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Ken Marino and David Wain have, in a sense, been bandmates for decades. They became fast friends at New York University and started a comedy troupe there that became The State, which got its own eponymous MTV series in the early nineties. They’ve collaborated closely many times over the years since, perhaps most memorably in the cult-classic Wet Hot American Summer, one of several features Wain has directed; Marino is a consistent comic presence onscreen, known for his roles on Party Down, Children’s Hospital and The Other Two, among many others.

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But over the past two years, they’ve taken their friendship and creative collaboration to a new level: being in an actual band together. The Middle Aged Dad Jam Band — a covers band with Marino as frontman, Wain on drums, and various of their friends, co-workers and family members filling out vocals and instrumentals — emerged in the waning days of the pandemic and has amassed a following both on YouTube and live. Their covers, which, as Marino puts it, run the gamut “from Schoolhouse Rock to Kiss,” often feature their famous and very funny friends, like Kristen Bell (who recently duetted with Marino on “Islands in the Stream,” which has been viewed nearly 2 million times on YouTube), Thomas Lennon, “Weird Al” Yankovic and Paul Rudd. 

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The MADJB, which has toured over the past two years, is currently heading out on a new slate of shows, including a performance at Comic Relief in New York City Dec. 9 and a gig at Irving Plaza Dec. 10, as well as a night at the Lodge Room in Los Angeles and a New Year’s Eve show (the latter two will be livestreamed). Ahead of their run of shows, Marino and Wain spoke to Billboard about finding their own version of rock stardom – and Wain, ever the drummer looking to keep his hands busy, performed a magic trick too. 

Middle Aged Dad Jam Band

Steven N. Smith

How long has music been part of your friendship?

Marino: I mean, since we met. We met in college, and when we were doing The State, anytime we’d do a show, the show was riddled with music cues that we would all talk about and put in the show.  

Wain: We were in the dorm with [singer-songwriter and composer] Craig Wedren, who I grew up with, and were sort of in his orbit of a lot of stuff he was doing. But we weren’t really like music partners, or even going deep and talking about music until we did [MADJB]. 

When The State was on MTV, were you guys crossing paths a lot with musicians, or more just feeling adjacent to it? 

Wain: We were definitely like the oddball, black sheep of a music cable network. At the time, MTV was mostly music videos, so our show, by directive from the network, was very music heavy, and our whole soundtrack was just stealing from the videos. 

Marino: But we were never hanging out with the top MTV stars. We were so outside looking in. 

Wain: We in fact once did a sketch spoofing that — like, what if MTV is like, Slash is just hanging around, the rock stars are just in the hallways. But that’s not what it was like. 

When did you decide to officially form a band together?

Wain: Like so many things we’ve done, it wasn’t really like, “This is the plan.” I had a garage that was big enough to have a drum set and friends over, finally, as the pandemic was waning, and I just started inviting whoever over, like, “Hey, let’s jam, whatever.” And then eventually these jams became more frequent, and we started being like, “Hey, let’s actually plan [to] learn this song and this song for the jam.” And then it sort of felt like, suddenly, we’re in it. We would joke like, “Come on, we’re late for band practice!”

Marino: David actually was in a band in high school and has always played drums, and has always wanted to scratch that itch through the years. And so he would always find some way to play drums… 

Wain: Like by shoehorning it into any sketch or movie or whatever… 

Marino: But like Dave said, it was this organic thing — everybody would come, and everyone was invited to sing, and over the course of many weeks, I sort of became the person who was singing the most. 

Were you both in bands at some point earlier in your lives? 

Wain: I was the manager of Craig Wedren’s high school covers band when I was in like, sixth, seventh grade. I wore a hat and sunglasses and I’m like, “I’m the manager,” and that was basically all I did. 

Marino: A little extra fun information about that: When Dave made up a poster about Craig’s band, he put his face and his name bigger than the band’s name himself. 

Wain: That band was called The Immoral Minority. But then Craig moved on to the bigger high school band at one point, so then I was in a band called Batman and Robin. We did win the battle of the bands twice. It’s not, it’s not….

Marino: [Faux modestly] It’s not a big deal, it’s just, you come and you compete, and that’s fine, and that’s… that’s the the gift. 

Wain: In college, I did play with a band in the dorm. I was never that good at the drums, but I loved it, and I would do it whenever I got a chance. And then in my 20s, I was in this band called Liquid Kitty, which was a trio with me and two ladies. And then I really went quiet for awhile. 

Marino: What about Rocking Knights of Summer? 

Wain: Oh, right, when I was 19, I formed a band for the purpose of touring summer camps, and we did that for a summer, which was awesome. 

Marino: I grew up wanting to be an actor from a very young age, so I was doing a lot of musical theater, and I liked singing. When I met my wife, many years later, we became very invested in karaoke, to the point where a lot of the people who came to our wedding bought us a big karaoke machine with thousands of songs, and we built a karaoke room in our house when we had kids, and I soundproofed it so people could come over and sing — we had a little baby monitor in the karaoke room.

For me, that was just a great way to brush up on all the songs that I remember from the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s. And I kind of stopped listening to current music after that. Even when we were doing The State I wasn’t listening to, like, the stuff that you guys were listening to. 

Wain: Well, I still, I think of ’90s as new still. That’s like the recent new s–t. 

Marino: For me, it’s just this little fantasy of getting to be a frontman in a band singing all these songs that just are deep, way deep back in my head from growing up. 

Wain: It does feel like middle-aged dad rock ‘n’ roll fantasy camp, you know?

If covers bands get a bad rap, it’s when they sound like bad karaoke. But part of what makes you guys impressive is that, both in the vocals and instrumentals, you sound pretty professional.

Wain: I’ve worked quite hard on my drumming in the last couple of years. As we started jamming, a couple people dropped by the garage who are actual serious musicians. And then the rest of us in the band were like, oh shit, we gotta try to keep up with that. 

Marino: The keyboardist, Jon Spurney, and Jordan Katz, the trumpet player, Allie Stamler, my niece who plays violin. And then Craig Wedren started coming by and helping us with all things vocal and harmony… 

Wain: I definitely learned so much about how little I knew about playing drums doing this. One of my great joys is just starting the journey of actually trying to understand the drums in a way that I never did in the first 30 years of playing. 

Marino: We try to honor the song, but also make sure that it’s truly from us. There are certain artists I listened to back in the day, and I’ve listened to [their songs] so many times that it’s just in there. And then when you drive around in your car and you’re singing to that artist, you always sort of sing it slightly differently, or you put a little extra stuff on it, and that’s what I’ve done over the years. 

Wain: One of the things I love about your singing is exactly that — you’re somehow channeling the thing that makes Billy Joel’s voice special, and also putting yourself in it simultaneously, which is very cool. 

Marino: Thank you, David. 

Middle Aged Dad Jam Band

Davis Wain

Where do your own musical tastes tend to lean? 

Wain: The ’80s is when I most paid attention to and cared deeply about lots of music. I still love things from all times, from today, but I just haven’t put the time and investment in learning as much about more current artists. But as a kid, I loved and played in bands that played a lot of like ’80s alt — like the Replacements, and I was in an R.E.M cover band. I was in a Smiths cover band in high school. 

Marino: I grew up on Long Island, so of course Billy Joel was a big thing. I enjoyed Bruce Springsteen and Elton John, singer-songwriter kind of guys. And then I went to college with a guy from New Orleans, and I really got into music from New Orleans — the Neville Brothers, Dr. John, Walter “Wolfman” Washington — and I like R&B stuff, Motown, Aretha Franklin and Otis Redding and Sam Cooke, stuff like that. 

Even your guests are quite accomplished. Do you think there’s some connection between people who have great comedic or improv skill and those who have musical talent, too? 

Wain: I think they’re definitely complementary. I feel like every actor I know, almost, is also a musician in some form, or wants to be, or could be. It feels very overlappy. 

Marino: I just think there are a lot of people who were theater kids or grew up singing. And then you come to this town, and there’s not a big demand for that – so you don’t get to do it, but it’s an itch you want to scratch. We’ve been lucky enough to work in this town and work with really talented people who we’ve become friends with. So when we throw out, “Hey, you want to come by and sing some songs this weekend?” a lot of them are like, “Hell yeah!” 

Wain: There’s a certain high of playing in a rock show with your friends on stage for an audience that is different than anything else that you could do. 

Marino: It’s unique. The rush you get from doing a sketch show in front of people is really cool and fun — hearing the laughter and riding the waves and stuff — but a band playing together and really trying to make the music sound good, and doing it live in front of an audience, is a whole other sort of rush. At our [MADJB] shows, we do little comedy bits between the songs, and I think that’s initially what people were coming to see, but then they’re pleasantly surprised by the fact that we’re taking the music so seriously and really kind of committing to it.

Do particular songs the band has done stand out as challenges you’re proud of having mastered?  

Wain: I mean, “Scenes From an Italian Restaurant” was definitely one that for a while we were just like, “There’s no way we could ever tackle that.” It’s just so much. But we’re like, let’s just try little by little, and we got that one into shape.

Marino: I thought “Islands in the Stream” with Kristen was gonna be super simple – and I went over to Spurney’s, and he’s like, “It’s very complex harmonizing —the song is pretty because of all the harmony.” So that one was overwhelming to me. We got it to where we wanted it to be, though. And it took us doing that for me go, “Oh, right, now I know how to do it properly.” Now when I hear the song, all I hear is the harmony. 

Wain: Learning The Police’s “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic” was, needless to say, challenging. I ended up doing my own slightly simpler version of it. The original recording involves more than one drum track, but I did the David Wain slightly dumbed-down version. 

You’ve performed “Magic To Do” from the musical Pippin, and there’s been a running joke in your videos since about playing more Pippin. So, as a musical theater nerd I have to ask: are you going to play more Pippin?

Wain: I mean, I think it’s literally our least viewed video of all of them. But uh…. 

Marino: If I had anything to say about it, yes, we would do more. But, yeah, it’s not the most popular. 

Wain: Our YouTube stats, apparently, is that [our audience is] like 95% men, which might answer the Pippin question. But I also I think we should do something from Hamilton. Who knows. We could do [The Who’s] Tommy… 

What can audiences expect from this next run of shows? 

Wain: If you’ve seen us before, we’ve added a ton of new songs since then, there’s quite a bit of new material. But it’s all covers. I do think the band’s getting better and better, and I love all the music that we’re doing. I’m super excited. 

Eleven days. More than 300 shows. The 20th annual New York Comedy Festival offered a Golden Corral-style buffet of laughs. It was impossible to see them all, but here are the top seven performances — in no particular order — that Billboard witnessed.

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1. Zarna Garg

Garg, who closed the festival with a sold-out show at Town Hall in Midtown Manhattan on Nov. 17, took an unlikely path to stand-up comedy. Raised in Bombay, she escaped an arranged marriage by leaving home, immigrating to the United States and attending law school before becoming a multi-hyphenate in the comedy business: stand-up, screenwriting, podcasting and a memoir. She first headlined at Caroline’s on Broadway in 2020 and, according to her manager, the Town Hall appearance was one of her biggest headlining shows to date.

A lot of Garg’s comedy is steeped in Indian culture and stereotypes — “You are Indian, your pronoun is doctor!” she said during her performance —but judging from the composition of the crowd on Nov. 17, she has clearly crossed over. Garg got big laughs saying her bindi was the same kind of sticker that Macy’s uses to mark down clothes, and implied that she occasionally uses hers to snag a bargain. “You know I’m doing it!” she said. And she elicited a huge roar from the crowd after telling a story about keeping her comedy work from her parents. When her mother found out, instead of disowning her daughter, she told her that if it would help with her career, “May you tell your audience that your father likes to do it doggy style.”

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2. Jeff Arcuri

The Michigan-raised, Chicago-based comic opened the festival on Nov. 7, when he brought his Full Beans Tour to the Beacon Theater on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, and proved how he has blown up over the past year: with crowd work, which has gone viral on social media. Arcuri is so lightning-quick and scalpel-sharp that attempting to take notes of his back-and-forth banter with audience members — done with a big, wicked smile — is a fool’s errand. So, check out this video and note that, unlike other comics who single out members of their audience, Arcuri practices largely cruelty-free comedy.

3. Jordan Jensen

The Ithaca, NY-born former contractor — she called her company Lady Parts Carpentry, because her name was often misconstrued as male — Jensen is a tattooed bomb cyclone of funny, who became the first woman to win the festival’s New York’s Funniest competition in 2021. Her act is seeded with the wins and losses of womanhood and dating, growing up with a lesbian mother and an estranged weed-loving father, and her battles with OCD and intrusive thoughts. As one of Jeff Arcuri’s openers at the Beacon Theater, Jensen had the crowd screaming with laughter over a wild bit on the realities of menstruation.

4. New York’s Funniest

The winner of the festival’s annual joke-off — which catapulted the careers of Jensen and Michael Che, among other comics — was New York-based stand-up Jamie Wolf, who delivered a polished set that closed with a killer, seemingly new bit on why he’s pretty sure God is a woman. “Picture dicks and balls,” he said. “They’re so first draft.” It got better from there but go see Wolf to hear it firsthand. As they say in the business, it’s all in the telling.  

Wolf was one of 10 comics who competed at the Hard Rock Hotel on Nov. 16, and two in particular brought to mind a comment Chris Distefano made in an interview with Billboard last week, in which he talked about his comedy originating as a “defense mechanism” that arose from his parents divorce.

The competition’s opener, Soo Ra, who is Korean, was born missing fingers on one hand and adopted as an infant after she was found in a box that had been left outside a police station. A devastating story, but Ra, whose delivery is could be described as cheerfully deadpan, got a lot of laughs out of it, telling the crowd she might have been abandoned when her real mother looked at her unformed hand and decided, “This baby cannot fix Samsung phones.” She also said that when people ask her which Korea she is from, she replies, “The one you can get out of.”

Next up was Nick Viagas, who used his stutter to land a lot of laughs. He told the crowd that if he didn’t make it in comedy, “I can always get a job as a turn signal.” And that when he was put in charge of the countdown at a New Year’s Eve show, “That was the longest year.”

5. Ricky Velez

One of Judd Apatow’s favorite comics — he even made Velez a producer on The King of Staten Island New York City in which he co-starred with best friend Pete Davidson — the Queens-bred smart-ass repaid the kindness with a charged set for Judd Apatow and Friends at the Beacon Theater on Nov. 9. In addition to compelling storytelling — check out his Dominican drug dealer in the bit online — Velez likes to rile up the politically correct, and in his addressing the influx of migrants into New York, he told the audience, “I like migrants a lot because they’re fucking up the white-woman agenda. That makes me very happy. [In] 2017 white women canceled cat-calling in New York City. Well, guess what. Venezuela never went through a #MeToo Movement. So, good luck telling Papi that ass ain’t fine, Mami.”

He also welcomed more crime in the city, which he said was “the war on gentrification,” adding that he recently saw “three men eating croissants on the corner.” Declaring such a brazen act of refined tastes “crazy,” Velez had the crowd wheezing when he said, “This is New York City. That can’t happen. Those men need crime,” adding: “Croissants and tote bags. If you’ve got a tote bag as a man. Time to move, bro. We back.”

6. Chris Distefano

Distefano did back-to-back-to-back shows at three outposts of the New York Comedy Club, which is owned by his manager, Emilio Savone — in part to re-record classic bits he did on Netflix and other comedy platforms so that he could reclaim ownership. He dubbed them “Chrissy’s Version” in homage to Taylor Swift. But he also riffed on the results of the presidential election and some of his successful friends’ reactions to it. “I will say this. If you made a post crying about the president, you’re a p—y” Distefano said. “You gotta be an adult here.”

He further explained that a number of friends he met through comedy “do big things. They host TV shows. I took the bus here.” Some of those famous friends “are crying,” he said. “I’m like, relax. You’re a multimillionaire making believe. You live in America. Shut the f—up. Everybody’s just got to take a deep breath. It’s gonna be fine. Now, do I know for sure? No. I went to Nassau Community College.”  

7. Stand Up For Heroes

Year after year, this benefit for military veterans brings out top-shelf talent to raise tens of millions of dollars. This year, Bruce Springsteen, Norah Jones, Jon Stewart, Jim Gaffigan, Jerry Seinfeld and Mark Normand put on a really big show, which you can read more about here (and watch a video of The Boss performing “Long Walk Home”).

Just as the The Waitresses‘ “Christmas Wrapping” captured the melancholy and romance of spending the holidays alone — making it a holiday-playlist perennial, Cat Cohen has recorded, Overdressed, an album of 10 original songs that mines the comedy of single life today, including the kind of sloppy end-of-year merrymaking that lives on in nightmares and brunch conversations.

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While Overdressed, which drops on Nov. 15, is not strictly a holiday album, it does take the stuffing out of office Christmas parties and the boorish behavior that takes place at them in songs such as “Plus One,” “Time of Year” and the inevitable self-help delusions accompany new year’s resolutions in “Just Bought a Journal” and “Blame It on the Moon.”

“I’ve been doing cabaret songs in my standup act for a really long time, and I’ve always wanted to do poppier versions of them — fancier, fun tracks,” Cohen says. “The holidays seemed like a good way to get into that celebratory mood. I had a bunch of songs that fit within the holiday theme somewhat and thought, this is a fun little idea.”

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That said, Cohen’s idea of fun, as expressed on Overdressed, would have made Bing Crosby drop his pipe. After “four to six glasses of wine” at an office holiday party, the star of “plus one” gets pretty granular recounting the time she had sex on a boat. And in the future Instagram-generation anthem, “Can You Send Me That?,” she ends up going home from the club with a foot fetishist in a fedora. “Thankfully no one took any pics,” she sings.

Before anyone thinks the characters in Overdressed have set women back decades, Cohen throws herself into “Time of Year,” a song that would fit on the soundtrack of Black Christmas — pick your version — or any other Christmas-themed feminist slasher movie.

“When you wake up in that hole wondering how you got so low, know it’s you touched my lower back at a party four years ago,” Cohen sings. “And when I see your friends, cuz it’s that time of year when the boys will close down the bar, I’ll let them know with my eyes, there will be no surprise. If you touch me, I’ll destroy your life.” (Spoiler alert: the guy in the hole doesn’t make it.)

On the eve of Overdressed‘s release, Cohen spoke to Billboard about the inspirations behind the music, many of which came from personal experience.

Why record a comedic holiday-themed album?

Comedically, the holidays are a great thing to mine for jokes.

Were any of the songs on Overdressed inspired by your actual experiences?

Unfortunately, they all are.

Okay.

The story of the guy asking to see my feet at the club. That’s true. The story of the sex-on-a-boat situation as mentioned in “Plus One.” I’ll heighten things in my act or change details, but I’m always pulling from real life, for better or for worse.

I was going to ask you if you really had sex on a boat and was sand involved?

Sure. Give it a go. Try it out. I want to encourage all my listeners to try it out. You know how the floor of a boat is always wet and sandy. Something must have gotten lost in the mix.

Office parties are always great fodder for comedy. Is “Plus One” based on any particular experience?

I wrote that song pre-pandemic. I often see pictures of these totally lavish parties these companies would throw. I was like, “Wait, just because I don’t have an office job doesn’t mean I should be left out.” Big parties are coming back, so this is my formal plea to be invited to yours. I want a seafood tower, I want a DJ, I want specialty cocktails.

Songs such as “Blame It on the Moon ” and “Just Bought a Journal” seem to be more about the contemporary tropes we buy into that we — usually mistakenly — think are going to be a path to self-improvement.

Totally. I’m just fascinated by how we’re all obsessed with bettering ourselves. I make fun of all this stuff but only because I’m doing it as well. I have paid so much money to astrologers, healers, psychics — because I’m obsessed by it. The same with the journal. Especially on New Year’s Day, you’re like, “Wow, I think this journal is going to change my entire life.” So I thought that would be a relatable point for people.

And then you stop journaling before January ends.

Exactly. A few years ago I bought one of those five-year journals where every day, you’re supposed to write a sentence. It stopped like the 18th of January.

Did an astrologer actually ask you to dip your nipple in…

Yes, yes. This is a while ago. We were talking about drinking. I was like, “I think I’ve been drinking too much.” What should I do? She was like, “You should have some sparkling water. Drink sparkling water. Play around, feel it. I don’t know, put your nipple in it.” I was like, “Wait, did I just hear you right?”

Good lord. The album spans a few different genres of music. It starts out with kind of a disco feel, and there’s a bit of Prince-y funk. But you’re also doing some sort of cocktail music. Are those genres your touchstones?

Before I went to the studio, I was listening to a lot of ’90s Spice Girls. Beyond that, when I’m writing a comedy song, it’s like, “h, if you’re talking about some grotesque thing, maybe we’ll make it a love ballad.” Juxtaposition is always interesting to me. The genre I use is just to comment on the message of the song, and what joke I’m going for. That’s why it spans so many different little bits.

Are you going to be touring at all behind this release?

This album is like, half old songs that have already been in my specials and half new. I think I’m going to wait until I write my next hour of comedy to go on tour. I just finished a tour at the end of the summer. So, I’m going to start fresh in the new year, and then hopefully, incorporate some of these newer songs in my next show. I’ll probably not be touring for a few months.

You were in the current season of Only Murders in the Building. What character did you play?

I play one of the Brothers sisters.

You did? Looking at the photos from this album release, I did not make the connection.

I hope I’m a transformative actor, so I appreciate that. Especially living in New York, Only Murders in the Building was a dream gig — working my comedic heroes on a show that everyone watches. I’m waiting for the next big gig, so I’m manifesting, obviously — a massive role for the new year, this interview.

And seeing an astrologer about it as well.

Always, always.

Cat Cohen

Courtesy Photo

On Nov. 11, the Bob Woodruff Foundation and The New York Comedy Festival held its 18th annual Stand Up For Heroes (SUFH) benefit at Lincoln Center’s David Geffen Hall in Manhattan, and, as usual, some of music’s and comedy’s biggest stars — Bruce Springsteen, Norah Jones, Questlove, Jerry Seinfeld, Jon Stewart, Jim Gaffigan and Mark Normand — helped raise more than $29 million for military veterans and their families.

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That figure includes the staggering $25 million donation the Craigslist founder Craig Newmark’s philanthropic organization donated to the Woodruff Foundation, where he is on the board of directors.

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The benefit — which took place on Veterans Day for the first time in its history — kicked off with Questlove DJ’ng for the receptive crowd. Here are some of the highlights of the show. (Some jokes are paraphrased for simplicity’s sake; others are not verbatim because recording was not permitted.)

1. Bruce Springsteen

Last things first. The Boss, who has long supported veterans and has performed at 17 of the 18 SUFH benefits, closed the show with an electrifying acoustic performance of four songs: “The Power of Prayer,” from his 2020 Letter to You album, “Land of Hope and Dreams,” “Dancing in the Dark,” and “Long Walk Home,” which he introduced as “a small prayer for our country.” Given the benefit’s comedic theme, Springsteen always brings jokes with his guitar — some ribald, some corny — and he told them between songs.

His first involved a husband learning that his wife is pregnant. Taking the doctor aside, he says his spouse couldn’t be pregnant because he is religious about practicing safe sex and always wears a condom. “Let me tell you a story,” the doctor says. To paraphrase Springsteen, A hunter goes out to bag a lion but brings his umbrella instead of his rifle. When he encounters the big cat, he raises his umbrella, yells “bang!” and the lion falls dead. “Doc, that’s impossible. Some other guy must have shot him.” Rimshot, please! Another: “Bakery burns down,” Springsteen said. “Business is toast.” The crowd didn’t judge Springsteen on his comedy and gave him a standing ovation. As they left the theater, some could be heard using words like, “exhilarating” and “powerful” to describe his performance.

2. Norah Jones

Jones performed early in the show and proved to be the quiet storm of the evening. She left the talking to others, choosing instead to speak through the soulful set she played on a Steinway grand piano that was wheeled onstage. Her first three songs, “Don’t Know Why,” the hit single from her 2002 debut Billboard 200 chart-topping album; “Little Broken Hearts,” the title track of her 2012 release; and “Come Away With Me,” also from her first album, could have been interpreted as subtle commentary on the results of the presidential election. “Don’t Know Why” contains the verse: When I saw the break of day, I wished that I could fly away. Instead of kneeling in the sand, catching tear-drops in my hand.” “Little Broken Hearts,” includes the lyrics, “Only the fallen need to rise. What if lightning strikes them twice? Will they give up on their lives. And finally divide?” And though “Come Away With Me,” is largely a love song, it does contain the line, “Come away where they can’t tempt us with their lies.”

The last song of Jones set was a tribute to the patriotism of the vets gathered at the benefit — “American Anthem,” from the soundtrack of Ken Burns’ World War II documentary, The War. “Let me know in my heart, when my days are through,” Jones sang. “America, America, I gave my best to you.”

Norah Jones performs during the 18th Annual Stand Up For Heroes Benefit Presented By Bob Woodruff Foundation And New York Comedy Festival at David Geffen Hall on Nov. 11, 2024 in New York City.

Valerie Terranova/Getty Images for Bob Woodruff Foundation

3. Jon Stewart

Stewart’s support of military veterans goes much deeper than the laughs he reliably provokes at Stand Up for Heroes, where he has appeared 15 times, and the applause and cheering he received while he was onstage reflected that. “Thank you for the Pact Act!” Iraq war veteran Amanda Hooper shouted from the audience during Stewart’s set, a nod to the 20 years The Daily Show anchor spent fighting for the 2022 passage of the law that provides assistance to veterans who were exposed to harmful chemicals such as Agent Orange during the Vietnam War and toxins from burn pits that were used to destroy military waste in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The chemicals can cause myriad illnesses, including cancer and respiratory diseases, and prior to the passing of the Pact Act, The Department of Veteran Affairs denied about 75% of veterans’ burn pit claims. Now a senior outreach coordinator at MACV, an organization dedicated to ending veteran homelessness, Hooper told Billboard that she is finally able to receive care for a severe respiratory illness she contracted because of burn pits in Iraq.

As anyone who watches The Daily Show knows, Stewart’s activism has not dulled his comic chops. He told the crowd that after the election, someone asked him if he was “worried about anti-Semitism.” His reply: “I think anti-Semitism will be just fine,” which led him to tell the story of posting a remembrance of his beloved three-legged pitbull, who had died, on social media. While most of the replies offered condolences and tributes to their own late pets, one response stood out: “Why did you change your name, Jew?”

Addressing his age, Stewart, who is 61, told the crowd, “The other day, I needed my reading glasses to jerk off,” and after the guttural laughing died down, he added: “I hear the rumble of recognition.” His final bit was an extended story about his son, Nate, a sophomore in college. Stewart recalled leaving his sleeping son at home to visit a nearby VFW post, where he met an impressive veteran who had enlisted at the age of 18 and deployed three times to Afghanistan. When Stewart returned home, continued, he received a text from his son, who was still in his bedroom. The message: “I’m up. Make me a bagel.”

4. Mark Normand

Normand was the rookie comedian of the night. It was his first time at the benefit, but he clearly wasn’t worried about whether he’d be invited back — which was a very good thing for unrepentant comedy fans in the audience. He opened his set by riffing on the election, and a few gasps peppered the laughter when he imagined Robert F. Kennedy saying to Donald Trump, “Now that you’ve been shot, you feel like family.” Normand also said he’d like to have sex with a non-binary person because it could be interpreted as a threesome. If someone asked, “Did you have sex with her?”, he could reply, “No. Them.”

And when all four comedians took to the stage to eat up a few minutes before Springsteen’s set, Stewart gestured to Normand, who at 41 was the youngest of the group, “We’re a boy band, and we finally found a young singer.” “I used to do Diddy parties,” Normand replied. “It’s good to be here. I escaped.”

Jerry Seinfeld, Jon Stewart, Jim Gaffigan and Mark Normand attend the 18th Annual Stand Up For Heroes Benefit Presented By Bob Woodruff Foundation And New York Comedy Festival at David Geffen Hall on November 11, 2024 in New York City.

Slaven Vlasic/Getty Images for Bob Woodruff Foundation

5. Jim Gaffigan and Jerry Seinfeld

Although they performed separately, both Gaffigan and Seinfeld are Jedi masters of observational comedy, and they had the crowd roaring. Gaffigan began his set with a bit on “running late” and traveling. When he sees someone running for their gate at an airport, he said, “I think to myself, I hope they don’t make it.” Otherwise, he added, “How are they going to learn?” He also noted that he takes a lot of connecting flights, which often involve sitting in an airport “for two hours and counting all the losers with neck pillows.”

Gaffigan then told a story about hustling along a New York City street — because he was late — and seeing a crowd of people with their cell phones raised. When he asked one of the amateur photographers what she was shooting, she replied, “The sunset!” Gaffigan said the response left him wanting to “kill” that person knowing “that that photo would be used to bore someone.” “I gotta be honest,” he said. “I want to kill a lot of people.”

Seinfeld also took on the subject of cell phones. When some in the front row broke out their handhelds to snap pictures of him, he encouraged them to proceed because “I choose to enjoy your dumbness.” He added that he also doesn’t give a “rat’s ass” about the photos on other people’s phones. “We need to stick to looking at our own phones, heads down,” he said, and, possibly referring to the election, “ride this disaster of the moment into the ground where it belongs.”

Moving to AI and its potential out-think humans, he said, “We were smart enough to create it; dumb enough to need it; and stupid enough to not know if we did the right thing.” One of the biggest laughs he got came from the simplest punchline: “Why was Frankenstein wearing a sport jacket?”

6. The Heroes

It was impossible to not be moved by the group of veterans who took the stage and, one by one, described the challenges they faced after returning from their deployment in Iraq and Afghanistan, and how they benefited from the programs funded by the Bob Woodruff Foundation. Among those who spoke was Jerrod Reynolds, who became homeless and a drug addict. He explained that the MACV organization found him housing, which led him to conquer his substance abuse. He has since joined VMAC, where he works with Amanda Hooper.

The last to speak was Frank Williamson, the medic who saved Woodruff’s life when he was seriously injured by an improvised explosive device in 2006 while covering the Iraq war for ABC News. Williamson explained that treating hundreds of soldiers life-threatening injuries left him rudderless and despondent when he returned home. He also turned to drugs and was rehabilitated by one of the foundation funded programs. When Williamson finished, Woodruff emerged from the wings, and the two men embraced, brothers in arms.

For more than 40 years, Caroline Hirsch’s name has been synonymous with comedy in New York City. Beginning in 1981, when she opened a small club bearing her first name in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood, comedy’s greatest performed on — and in some cases, made their bones on — her stages: Dave Chappelle, Jerry Seinfeld, David Letterman, Jon Stewart, Gilbert Gottfried, Jay Leno, Kevin Hart, Bill Burr, Paul Reubens and Michael Che, among many others.

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In 2004, Hirsch and her partner in business and life, Andrew Fox, decided to expand the Caroline’s brand beyond the walls of the club (which had since moved to Midtown Manhattan). The New York Comedy Festival debuted in November of that year, spanning approximately 15 shows over five days. On Nov. 7 the festival kicks off its 20th season which will feature more than 300 shows over 11 days, including its annual Stand Up for Heroes benefit — now in its 17th year — where Bruce Springsteen, Jim Gaffigan, Seinfeld, Stewart and other comics and musicians have raised a total of $84 million for wounded and ill military veterans. There’s also The Eras Tour: Taylor Swift Comedy Show and Dance Party.

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“Twenty years is a long time to be in business, especially in New York City,” says Hirsch — who, along with Fox, spoke to Billboard about how the festival and comedy have evolved over that time.

How has the festival evolved over the last 20 years?

Caroline Hirsch: Most noticeably is the depth and length of the festival. We started out with 10 big shows and three or four headliner shows. Now, the festival is 11 days, with over 300 shows and 22 headliners. And I would attribute a big part of that to the fact that comedy is more of a staple in our lives today.

Andrew Fox: When we started, so few comics playing theaters. New York has such great theaters — Carnegie Hall, the Beacon Theater and Madison Square Garden. For comics, these are bucket list shows.

Hirsch: Before 2006, the only person who played Madison Square Garden was Andrew “Dice” Clay, and that was because of his relationship with Howard Stern. In 2006, we put Dane Cook into Madison Square Garden for two nights. We sold 38,000 tickets. Since then we’ve put Kevin Hart, Bill Burr and Trevor Noah at the Garden.

Fox:  When we played Dane there, it really changed the way people looked at the comedy business. When we look back at that, from our humble beginnings. It was a game changer for us, agents and managers in the industry.

Hirsch: Now Carnegie Hall is considered a steppingstone to the Garden or other arenas. A lot of comedians we worked with at Caroline’s wanted to play bigger venues. The festival enabled us to do that. And we continue the tradition started at the club of building talent. Zarna Garg started with one night at Carolines, and at this year’s festival, we’re presenting her at Town Hall on the last day of the festival.

You closed your club in at the end of 2022 because your landlord wanted a significant rent increase. Do you have any plans to reopen it in another location?  

Hirsch: The festival is about moving beyond the four walls of Caroline’s and doing comedy in a bigger way. The only way we’re thinking of Caroline’s right now is as a bigger event.  

Fox: People are always coming to us with different ideas for events and branding opportunities, and we listen. Consumers trust us if they’re not familiar with a particular performer.

Caroline, you recently wrote an op-ed in the New York Daily News about comedy being more important than ever given today’s political climate. Can you talk a bit more on that?

Hirsch: Comedy is important for society, and it has become a central part of our conversation today as you saw with some of the stuff that came out of the political rallies. Joe Rogan’s podcast had a lot of influence during the presidential campaign, and I’m curious to see what Bill Maher’s play is. Bill’s in the center, and he calls it right on. I think hearing what he has to say will bring relief to some people.

You’ve also said that it has the power to bring people from different backgrounds, political and cultural perspectives together.

Hirsch: Ideally, comedy is about taking information that may be controversial or polarizing and making it more palatable in a communal setting where everyone comes together to laugh and let off steam. We live in a country where 50% percent of people are pissed off, and 50% are happy. How do we bring those two sides together? By making them laugh. Laughing is a healing process. It soothes the soul.

Andrew, in another conversation, you said that stand-up tours are hotter and more important then ever for comics’ careers.

Fox: People are getting their comedy in all different forms today, including social media and streaming and podcasts, but there’s nothing like the live experience of sitting in an audience, on a date or with friends.

Hirsch: It used to be that everybody wanted a sitcom. Now they want to tour. And for comedy fans, it’s like going to see a band. People want that first-hand experience, and they’ve wanted it more since Covid.

How has stand-up comedy changed since the festival started?

Hirsch: It’s a lot smarter, much more political. It used to be very left-leaning, but now it’s more balanced. There’s a right-leaning side to it now. Women play a much bigger role in comedy now, too. Also, the number of headliners has increased. In the early days, I had maybe 18 headliners. Today, there must be a hundred comics that can headline. I think Caroline’s had a lot to do with that growth. We also played a role in the media’s increased interest in comedy. In the early ‘80s, no one covered comedy. I had to convince people to cover it at the [New York] Daily News, Page Six and on the Howard Stern show.

Is there one particular show at the festival I should not miss if I want to see comedy’s next headliners?

Hirsch: New York’s Funniest. Every year we survey the canvas, so to speak, and select 10 promising comics to participate. Some major comedians have come out of it — Nate Bargatze and Michael Che won in different years. It continues to grow year after year, and it’s a way for comedians who aren’t know to get known and to get agents and managers. The night Michael Che won, he got an agent and a manager at the bar at Caroline’s.