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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”).
One of the highlights of the New York Comedy Festival so far has been Chris Distefano, who performed three back-to-back sets at three different locations of the New York Comedy Club. It wasn’t quite the same as Phil Collins playing at Live Aid in London in 1985 then hopping on the Concorde to do the same at the Philadelphia show, but you try making people double over in laughter for three hours in a single day.
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Distefano’s Hat Trick — an excerpt is posted below — was more than a stunt. He was taking a page from Taylor Swift‘s playbook, and recording live bits that he performed on previous Comedy Central and Netflix specials, so that he could reclaim ownership of his work. The material will be culled from the Hat Trick shows and released as “Chrissy’s Version,” a nod to his inspiration, on Chrissy Chaos, one of two podcasts that he hosts. He and co-host Yannis Pappas recently revived the second, History Hyenas, after a four-year hiatus.
Forty-year-old New York-based Distefano, who has been performing stand-up since 2009, is as savvy about the changing nature of the comedy business as he is funny, and he spoke to Billboard about the value of podcasting, fan-building and his love of The 1975 — and as a comic who married into a Puerto Rican family, his take on Tony Hinchcliffe’s “floating island of garbage” joke at Donald Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally in October.
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You performed at three locations of the New York Comedy Club in one day. What was the impetus behind that?
It was actually Emilio Savone, my manager and the owner of the New York Comedy Club, who was like, “I want to have a headliner come in and do three headlining shows back to back to back at my clubs — something different for the New York Comedy Festival.” He asked me if I wanted to do it. I was like, “Sure.” I was supposed to do the show later in the festival, but I’m going to be in a TV show with Tom Segura and the shooting schedule got changed. So, I did it sooner. And it was fun, man, because I was calling each show Chrissy’s Version — because I was doing old jokes that I did on my Comedy Central and Netflix specials because technically they own the audio rights to that stuff.
I was going to ask you about that. You name-checked Taylor Swift and her re-recorded albums at the show.
Yeah, Taylor Swift rerecorded her stuff to regain ownership of her songs, and I did it with my comedy that night. We’re going to take a mashup of the three shows that I did — three hours of material — take the old bits, call it Chrissy’s Version and upload them on Sirius XM and wherever. Now I’ll own them outright.
Will there be a video streaming version?
Yeah. Every Sunday at 7:00 p.m. for the past, I think it’s 10 weeks, I upload that week’s material on my YouTube channel — 20-30 minutes of my week of standup So, this Sunday, I’m going to put up some of that material. Then Emilio’s guys will take the audio version and get it uploaded to SiriusXM and hopefully they’ll start spinning it. This way, I own the rights.
Are you constantly touring? Are you the Bob Dylan of live comedy?
My rule is I typically only go away two weekends a month. I leave Friday, and I come home Sunday. I’ve got family, little kids, so I don’t want to be eternally on the road. I’ll make less money to have more time with my kids. This idea of a world tour seems good in theory, but it’s just too much time away from my kids. I would only go if they could come with me. I enjoy going on the road, getting my material out there for new audiences across the country. But I try to limit it to one or two times a month, and then the rest of the time I’m usually at one of the New York comedy clubs or the Comedy Cellar working on my material. Then I’ll post that every Sunday.
You have two podcasts.
Yes, I have Chrissy Chaos, which comes out every Tuesday. Then, I also relaunched my old history podcast, History Hyenas, with Yannis Pappas. We just started doing episodes again. It was really a fan favorite. We took a four-year hiatus, and now that we’ve brought it back, fans are really digging it.
Streaming and podcasts seem to be more and more important to comedy. Do they enable you to cut back on touring without sacrificing too much revenue?
To be honest with you, most of my peers and me could live off the money we make in podcasting. I still do the road because I enjoy it but as time goes on, I’m always looking for ways to stay home, stay in New York more, and the podcast is that avenue. Especially Patreon, where History Hyenas lives . That’s the best because that’s all fan generated. They pay $5 a month or $10 a month to get extra content or to get the episodes early.
Really, my whole career and life changed when I put my career in the hands of my fans. I still respect the industry. I have a TV show in development — I’m doing all those things, while generating income because of my fans. I’m living my dream and doing what I want to do with or without the industry. That’s why streaming and all that is very important, and more than that, having a direct relationship with your fans is humungous. It’s changing so rapidly before our eyes, and it’s a beautiful thing. You can have relative anonymity this way.
Take a guy like Tom Segura. He sells out arenas all over the country, and he’s still able to go to those towns and the general population won’t recognize him on the street. He’s making $50 million a year, but he doesn’t have to be locked behind gates with security everywhere — because he has a direct connection with his fans. I think that as far as entertainment goes, we’re living in such a transitional period. You might think, “I should go on this television show to promote myself and sell tickets.” I still do it — but I can do the podcasts from my home, and they will be 10 times more impactful than going on a late-night talk show.
It’s the same in the music industry. Maggie Rogers has yet to have a platinum record, but she sells out arenas all over the world because she has a direct relationship with her fans.
That’s why I like my manager, Emilio. He has adapted to this change. It used to be, a manager booked your flights and set up meetings. That’s not what I need anymore. I can book my own flights on an app with two taps on my phone. I need my manager to digitally market me. When I’m coming to Salt Lake City, calling into a radio station or going on the local news doesn’t work anymore. What I need is — how do you digitally market me so that when everyone opens up their Facebook or their Instagram, they’re seeing an ad for my show, with a link to click for tickets? E
milio and his team is making it very easy for me. It used to be you needed all these middlemen, but now you don’t. I think some of us recognize this shift, but some of my peers… either they don’t want to admit it or they don’t want to adapt. That’s fine, but the old ways — getting a late-night set or a sitcom — don’t put butts in seats anymore.
In your set at the comedy club, you alluded to Tony Hinchcliffe’s Puerto Rico remarks at the Trump rally in New York. You also talked about the Puerto Rican heritage of your partner, your children and your in-laws. Since you straddle both these worlds, how did Hinchcliffe’s joke land with you?
It’s one of those things where, for me, it’s always comedy first. Obviously, I have Puerto Rican family, and I watched the video with them. They were all like, “It was a joke.” You can say, “Is the joke funny or not?” Comedy is subjective — I get it — and I understand that if you’re doing comedy at political rallies, which are non-comedy spaces, you’re definitely opening yourself up to more criticism. Comedy is one of those things where it’s got to be the right setting, the right ambiance.
But I subscribe to comedians that never apologizing. The way I look at it is, you can’t be funny and hateful. Hitler wasn’t funny. So, if a joke misses, it misses. Don’t take one thing someone says and say, “This is who this person is.” That’s not going to get us further as a society.
Some of the best comedy knocks against political correctness, the status quo and even tragedy. What are your limits when you’re onstage?
My thing is, like — you can say whatever you want and cross that line, as long as there’s an attempt at a joke attached to it. Don’t just say a shock-value word to say that shock-value word. That’s being corny. That’s not what comedians do. My job is to thread that needle of saying something that crosses the line and possibly offends someone, but offends them and makes them laugh by making a heavier subject more lighthearted. It’s hard.
When you come to a comedy show, you have to understand what you’re buying a ticket to. There’s a lot of times we all swing for the fences and miss. That’s part of our job. We’re the group that makes light of a situation with humor. To me, it’s my defense mechanism. The reason I’m a comedian – I really started doing this for me, because I was upset that my mom and dad were divorced. So, I would make jokes and try to make my dad laugh when he would come pick me up. I did this because I was upset that my dad wasn’t there, so I would try to make him laugh to hide my tears.
Most comedians come from a place of – it’s our coping mechanism for the world. The comments about Puerto Rico were one of those things where most of us understood that whether you thought it was funny or not, it was just a joke. It didn’t land, he knows that, and it’s fine.
Chris Distefano
SAM CASHELL
Do you think the outrage that followed had any impact on the election?
Dude, it didn’t have an impact on the election because most adults don’t give a s–t about that. Most adults were like, “Hey, I can’t buy gas and groceries, so I’m not going to not vote for whomever I want to vote for because of a joke.” That’s when you’re going to have the celebrities coming out on social media. It may have made a difference ten years ago, but [now] nobody cares.
As a matter of fact, it looks worse when you have J.Lo or even someone who’s conservative telling people what to do and who to vote for. It’s like, “Really, you’re going to tell me what to do in your $50 million f–king mansion? I can barely get by here, so shut up.” I don’t think people understand that.
But with my career, I have to be a man of the people. You’ll see some comics get humongous, and then they have a comedy special talking about their mansion or their private jet and it doesn’t hit as hard — because the viewers are like, “Wait, wait, wait, where is the comedy?” I’m listening to what the common man is going through every day.
You’re also saying the things they’re thinking but are afraid to say, and making people laugh in the process.
That’s why Ricky Gervais is my favorite comedian of all time — a hero of mine, a guy who I would love to work with one day and who I strive to be like. He is far and away my favorite, because look at what he did at the Golden Globes a few years ago. He just destroyed [the celebrities there]. He said to them, straight up, “You guys are in no position to lecture to the public, so get your little f–king award and f–k off.”
Your exchange with the Norwegian guy who said “Americans are dumb” at your show was fascinating. I couldn’t see his face, so I couldn’t tell if he was enjoying the interaction.
You take a chance going into the crowd. He looked like he wasn’t having the best time, but I figure he’s a guy, he’ll be able to handle it. So, I’m like, “Let me poke at him a little bit.” If that was a woman not having a good time, I wouldn’t mess with that. But a guy not having a good time, you can typically f–k with. I think that he liked it, but I do think he had that European attitude when he said that Americans are dumb and stupid. I was agreeing with him — but I also was like, “I’m the one with the microphone in my hand, so I’ll just overpower you with my stupid American logic.”
When he said that, I imagined there was one of those vintage cartoon thought bubbles above your head with a big juicy steak in it.
Yeah. that’s why I love doing live standup because even though I did relatively the same jokes in the same order all three shows, every set was radically different because of the crowd. I would weave in crowd work with this guy and that would change this joke a little bit or whatever it is. That’s why, I know comedy is all over the internet — and I post it there — but the live stand-up comedy experience to me is still the best. Because you could go see your favorite comic and hear them tell the same jokes you heard him or her say on the internet or their special, but it’s going to be a totally different experience, because every audience is like a living, breathing organism that’s changing little things here and there about the show.
Besides your podcast, do you have any other projects in the works?
I have my Hulu special coming out February 21. Hulu is doing its first foray into comedy specials — they’re trying to dethrone Netflix, and they have a different stand-up comedy special every month. I think they’re starting off with Jim Gaffigan and Sebastian Maniscalco, Bill Burr, Andrew Santino, and them I’m the month of February so that’s big.
Since this is Billboard, what music are you listening to?
My all-time favorite musician is Whitney Houston. I’m obsessed with anything Whitney Houston. But my favorite band right now, and has been for the past five years — the only band I’ve ever really cared about — is The 1975. I love those guys. Through comedy, I’ve gotten to know some of the guys — Matty Healy and Ross, and we keep in contact once in a while. I mentioned my fandom for them on The Joe Rogan Show two years ago, and Matty Healy reached out and we connected.
I wasn’t a big music fan growing up. I never went to concerts. But The 1975 came into my life at a time when I needed them, I guess. Then, I listened to interviews with them where they said they’ve been influenced by Whitney Houston. So I’m like, “Oh s–t, this is all connected.”
At the 2024 Grammy ceremony on Feb. 4, host Trevor Noah was nominated for best comedy album for the second time for I Wish You Would, but lost to Dave Chappelle’s What’s in a Name?. The Recording Academy hasn’t announced who will be hosting the 2025 Grammys on Feb. 2, but these two comedians are likely to both be nominated again for best comedy album – Chappelle for The Dreamer and Noah for Where Was I.
Chappelle has been nominated five times in this category – and has never lost in this category. (He did lose in 2022 when one of his albums, 8:46, in which he discussed the 2020 police murder of George Floyd, was judged to be not primarily comedic and was moved to best spoken word album.)
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If Chappelle wins again, he’ll stand just behind Bill Cosby for the most wins in this category. Cosby won seven times from 1965 and 1987. Chappelle is currently tied with George Carlin and Richard Pryor as runner-up in the category.
Jim Gaffigan has been nominated seven times in this category, but has yet to win. He will likely be nominated again this year for The Prisoner. Gaffigan is the only comedian (and the only non-Grammy winner) who was announced last week as one of the presenters of the Grammy nominations on the livestream on Friday (Nov. 8). Does that mean the academy knows for a fact that he’s going to be nominated and booked him for the livestream so they’d have a happy reaction shot? I don’t think the academy knows that far in advance who is going to be nominated, but his booking on the livestream certainly isn’t a bad sign about his chances for another nod this year.
Adam Sandler, a three-time nominee in this category, is entered for Love You. Sandler and Chappelle are both past recipients of the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.
Tig Notaro, a two-time nominee in this category, is entered with Hello Again. David Cross, also a two-time nominee, is entered for Worst Daddy in the World.
Joe Rogan is a contender with Burn the Boats. The Joe Rogan Experience is considered one of the most influential podcasts, though his politics do not align with that of most Grammy voters (as evidenced by the fact that only Democratic presidents and first ladies tend to be nominated for best audio book recording.) Burn the Boats is Rogan’s latest Netflix special.
Conan O’Brien, who won his fifth Primetime Emmy in September for Conan O’Brien Must Go, is entered with Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend: Quinquennial Celebration, a collaboration with Sona Movsesian and Matt Gourley.
Taylor Tomlinson, the host of After Midnight, which follows The Late Show With Stephen Colbert on CBS, is entered with Have It All.
Nikki Glaser, who is set to host the 2025 Golden Globes telecast on Jan. 5, is entered with Someday You’ll Die. Jo Koy, who hosted that show earlier this year, is entered with Live From Brooklyn. Ricky Gervais, who hosted the Globes five times between 2010 and 2020, is entered with Armageddon.
Several other potential nominees have also hosted awards shows. Marlon Wayans, who co-hosted the MTV VMAs in 2000 with his brother, Shawn Wayans, is entered with Good Grief. Kevin James, who hosted the People’s Choice Awards in 2001-02, is entered with Irregardless. Jack Whitehall, who hosted the Brit Awards four years running, from 2018-21, is entered with Settle Down.
Other notable contenders on the entry list of 94 albums include Shane Gillis’ Beautiful Dogs, Demetri Martin’s Demetri Deconstructed and Matt Rife’s Lucid – A Crowd Work Special.
Our Fearless Forecast
Dave Chappelle, The Dreamer
Jim Gaffigan, The Prisoner
Trevor Noah, Where Was I
Tig Notaro, Hello Again
Adam Sander, Love You
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Abso Lutely Productions, the company behind the Eric and Tim Awesome Show, Good Job!, Moonbase 8, The Eric Andre Show and numerous stand-up comedy specials, unveiled its Abso Lutely Records label on Sept. 30, with the release of stand-up comic and musician Tim Platt’s debut album Teeth Like Beak. The label intends to capitalize on the current popularity of stand-up comedy specials through audio recordings that will be released on vinyl (among other formats), and producer and Abso Lutely partner Dave Kneebone says, give comic artists more creative control and the opportunity to own their work.
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“Abso Lutely Productions has always thrived on giving the ultimate creative control directly to the artists and helping to shepherd their vision to their audience. Trust the idea – it’s at the core of what we do,” Kneebone says. “We created Abso Lutely Records so that we can help push performances and performers that we love, but who might not quickly find an audience on their own.
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Although the label won’t limit its releases to musical comedy, Kneebone says Platt — who has written songs for Sesame Street and The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon — is the ideal choice for Abso Lutely’s first album, in part, because vinyl will be a key component of its business plan. Teeth Like Beak, which was recorded at Brooklyn’s Union Hall in February, is a mix of songs, character work, one-liners and confessional stories.
Abso Lutely has produced projects for Netflix, Comedy Central, Cartoon Network, HBO, and Showtime, and worked with such break-out talents as Andre, Nathan Fielder and Hannah Einbinder, as well as comedy veterans Scott Aukerman, Bob Odenkirk, David Cross and Andy Daly. It’s more recent stand-up special productions include Einbinder’s Everything Must Go, John Early’s Now More Than Ever and Brent Weinbach’s Popular Culture. In 2023, Abso Lutely — — which was formed in 2007 to produce the surreal sketch comedy show, Adult Swim‘s Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! — partnered with the comic improv institution, the Upright Citizens Brigade, which minted such contemporary comics and actors as Amy Poehler, Aubrey Plaza, Donald Glover, Kate McKinnon and Nick Kroll.
Kneebone spoke to Billboard about his love of comedy albums and vinyl, Abso Lutely’s business strategy, which includes giving comics more control of their work, and the growing role of social media in breaking talent, among other subjects.
I’ve got to ask you — is Kneebone your actual surname?
It is. It’s an old Cornish name — English miners from way back.
I cursed it all the time growing up. What a dumbass name. But as you age and you grow into it, especially in this business, it doesn’t hurt to have a somewhat distinct name attached to you.
Why start a record label at this period in time?
It’s something that we — particularly Tim Heidecker, who is a musician and a comedian — have been talking about for a long time. But it was never our core competency. We didn’t know how to run a label. As time went on and we started spending more time shooting standup specials — it’s a big moment right now for standup specials — we were like, why not us? Hannah Einbinder, who just did her special for Max, was keen on getting a record made of the special. I was like, that’s a great idea. I went home that night and thought, there’s no reason that we can’t give that outlet to these folks that we’re working with.
I grew up listening to comedy records: Bob Newhart and Steve Martin and Bill Cosby and Bob and Doug McKenzie’s Great White North record. It’s a great experience and a great gift to give yourself. It’s theater of the mind. I’d rather sit home with a beer and listen to it on a record than be in a club sometimes. We were like, why not do this and give a chance to the folks who are not Hannah Einbinder and John Mulaney and Nikki Glaser? Our stock and trade at Abso Lutely Productions is finding off-the-radar comedic voices. Here’s a way to help amplify that. And it doesn’t cost as much as making a television series.
Will you be digital only?
No. Digital is so easy that obviously it’s digital first. But part of the love that I have for comedy records is the record — the artwork, the liner notes, the physical. I love going through record stores, and I think the renaissance vinyl records are having is fantastic. We want to be a part of that, and we have more options than ever because of buddies of ours who have custom vinyl pressing houses. Why not make something beautiful to begin with? Something great to listen to and also great to hold in your hands.
Listening to a great comedy album is the equivalent of hearing a great album or song. Every time you hear it after that, you’re able to say, “I was at this place, doing this, feeling this when I heard it.”
It’s a core memory. You create the picture of the bit in your mind, whether it’s Bill Cosby or Bob Newhart or Steve Martin. I have very vivid memories of the way my eight-year-old brain conceived of this joke. I still see it. You don’t get that from watching [stand-up] specials. The only restriction is — I love silent, physical comedy, but that doesn’t translate well.
You’re not going to do a Billy the Mime album.
Actually, that would be a great joke. I’d love to do that. Here’s the world’s greatest mime.
In choosing Tim Platt, who does a lot of musical comedy, for the first album, is that going to be a theme of your label?
Not necessarily, although I’m drawn to that. When Tim Platt and I started talking about us releasing his record it was a natural fit for that reason because he’s so talented musically as well.There’s something about Tim Platt that is evocative of Steve Martin early on. Martin jumped so seamlessly and deftly between bizarre, high-concept joke structures and then playing an alluring melody that turned into a joke. Tim does such a nice job of navigating between those two things that it felt like yeah, this wants to be a record. But we’re not going to be exclusive to musical comedy.
Given that an absurdist threat runs through the comedy of your partners and Tim Platt, will your label offer a lot of that?
That’s my taste and Tim Heidecker’s and Eric Wareheim’s taste — something that’s surprising and weird and fresh. That’s always been the guiding light for our company. Let’s find something we haven’t heard before. Somebody saying something in a way we haven’t seen before.
Comedy that you must hear and cannot be explained.
Without question. That’s usually, to me, the hallmark of something that’s special and good.
What terms are you negotiating with the comics who release albums on Abso Lutely? Do they keep their masters?
This is still a work in progress, but our guiding principle is — and one of the things that spurred us to do this — is that the artists should own their work. We’re not doing this as a charity. We’ll split it with them, but so many of the deals that get made these days are, hey young guy, I know you’ve been touring this hour that you’ve been working on for five years. Come here to this giant mega streamer service and here’s your little sum of money. You can brag about it and send the links to people, but there’s no long tail of revenue. It’s good advertising, but the work that you crafted for so long, kiss it goodbye. It’s heartbreak.
I was surprised to hear how little a Netflix plays for name comics to shoot specials for them.
Obviously, this is universal. The economics aren’t what they used to be. And it gets to a point where, especially if you’re younger or not a mainstream comic, where the upside is not that far up anymore. So, why not go craft the record with the artwork that you want, with the sound that you want, with the material that you want and get it out to an audience and directly participate from dollar one in the benefit of this thing?
We’re doing the same thing with shooting specials here. We’ve done it under a partnership with [Upright Citizens Brigade]. We’re like, “We can make good specials without them costing a million dollars. And the focus is artist-first. Let’s do it for a lower budget and share the control and ownership directly with the artist in a more substantive and genuine way. We’ll make a record of it. We’ll get it on SiriusXM, we’ll create merch.” Being able to provide multiple streams of revenue to these comics is something that we can do now. This technology didn’t exist for us 20 years ago, but this is something that we can do now and we can do it damn near as good as anyone else.
Who’s going to distribute your records?
We’ve talked to a few people. Right now, we’re doing it ourselves, but when we’re up on our feet a little bit more we’ll extend the conversation and try to find a partner.
Social media has become an important tool for comics to grow fan bases. What is more important today – touring as a standup comedian or social media?
I think they have to go hand-in-hand now. You have to learn to use them together. But I also know comedians who choose to ignore social media because they don’t want to burn good material. Everybody is going to see it, and then they come to the club with preconceived notions, and you have to do that bit again. It’s a double-edged sword.
Can you reveal any future releases?
We have a couple more. I can’t give you any details because we haven’t closed the paperwork, but they’re great, weird comedians who I love and who are familiar in the comedy world. Those and at least one more this year or early next year. Then next year I would like to do a full slate — our anticipation is that we would like to do half a dozen at least a year.
Will there be a video component to the Tim Platt record?
Not from Abso Lutely. He filmed the show that as part of the recording at Union Hall that we are releasing, but this is only a record release for us. That said, many of the upcoming projects we have there will be a dual component, where we will make a special and we will do the record version of that special as a tandem piece for that project.
What are the biggest challenges or headwinds that the comedy business is facing in the coming five years?
In the current media landscape — film, television and records — there is not so much of that middle level of tastemaker on the buyer side that there used to be. People with enough rope to hang themselves creatively to say, “I’m willing to try this. This might not be for me but there’s something in it. Let’s make a pilot.” Or, “I’m not sure what this is but let’s check it out. Let’s do a season of this show because that’s how it finds its legs.” That process is going extinct in a lot of ways — and it’s the biggest challenge that I face, as someone whose job it is to try to get an idea, a comedy bit or a joke or a piece of talent in front of a buyer.
It’s so interesting because there are more and more streaming platforms that need content. Is it just a fear of risk?
Yeah, to a large extent it is risk aversion, because the competition is so fierce. You don’t want to be out there taking funky swings at crazy little projects while your competitor over here is making huge big-name projects — big bankable IP. If you fail in your endeavor, then lights out. Which is unfortunate, because with comedy, the best s–t is made when people are like, “I don’t know what this is but let’s try it.”
That’s what Mike Lazzo — who we owe so much of our professional success to — was great at: taking risks. He was the head of Adult Swim, and a lot of that [programming] was born from, “Well, let’s give it a shot. Let’s build a boat as we’re sailing it.” It sounds like bad business advice, but it’s good for comedy.