Natasha Leggero: Exclusive video interview

by Punchline Magazine

Recently, comedian Natasha Leggero had a spike in popularity after becoming the first woman that nutbag Charlie Sheen responded to on Twitter.

Natasha, in her typical scathingly sarcastic tone, tweeted “Charlie Sheen is our Egypt,” and Sheen replied, “I’ll take it.” Forbes decided this was amazing and ran with it. Which is fine; any way a different audience gets exposed to Natasha, we’re happy about it.

Though we’ve been following her rise for years (her stand-up appearances on Comedy Central, her judging duties on NBC’s Last Comic Standing, her roles on Reno 911! her role as Callie Maggotbone on Ugly Americans, which returns in June on Comedy Central, and her recurring spots on Chelsea Lately) spring 2011 will prove to be great for the versatile comic. Comedy Central Records will release her first album, Coke Money, tomorrow on iTunes and Amazon; and this Friday we’ll get to see Natasha’s half-hour Comedy Central Presents premiere at 11 p.m. EST.

But for you, dear Punchline Magazine readers, you get to see this exclusive interview with Natasha, hosted by our friend, comedian Ron Babcock, before any of that happens. Check it out!

Snag yourself a copy of Coke Money. Just click the image below!

Interview: The Beards of Comedy

by Stephanie Swain

The Beards of Comedy tour is one of the funniest collections of bushy faces that have ever trekked across the United States. Comprised of comedians Andy Sandford, Joe Zimmerman, T.J. Young and Dave Stone, the Beards are four dudes with very different styles that share one, common goal- to make you laugh.

The four-piece laugh machine is hitting the road again from March 22 – April 6; check out their official site for all the details. For now, check out the below conversation we recently had with the Beards!

You guys recently completed a 10 city West Coast tour. Twelve dates in 12 nights sounds pretty grueling. Was it?
Dave: Yeah… It was grueling but fun. We were in a Tahoe much of the time.

Joe: It was, but believe it or not, I actually felt pretty well rested by the end of the tour. It wasn’t too bad having four guys switching off driving duties. The challenge was driving through the night a couple of times to do T.V. in the morning.

What was the best thing about the tour?
Dave: Just seein’ all those cool cities that me personally, I’d never been to.

Joe: Kyle Kinane doing a guest set in Los Angeles and just meeting and hanging out with a bunch of other great comics in different cities.

Andy: Also seeing that our show works on the other side of the country was pretty validating I guess.

Dave: Up until then it had just been a regional thing, mainly Southeast, little bit of Northeast stuff but never out West so it was nice to know that it translates out there. Granted it was the same country and all… (chuckles)

T.J.: We’re based in the South and we’re comedians from the South but we never consider ourselves “Southern” comedians.

Dave: Yeah, we don’t do “Southern” comedy, even though sometimes, we get billed as such.

T.J.: But it’s still nice to get that validation that oh, it’s not “Southern” humor, it’s just humor.

What city do you think you received the best reception?
Andy: L.A. was probably one of our favorites.

T.J.: Seattle was a really good crowd.

Andy: Seattle was a really great crowd but L.A., umm… was more like…comedy nerds. Like they laughed and they listened, probably our favorite stop on the tour.

Dave: But Seattle was a really good show too.

Joe: We had 350 students come out to our show at Eastern New Mexico University and that was a nice surprise. We didn’t know if we’d have 10 students or what so that was great having such a large audience at our first gig of the trip. Especially since we’d just driven through 3 hours of tumbleweeds, literally tumbleweeds, then we get to this huge auditorium and they treated us like super stars.

What was it like having Brian Regan pop in at your Washington gig, do a set then party with him afterwards?
Joe: That was a really big highlight of the tour for me, getting to hang out with one of my heroes.

Andy: It was a pretty big deal. We got to the point where we thought he may come through afterwards but he got there while the show was still going on.

T.J.: I walked over to him and asked if he wanted to do a guest set, then he paused and I was like….uh oh…I asked the wrong question. Then he was like “No,no….I’m thinkin’ about it” and then he said “Sure, I’ll do it.”

Dave: And that was kind of a small show anyways that night, not a big crowd, maybe 30 or 40 and I saw him the whole time I was on stage. Through my whole act I kept saying to myself “Ohhh…there’s Brian Regan…right…there.”

Didn’t he invite you back on his tour bus after the show?
Dave: Oh yeah, couldn’t have been any nicer, just a real down to earth dude.

Did that kind of put it in your heads, like this is what it could be like someday?
Dave: We were definitely daydreaming a little bit on that tour bus.

Joe: Brian Regan’s really at the top of the food chain when it comes to comedy and individually, I don’t see me achieving that on my own. But as a group, yeah I could see The Beards, 5-10 years down the road getting some kind of tour vehicle together.

Would you be happy with a career like Regan’s, just being a touring comedian or do you want “the show” and all that?
Andy: Oh you never know, but definitely wouldn’t be unsatisfied with that result.

Dave: Yeah, we respect him because he’s one of the few guys who’ve reached that level of success without movies and television.

Joe: Regan’s career is probably one of my favorites, just getting to do what he does and having a crowd that loves it, coming out to see just him. It’s ideal. Just pick whatever towns you want to go to then…. sell them out.

None of you are shy when it comes to talking about your love of food. What was the best meal you had on tour?
Andy: Dim sum in San Francisco.

Dave: Yes, definitely dim sum. T.J. wasn’t at that dinner so he probably has a different answer. Wadda ya think (to T.J.), Mexican food in L.A.?

T.J.: Well it was decidedly NOT prime rib in Vegas. However, it was probably the cheapest prime rib I’ve ever had.

Joe, reading the blogs from the trip, it’s obvious that you’re an amazing comedic writer. Do you think you’ll ever shift gears and go into that full time someday?
Joe: Yeah, well writing is what actually got me interested in stand up. I love writing creatively and doing stand up is the first thing where I’ve figured out how to make a living at it. Honestly, my favorite part of doing comedy is sitting down in the morning and writing new material. I enjoy that more than standing up in front of a room full of strangers.

Famous or otherwise, who has been the biggest influence on your comedy?
Joe: Well the first CD. I ever listened to before going into comedy was Mitch Hedberg so that sort of got me interested in stand up. Once I got going, I started listening to a lot of Steve Martin’s CDs and read his book. I really love his career, how he writes, plays the banjo and does stand up. He’s so inventive and original. Most recently I’d say Marc Maron after listening to him on his WTF podcast.

T.J.: My friends really have played a big part in that. I grew up around a lot of jokesters.

Andy: I’d say a lot of comics who are just above us in the level of what they’re doing. People that aren’t huge yet, like Kyle Kinane and Shane Mauss. They’re people that I know and they inspire me.

Dave: I have to agree with T.J. It sounds like a cheap way out, but it’s my friends. The people that influence me the most are just the one’s I’m around every day because those are the guys I’m interacting with. Our sensibilities are the same and we absorb each other’s sense of humor. As far as big comics go, I wouldn’t say I’m influenced by them because our styles aren’t similar. We’re all huge Louis C.K. fans though. But there are tons of great comics in Atlanta. We’re very fortunate to be real close with dozens of great comedians.

T.J.: And I think that’s why this tour works so well because we are influencing each other. We’re always around each other, building this thing together so we’re all growing as comedians at the same time and we’re all in the same place. Not exactly developing the same voice, but it makes the tour that much more cohesive.

How many times will you try a joke before you give up on it?
Dave: I’m pretty committed to what I think is funny. If it makes the stage, then I believed in at some point. I’ll try a joke at least 20 times and it has to bomb that many times in a row before I’ll say I’m done with it.

Andy: And we’ll put different twists on it.

Dave: Yeah, that’s the thing. If it doesn’t work we’re always trying to tweak it, adjust it, so it’s not like we’re doing the same version of the same joke that bombs over and over.

Andy: If you really think there’s something funny to it, maybe you’re just not getting it across the right way.

T.J.: I don’t always do it “in a row” like that. Like if it’s not working, I’ll put it aside for little while then try it in a completely different place and see if it goes over better. If you’re honest, you never put it to bed. If you thought it was funny at some point, then there’s an audience that probably will too.

Joe: I’ll usually give it 15 times. Sometimes I’ll do a joke and it gets a good response, but I’ll put it away just because I don’t feel like doing it again.

How did the four of you meet?
Dave: Just doing shows in Atlanta. Andy and I started here, T.J. started in Athens but he was constantly coming to Atlanta.

Andy: Joe started in Asheville but when he started to branch out, the first place he went was Atlanta.

Dave: We would run in to each other doing shows, eventually became friends then just kinda got the idea to do this thing.

Before you joined forces, Dave, Andy and T.J. were all rocking beards by choice. Joe grew his to fit into the tour. Do you feel that there is any follicular resentment on his part?
Dave: (laughs) Follicular resentment is a great term.

T.J.: I didn’t but I do now. That is, now that I know that term exists.

Dave: Nah….I don’t think so. He knows his beard sucks.

Joe: It was the first beard I ever grew, so I was a little nervous that it wouldn’t come in well but I’ve been really happy with it. I tend to feel more comfortable having it now. I’ve had several people tell me I look better with a beard which is kind of like saying that I look better when my face is covered up. Dave has a perfect Civil War era beard, mine doesn’t quite stand out like his but I’m happy with the modesty of it.

In regards to comedians – Judd Apatow has been quoted as saying “Anyone who needs the world to love them and goes out in the middle of the night to get up on stage and hear laughs from 30 to 200 people, multiple times a week, is working through something.” Would you all agree with that statement?
Andy: I don’t know. Maybe subconsciously in some way but I don’t think about it much.

Dave: Yeah, I don’t think so either. Maybe subconsciously and I haven’t dug that deep into my own psyche yet, but for me personally, I don’t think it’s an attention thing. I just truly know that I’m funny and have a unique perspective.

Andy: It’s more like, I can think of stuff that will make people laugh, it’s kind of its own thing.

Dave: It’s just a desire to make people laugh. Not “Oh love me, accept me”, I don’t really give a shit about that. I just know that I have the ability to make strangers laugh and I enjoy that challenge.

Joe: I don’t really relate to that. I do comedy because I love creative writing and I enjoy hanging out with funny people. I don’t really do it because I have issues. Often I’m the kind of person who would be just as happy to NOT get in front of 100 strangers. Sometimes I have to force myself into that performance mode.

So comedy is like a sport for you guys?
Andy: Yeah.

Dave: I’d say so.

T.J.: I enjoy it that way too but I know there were specific times when I was definitely “working through” something. I didn’t necessarily write material about what I was dealing with but there were certainly things going on in my personal life that made me feel like it would be really good for me to get up on stage and still be able to do this. Just in the midst of whatever crap was going on. In that sense, I don’t know if comedy saved my life but there are times when that kind of experience with an audience helped me on a personal level.

Dave: And I will say this…in a mild mannered way….comedy did save my life in the sense that I spent my whole life up until this point trying to figure out what the hell I wanted to do. I wasn’t passionate about anything. Success or not, I know what I’m doing for the rest of my days.

Along the same lines, Jerry Seinfeld says that you have to be extremely irritated with just about everything in order to be great at comedy. Do you feel there is any truth in that?
Dave: Oh yeah, you’ve got to have opinions.

Andy: You’ve got to be able to not just go “Ahhh …that sucks”, you have to look into it and make it funny.

Dave: You don’t ever accept anything. Like “Well…that’s just the way things are”, you have to say “I disagree with that and I’m gonna talk about it.”

T.J.: I would amend that to say that you at least have to understand why everything could be irritating. I’m not exactly irritated by everything, but I can appreciate what irritates other people.

Living or Dead…..best beard ever?
Dave: Oh, well….Robert E. Lee had a pretty badass beard. Mine’s kinda the confederate type beard.

T.J.: How bout never living? I think Yosemite Sam’s was pretty cool. Not exactly a beard, more like muttonchops, stops at the chin but still pretty sweet.

Andy: Mine’s more local. Jeff from the Star Bar here in Atlanta that runs the karaoke, his is pretty awesome.

Joe: I’m gonna go mythical and say Gandalf the Grey.

T.J.: My B. answer is Demi Moore for marrying Ashton Kutcher. Best beard EVER.

Dave’s done hysterical bits about his days as a radio DJ in Athens. What are some other jobs you guys held before going into comedy full time?
Dave: I also owned a landscaping company right before doing this.

Andy: I was a legal courier and I used to valet cars and shit, just random crap that I didn’t care about.

T.J.: I was and still am a graphic designer.

Joe: Most recently, through Americorps, I helped start a coffee shop for Habitat for Humanity. Before that, I was going to be a pro golfer. I was hardcore college golf but once I got out, decided I wanted to do something more creative.

Dave, tonight during your introduction they said you were going to be on a couple of episodes of Squidbillies next season. Do you know the names of those episodes so we can be on the lookout?
Dave: No, I sure don’t, not yet but I play a recurring character in two episodes named Barack Liberty Bell. He’s a right wing, radio disc jockey.

Is stand up something you think you’ll always want to do?
Andy: Oh yeah, I think all of our approach is “Well, were going to make this work” because we have to.

Dave: I’ll do comedy for the rest of my life even if I never make another dollar at it. I’m not doing anything else. It’s either this or being homeless.

Joe: Yes, stand up is something I’ll always want to do but I don’t know if I’ll always want to do “the road”. Like if I’m 45 and I’ve got a wife and children, I’ll probably yearn to do stand up but I doubt I’ll want to jump on a plane to Aspen to do a weekend. At high altitudes, I tend to get dizzy ya know?

For more info, check out beardsofcomedy.com. To snag yourself a copy of The Beards’ live album, just click the image below.

Video: Backstage with Morgan Murphy, Jen Kirkman, Kristen Schaal

by Dylan P. Gadino

Over the weekend, I dropped by the Women in Comedy Festival, which was going down in Boston and Cambridge, Massachusetts. The third annual event, which ran from March 9 – 13 hosted comedy panels, workshops and of course shows– lots of shows covering stand-up, sketch and improv.

On Saturday, headliners Morgan Murphy, Jen Kirkman and Kristen Schaal (with sketch partner Kurt Braunohler) did two shows in Cambridge at the Brattle Theater. Before their first show, I had a fun, informal hang with the women of the show; I learned that Murphy was wrapping up her writing duties on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon and heading back West, gained a little insight on Kirman’s forthcoming live album and Schaal let me know she was going to test out some “squirting” material that night onstage. There’s lots more of course, seeing as the video is unedited, uncensored and runs at a Internet-unfriendly 17 minutes.

Enjoy!

Morgan Murphy, Jen Kirkman, Kristen Schaal from Punchline Magazine on Vimeo.

Louis Katz: If These Balls Could Talk

by Jeff Havens

Halfway through If These Balls Could Talk (which, incidentally, is probably the most aptly-titled comedy album of the year), Louis Katz offers an apology: “I’m sorry I talk about sex so much.” It is a lie. He is not sorry, not even slightly. And if you’re in the mood for a delightfully irreverent trip straight into the gutter, you won’t be sorry, either.

Katz maintains a fast and self-assured delivery throughout the entire album. Even without visuals, you can feel his confidence onstage as he covers everything from the humble platypus (“the pre-op transvestite of the animal kingdom’) to vegans (“People who won’t eat anything that is made by or with flavor”) to the smell of a homeless person, which he describes with the same eloquent language usually reserved for a fine wine.

But the bulk of the album addresses Katz’s obsession with all things carnal. You’ll learn about his threesome with two fat women, the various things he likes to do with other people’s feet, and the pros and cons of his small hands – “terrible for fixing stuff, but great for fisting.” He knows that he goes too far sometimes, and he’s happy to go there. On the few occasions the audience groans, Katz typically laughs. “I like that sound,” he says at one point. “It’s gonna get worse.”

His audience never deserts him, though, because Katz weaves in the perfect amount of self-deprecating humor– such as, why he doesn’t want to find a woman anything like himself: “I’m not trying to double all these genes. How much shorter and blinder could our kids possibly get? I’m going to hook up with some other short, nearsighted chick? We’re not going to have kids, we’re gonna have a bunch of freaky little mole babies. They’ll keep burrowing up the yard, lowering the property value.”

So at this point in the review, I’m supposed to tell you all the things I didn’t like, but I really don’t have much to say in that department. There are a few unoriginal jokes and a couple too-long pauses. But I’m really just grasping at straws. If These Balls Could Talk is a consistently excellent offering. Get it. Katz might take you someplace you weren’t prepared to go, but you’ll be glad that he did.

Snag yourself a copy of If These Balls Could Talk. Just click the image below!

Dylan Brody: A Twist of Wit

by Jeff Havens

It’s not every comedy album that opens with an elaborate palindrome. But then, Dylan Brody is not everybody’s comedian. His third album, A Twist of the Wit, is a dense journey into the mind of self-loathing neurotic (his words, not mine) who knows more words than almost everyone and who occasionally pretends not to understand English just to irritate new neighbors.

Brody very accurately describes his stories as ‘lengthy and heavy and multi-textured shades of gray.’ A playwright (and general humorist) at heart, he refers to his stories as ‘pieces’ rather than ‘bits,’ and they cover everything from homeless magicians stealing his money to deeply confessional conversations about experimenting with homosexuality in an attempt to better relate to his bisexual father.

He’s the only comedian I can think of who would even attempt a joke about an opera based on the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle – “a show that cannot find its natural conclusion if anyone is there to see it,” – and his extended piece about his beloved dogs is perfectly done.

For wordsmiths, Brody’s album will be a dream. He quite obviously loves language and enjoys manipulating it– almost to a fault. I guarantee you’ll never hear the phrase ‘a tantalizing taste of linguistic terpsichore’ in anyone else’s comedy routine. (Or ever again in your life, for that matter.) As he says, “I’m a huge grammar dork. I’ll correct people on the difference between nauseous and nauseated. That means not only will I correct your grammar, but I’ll do it when you’re at your most vulnerable.”

For pure comedy fans, however, Brody’s approach may be more difficult to appreciate. There are times that Brody seems to be delivering more of a spoken-word poetry set than a stand-up comedy performance. He repeats phrases and sentences more for dramatic effect than for any augmented punchline, and some of his pieces are self-indulgent and distressingly light on laughs.’’

But if you’re looking for something that is completely out of the box, then A Twist of the Wit is right up your convoluted alley. As Brody says, “I’ve got mouthwash in my shoes, I’ve got hair gel in my shorts, I’m ready to work!”

To grab yourself a copy of A Twist of Wit, just click the image below.

Featured review: Daniel Tosh– “Happy Thoughts”

by John Delery

Like Jim Norton and Patrice O’Neal, Sarah Silverman and Lisa Lampanelli, Daniel Tosh clearly belongs to Comics Without Borders, a cadre of comedians that fearlessly (some scolds may say tastelessly) crosses boundaries to deliver jokes to those in need…of convulsive laughter.

“If I offend anybody tonight, I apologize. It’s not my intention. I’m not going to guess what your personal line of decency is. I cross my own from time to time; it’s how I know I still have one,” Tosh proclaims perfunctorily at the outset of Happy Thoughts, his new album from Comedy Central Records (available on March 8; watch the special Sunday at 9 p.m. on Comedy Central).

Reciting that counterfeit concern (the equivalent of liquor makers’ routine pleas to “drink responsibly…so we can advertise recklessly”) frees Tosh to shamelessly, gleefully, and, forgive us oh NAACP, ACLU and NOW, hysterically be his paradoxically insolent self: the choirboy with the devilish sense of humor.

Onstage in a plain white shirt, gray pullover sweater and charcoal pants, Tosh resembles a seminary student or the banjo-thrumming member of some folksy ’60s singing quartet. But beneath the Gap uniform lies a clever, relentless, remorseless guerrilla who deliberately tosses grenades into crowds and admires the explosion of gasps and probably inappropriate applause his incendiary commentary provokes.

A master of misdirection, Tosh purposely creates unease — with cringes and twinges of guilt in audience members being his payoff.

“I have no problem with illegal immigration in this country,” Tosh announces, jabbing the Right before leveling the Left with this emphatic sucker punch, “except for the fact they don’t serve on jury duty. That’s horseshiiiiiiit. It should be the other way around; they should serve exclusively on jury duty. Yeah, then it finally would be a jury of ones’ own peers. It’s not a stereotype if it’s always true. Yeah, then it becomes law. That joke is called, ‘Latinos Are Criminals.’ That’s just a title, it doesn’t mean anything.”

Yes, Tosh often straddles the line barely separating mockery from misogyny and bigotry, but oh so deftly. He never sounds genuinely hostile or mean. No doubt he mines deep for his jokes, using a backhoe it appears to dig low enough to discover the humor in usually taboo subjects: premature death, poverty, homelessness, domestic abuse, abortion, and, uh, really, rape. A brilliant comic alchemist, Daniel Tosh somehow spins the grim into comedy gold.

We highly suggest you pick up a copy of Happy Thoughts. Just click the link below!