuting Sunday, Adult Swim’s The Eric Andre Show features Hannibal as a co-host. Hannibal performed on Conan last night, explaining why he doesn’t believe in dinner napkins and why the TV show Homeland is having such a profound effect on him. Great job Hannibal!
In many ways, Andy Woodhull is just a comedian with a degree in geology and a dream. Yet he’s come a long way from juggling his 9-to-5 lab job and the demands of being a comic always on the road. Andy’s garnered some considerable cred as a comedian, appearing on Comedy Central’s Live at Gotham, performing at the renowned Montreal Just For Laughs festival, and winning the Best of the Midwest competition at the 2011 Gilda Radner-honoring Gilda Fest. Rooftop is happy to announce the release of Andy’s second album, Lucy, showcasing his ventures into manliness, dating, and more. We recently chatted with Andy about the Chicago comedy scene, his writing process, Butterfinger’s sneaky corporate loopholes, and more.
Rooftop Comedy: What was it like getting your start in the Midwest?
Andy Woodhull: Well I started in St. Louis, right after college at The Funny Bone there. I took a couple comedy classes and then moved to Chicago about a year later. I went to some of the open mics in Chicago, but I got most of my stage time at Zanies in downtown Chicago. I did a couple clubs in the suburbs and I would go back to St. Louis a lot and I just tried to do comedy as much as I possibly could. I was working in a laboratory—my degree is in geology—so for the first five years I was in Chicago I was working in a lab and then trying to be on the road as much as I could. It was crazy. Sometimes, I would drive to gigs and then drive back to Chicago, sleep in my car in the parking lot, and then work in the lab. Then I would drive to the show again the next night.
RC: I imagine that lifestyle reached a breaking point after a certain time.
AW: I did it for about five years and eventually it got to a point where I was on the road a lot and I was getting super drained from all the driving. It almost comes out to be two full-time jobs when you’re doing it that much. The last year I did it I was on the road probably 45-50 weeks a year, somewhere in there. I was working almost every weekend.
RC: The past few years have seen an influx of stand-up clubs into the improv/sketch-heavy city of Chicago. Do you think this is affecting the comedy community there?
AW: I think that lately there have been a lot of successful comedians coming out of Chicago, like TJ Miller, Kyle Kinane, Kumail Nanjiani, and Hannibal Buress. All of these guys are coming out of Chicago and then at the same time, Chicago is the third-biggest city in the country and there has been only one club downtown for maybe 30 years. So I think it makes more sense that more stand-up clubs are moving in. I think it’s going to be great for comedy in Chicago too.
RC: Was there a specific moment or show in your career that really pushed you to pursue comedy full-time?
AW: I think I wanted to do it fulltime from the beginning and that was always the goal to not have a job and just to do stand-up. It was just so fun and I loved it right away out of St. Louis. I didn’t quit my job until I won the Butterfinger comedy competition in 2008, where I wrote a joke about candy bars and ended up winning this contest. I quit my job right after that. They gave me 365 Butterfinger coupons and I was like, “I don’t need to work anymore”.
RC: Have you redeemed all the coupons?
AW: Yeah they’re all expired—the ones I didn’t use. I don’t even like Butterfinger that much, but I gave a lot of them away. The funny thing about the coupon is that you still have to pay tax. So each Butterfinger wasn’t exactly free—it was 9 cents.
RC: Last year you won the “Best of the Midwest” title at Gilda Fest. How was it performing at that event?
AW: It was very cool. This year was a lot bigger than it was last year. Last year, when I won it, I really didn’t hang out that much. To give some levity to my win, when I won, the Best of the Midwest was on a Wednesday and I had a show in Sioux Falls, South Dakota on Thursday. After the contest, after I had won, I got in my car and drove overnight to Sioux Falls—13 hours in the car or something like that. That’s a good way to not get a big head about a contest win.
RC: Your new album is titled Lucy, after your beloved black Labrador. Do you think Lucy appreciates the honor?
AW: She has always been a big fan of my comedy. She used to come out on the road with me sometimes. Maybe it was overly sentimental to name the album after her, but I’m not really good at making up names. I knew I’d never be sick of that name and also I have a joke on the CD about Lucy.
RC: That one is a stand-out for sure. Listening to it, you get the sense you’re having a lot of fun telling the story, adding embellishments and tags here and there to fully paint the picture.
AW: That’s kind of how all my bits evolve. I’ll write something or I’ll have an idea and I’ll do it once and then they’re pretty fluid. I don’t normally have jokes that are done and then they’re always that way. I have a couple short ones that are like that, but the longer jokes I’ll often try to add to and take them in different directions—it keeps them kind of fun.
RC: Why did you want to release an album now?
AW: I guess it’s because you kind of want to graduate material—for me, anyway. It’s probably different for everyone. You also want to make that money! I started having jokes that I wasn’t wanting to tell anymore. When you get to that point, I like to make a CD or an album or whatever, because then those jokes serve a purpose. They’re there forever. They’re not just forgotten—if that makes any sense.
–
Andy Woodhull will be performing at Zanies Comedy Club in Chicago June 25-30. Be sure to follow Andy at @AndyWoodhull. Listen to some free tracks from Lucy at the Rooftop Comedy Shop
We were thrilled to hear the news that Dave Waitewould be making his TV debut this week. The Cincinnati native did not disappoint when he took the Late Night with Jimmy Fallon stage. We’ve got Dave’s full set after the jump, in which he talks about his (lack of) skills with the ladies, substitute teaching, working for Delta airlines, and more. Great job Dave! Be sure to follow Dave @DaveWaiteComedy and check out his Rooftop album.
The month of May just got a whole lot busier for Hannibal Buress. The Chicago-bred, NYC-residing comic will release both a new CD and Comedy Central TV special this month, with more bonus and extras than you can probably handle. Buress, renowned for his deadpan wit and passion for McGriddles, will debut his hour-long TV special, Hannibal Buress: Animal Furnace, on May 20. If that’s not enough Hannibal for you, don’t worry. First, run out to the grocery store to stock up on apple juice (they’re having a sale). Then, on May 22, Animal Furnace will be released on CD as well as DVD with plenty of bonus content to boot. We’ll be posting clips from the TV special as they become available. Hannibal is indeed staying busy these days, having won the Best Club Comic title at this year’s Comedy Awards and stepping into the co-host chair on Adult Swim’s The Eric Andre Show.
Enjoy this clip from Hannibal performing at the Rooftop Aspen Comedy Festival:
Mike Brody is a very easy-going guy, but make no mistake: if you’re an AC/DC cover band and you pick a fight with him, he will fight back (on Facebook at least). Mike is a hilarious Minneapolis-based comic with a palpable on-stage energy that makes him a pleasure to watch. Mike is the official comic for the SyFy network’s Ghost Hunters and regularly headlines clubs and college campuses across the country. We recently chatted with Mike about his new album, his love for punk music, spending a very comfortable night on Alcatraz, and more.
Rooftop Comedy: How did you get started in comedy?
Mike Brody: I did my first year of comedy in Iowa in a town called Cedar Rapids. I was going to school in Iowa City—the University of Iowa. Cedar Rapids is about 20 miles north of that. There was a comedy club called Penguin’s Comedy Club and that’s where I started. I went and watched an open mic and then I decided I should try it. Actually, a friend of mine had gone up and done comedy and he killed and he wasn’t funny at all. So I thought I could do that. Because it’s Iowa, there was maybe one open mic a month in that area. So I did that for about a year and there just wasn’t that much stage time. I actually moved to LA first. I don’t think I was naïve thinking I was going to get famous after doing it for a year, but I just wanted to do something crazy. I moved there, ran out of money. I saw a commercial on TV for paper towels and I literally thought, “Who can afford paper towels?” and I was like, oh, that’s not good.
RC: Then you moved to Minneapolis. That seems like a really supportive, talented community of comics.
MB: It’s always been that way—from Louie Anderson in the ‘80s to the Mystery Science Theater 3000 guys in the ‘90s. There’s just a long history of really good comics in Minneapolis. Same with music and everything. There’s just something about the arts in Minneapolis that just pervades everything and is pretty cool.
RC: Do you have a favorite track on your album?
MB: You know, my favorite one on that is the ADD/C story. [Laughs] That one is the most me, the most neurotic, not spending my time well—getting into a fight on Facebook with a tribute band. That story is 100% true. I transcribed what they wrote to me on there. That joke sums me up best as a person: just putting my energy into the wrong things and overblowing everything. It’s kind of cool because ADD/C is a real punk band and they’re not that big yet, but they’re really awesome. So I like talking about them. It makes me feel cool.
RC: Did the band show any appreciation for you defending their cause on the merciless battleground of Facebook?
MB: They did. The drummer friended me on Facebook. They must have been Googling themselves because I put up a blog post a long time ago when it first happened. He emailed me and was like “Hey, you don’t know me, but I’m the drummer for ADD/C and I just wanted to say thanks. We read it and thought it was hilarious. Thanks for sticking up for our honor”. Now, when the CD comes out, I’m going to send them a copy. They talked about me in the punk scene too. “This guy Mike Brody—he did this”. I thought it was so awesome. I’ve never felt so cool. I’ve been a dork my whole life. I got name-dropped by a punk band. That’s the pinnacle for me.
RC: As the official comic for the SyFy network’s Ghost Hunters, you got to stay overnight on Alcatraz. What was that like?
MB: Yeah I got to spend a night in a cell. True story: I was a bachelor at the time and the bed I slept on Alcatraz was an original bed and it was more comfortable than the bed I had in my apartment in the Twin Cities.
The thing about the Ghost Hunters thing is I didn’t even mention it in the CD because a lot of it is very specialized. A lot of time, when I do these conferences, I’ll go do 45 minutes on ghosts and then I’ll go and help them lead the tours and see the whole event. They’re like ghost trekkies, if that makes sense? I’ll go up on stage and be like, “Remember in Episode 38, at 45 minutes…” and they’ll be like “Oh yeah!” If I did it during a regular set, people might go, “What the hell is he talking about?”
RC: I feel like that genre tried to inch into the mainstream, with shows like Fear on MTV.
MB: There’s a lot of them that are really popular. They keep getting more and more extreme. It started off with Ghost Hunters. Then there was Paranormal State. Then there was Ghost Adventures, where they’ll yell at the ghost. They’ll go in and be like, “Who wants to rumble?!” There’s Extreme Paranormal, where they go to witch doctors and they’ll cut heads off chickens and stuff. Pretty soon it’s going to be UFC Ghost Fighting. I don’t even know what it’s going to get to, but it keeps getting weirder and weirder.
RC: How are the crowds at these events?
MB: They’re super enthusiastic. They love it. You get a lot of repeat customers at these events across the country, but often you’ll get completely new people. You can always tell the new people right away because they’re not sure what’s going to happen. They’re not a comedy audience per se. They’re there to see ghosts and stuff like that. It always goes super well. The minute I get up there, they’re all super into it.
RC: There’s a funny video circulating of you pulling a prank on a bachelorette party that showed up two hours late to your show.
MB: I was headlining the Comedy Caravan in Louisville, KY. It was probably halfway through my set—I was the last comic of the night and a bachelorette party came in. You know how sometimes in music, people will skip the opening bands? It doesn’t work that way in comedy. Comedians are a team: the opener, the middle, and me. It’s our show. We’re not against each other so it kind of offends me that people don’t show up to see everybody. I thought it was disrespectful, so I found out they were in the parking lot. I heard that they were coming in. I told the whole crowd, “OK, here’s what we’re going to do. Don’t tell anybody when they walk in, don’t even let on, but I’m going to say a password”. I think the password was “farfegnugen”. “I’m going to say farfegnugen to signify that they’re coming in and I’m going to wait until they all sit down and then I’m going to say ‘Thank you! Good night!’ and then walk off stage as if the show’s over, the minute they all sit down”. It worked perfectly. I started laughing halfway through it, but it was fun. The crowd loved it. They were so excited to be a part of it.
RC: You also mention on your album that you’re neighborhood gives out weather warnings called “Small Dog Wind Advisories”.
MB: I live in downtown Minneapolis, which, if I had to make a comparison, it’s kind of like the West Hollywood of Minneapolis. It’s very gay-friendly, very quaint, and a lot of little dogs blowing down the road. It really does paint the picture, doesn’t it? It’s not bad enough for humans, but if you go outside with a little dog, you might lose it.
That’s Not What I Meant is available now at outlets including iTunes, Amazon, the Rooftop shop, Pandora, Rdio, and more. Mike will be hosting his official CD release party on May 17 at the Joke Joint Comedy Club in St. Paul, Minnesota.
For comics and audience members alike, heckling just goes with the territory at comedy shows. Even the most well-behaved crowds are prone to drunken shouts, vaguely directed to the comedian on stage. We’ve been talking to comics all across the country, asking to hear their memorable heckler experiences, and we’re now sharing them with you. Check out the latest edition of Heckler Diaries, in which Chicago-based comic Mike Lebovitz recounts that one time he almost got beat up by a Hells Angel Biker. Tough crowd indeed.
The wonderfully bizarre Bo Burnham dropped in for a guest appearance on Conan this week. In a short five minute set, Bo managed to show off a range of talents, including his new heckling comebacks, some quick musical numbers, and several poems. Watch Bo’s full set after the jump and be sure to follow him @BoBurnham.
The Muslims Are Coming! is a new documentary from comics Negin Farsad and Dean Obeidallah. It follows the two on tour, along with other Muslim American comedians, as they put on free shows across the country and shed some light on the anti-Muslim undercurrents that still permeates through the political discourse. The film also features perspectives from great comics and non-comics like Jon Stewart, Lewis Black, Rachel Maddow, Janeane Garofalo, and CNN’s Soledad O’Brien. Like many other awesome comedy ventures today, The Muslims Are Coming! is crowd-supported and still needs some financial love to complete the project. Watch the trailer below.
Comedian Dana Eagle has come a long way since her childhood Christmases spent in the Catskills, her parents sneaking her in to watch foul-mouthed comics. This Saturday, Dana will record her new comedy album, showcasing her playful takes on such “serious” topics as bi-polar disorder, confronting gay hate, and years of being a slave to “self-help” books. Dana, who regularly opens for Bill Maher, has performed on the Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, Comedy Central, and Comics Unleashed. We sat down to chat with Dana about being an underdog, performing in Iraq, and being pigeon-holed as a gay comic.
Rooftop Comedy: On Saturday you’ll be recording your new comedy album. Why did you want to produce a CD now?
Dana Eagle: A lot of people keep asking me and it does seem like one of those rites of passage for a comedian to be able to say that this is me, this is who I am, this is what I’ve been working on. It makes me feel official.
RC: Some comics have their album release meticulously calculated and others just make the move when it feels right.
DE: I don’t think it feels right. I will say that. [Laughs] And that’s one of the things I’m finding—you have to set deadlines, because nothing ever feels right. You just have to go in with all your awkward glory and do it. I could title the CD that –Awkward Glory.
RC: Did your family background influence you to become a comic?
DE: You kind of had to have a sense of humor with my family, because no one really had a filter. If you got a bad haircut, no one tried to politely cover what they thought. No one tried to build you up and say, “Oh, no. It looks really good”. They’d say, “Wow. What happened?” So you kind of had to have a thick skin and my parents took [my brother and I] to a lot of comedy too. We were Jewish and always went to the Catskills for Christmas. They always had comedians there. It was really cool. My parents would bring us and we knew we were at an adult thing and they were letting us watch it, but that didn’t give us permission to repeat what we were hearing.
RC: Has your comedy persona/voice evolved a lot since you started out?
DE: I definitely started out going with the underdog thing and I think that’s continued. I guess the biggest change right now is, somewhere in the middle I dropped that I’m gay and I talk about that and that’s been a bit of a tricky thing because there’s this perception out there that once you’re talking about being gay, it’s a gay show. It’s always been this tricky thing that club owners and promoters don’t know what to do with. There tends to be two different promos—there’s the one you drop off at the LGBT center and there’s the one for everybody else. It always seems to be the more I talk about those things that would make me blush or turn red in public, that tends to be the stuff that everybody connects with the most. When I talk about the difficulty of being gay and then when I was diagnosed with bipolar, I hated doing them. I didn’t want to reveal that much about myself, but I couldn’t resist the laughter. They just always seem to hook into those things.
RC: It’s interesting that we live in an age when there are more openly LGBT comics than ever before, but there are still these limiting expectations for “gay” jokes.
DE: It’s a little bit tricky. I think that was always the thing about not coming out. You kind of feel like, well, this is a part of my life, but you don’t want it to eclipse every other part of you. I think what happens for a lot of us, who do the mainstream clubs, they just advertise us as they would any other comic and then we drop it in the middle and it’s a little gay surprise!
RC: Do you think there’s still a lot of misunderstanding about bi-polar disorder?
DE: I think the thing that I find in comedy is that a lot of people will stay behind after to talk to me—especially college students. Kids are getting diagnosed younger and younger, so it just seems to be on everybody’s radar. A lot of comedians make jokes about it—how everybody has something. I’m always more concerned about the people who don’t go and get diagnosed. I’m always concerned about that person that’s like, “I don’t know. I never needed a therapist”. Well, you’re the reason the rest of us are going.
RC: You’ve done quite a few shows overseas for US troops now. What do you take from those shows?
DE: It’s pretty compelling. I’m always very interested in the news and events. I think it definitely broadens my world view. The first year I went was 2007 and that was definitely when the climate here in the United States was everyone was very restless. That was the year of peak protesting. So when I returned, I felt like everybody kind of wanted an answer from me and it was my job to have one for what’s going on over there. I think the more I’m exposed to things, the more I realized, there is no black and white. Everything is just shades of gray. You try to make sense out something you can’t make sense out of. That’s my take.
–
Dana Eagle will be recording her comedy album Saturday, April 21 at the Acme Theater in Los Angeles. More info and tix can be found here. Be sure to follow Dana @DanaIsSoCool.
Rooftop comics just keep popping up on late night TV and we’re certainly not one to complain. On Friday night, Keith Alberstadt stopped by the Late Show with David Letterman. Enjoy Keith’s full set after the jump, in which he talks about time-traveling in a wine store, getting through a bad break-up, learning some new dating tricks, and more.
Keith has been one of our favorite comics for a long time. In 2010, Rooftop Comedy Productions released Keith’s album, It’s Pronounced Jenkins. The following year, Keith went on to be one of the finalists in CMT’s Next Big Comic. Be sure to catch up with all of his Rooftop clips and follow him @KeithAlberstadt. Great job Keith!
As we noted a few weeks ago, Hannibal Buress is staying busy these days, possibly fueled by a steady diet of McGriddles and apple juice. Hannibal’s hour-long special, Hannibal Buress: Animal Furnace debuts on Comedy Central this Sunday. Also debuting Sunday, Adult Swim’s The Eric Andre Show features Hannibal as a co-host. Hannibal performed on Conan last night, explaining why he doesn’t believe in dinner napkins and why the TV show Homeland is having such a profound effect on him. Great job Hannibal!
