Stephen Lynch on the second leg of 3 Balloons and his upcoming special

Stephen Lynch kicked off the first leg of his 3 Balloons Tour in Boston in February. Now he’s on the second leg of the tour and heading to the Hanover Theatre in Worcester Saturday. Sometime next year, you can expect to see a few different versions of the tour on a Comedy Central special, on DVD, and as a concert film, if you happen to frequent film festivals. I caught up with Lynch by phone last week.

How has the tour been going since you were here in February?

The show is much funnier than it was when we were in Boston, I’m pleased to report. Even though it was pretty good then, we’ve learned a few things. It’s going well. We finished that big tour in the spring and then I took the summer off, and then I started off this new tour with a trip to Europe where I did a bunch of Scandinavian dates and Dublin and Germany. It’s been going really well. Now we’re back to the U.S. and doing some places we missed on the first part of the tour.

Is it still the 3 Balloons Tour?

Yeah. The record’s eight months old now, but it’s still the same tour, really. We’re doing the same show, maybe a few changes here and there as we come up with things.

If someone saw you in Boston at the start of the tour and came to see you in Worcester, how would it be different?

Uh. Oh boy. Now I have to write something really quickly before I get to Worcester, don’t I? The show always is evolving, so I can’t tell you exactly what will be different. The set-up will be the same, where I show some videos and do a bunch of songs from the new record and I have some friends join me onstage. But there will be subtle things, and some new jokes here and maybe a song or two replaced as we come up with other things. But nothing radically different.

When you say it’s funnier, is it just a matter of the timing?

Yeah. The jokes start to gel and you start to think of better transitions between songs, and song orders, you experiment with those. By the time I’m done with this tour, I don’t know when it will be, probably sometime next year, it’ll be just where I want it. And that’s the time you have to hang it up and start over again. Which is unfortunate, but that’s how it works.

Are you someone who can write on tour?

Not really, no. I mean, yeah, I’ve done it before. But what I really need is time and isolation, which is sort of hard to come by when you’re traveling with people and checking into hotels and on airplanes all the time. What I need to write really is to sequester myself in a room somewhere with nobody around me and force myself to do it. If given the chance to watch America’s Next Top Model or write, I will probably watch TV before I take up a pen. Which is unfortunate, but I’m very easily distracted.

Then all the songs would wind up being about America’s Top Model or the people who annoyed you on the airplane.

Yeah. That would really be horrible. Maybe not. Maybe I could write a rock opera based on America’s Next Top Model. I think it would have a very short shelf life, though.

Have you taped the show that’s going to be the new DVD yet?

Yeah. We taped it back in, I think it was April in Portland. I shouldn’t say we taped it, we filmed it. We actually used film because I wanted it to have a certain look. I haven’t seen any of the footage yet so I don’t know if it’s going to have that look that I wanted it to have, sort of a 70s rock concert, Last Waltz-type look to it. So we’ll see. I hope it comes out the way I see it in my head. I wanted it to look sort of classic and not just another something you’d see on Comedy Central.

Was there a particular reason for doing it at the Aladdin Theatre?

I like the theater. It’s sort of an old, decrepit movie theater. I don’t know when it was built. It’s got to be a hundred years old, I’m guessing. And I always pull good crowds there. And there were film crews readily accessible there. So instead of doing it somewhere where I would have had to fly in a crew of a hundred people, there were people there or near there already. I’ve always done good shows in Portland, too.

Did you do anything differently for the filming?

No. I did essentially the same show. Now what I can use out of that, I’m not sure. For example, I always close my show with “Purple Rain,” which I think would probably more than I would ever make on the sale of the DVDs to actually use, because Prince does not come cheap, I do not think. So that’ll be out. I’ll have to think of a different way to close the show. And the video, I’m thinking what I’ll do is sort of intersperse the video that I show during the show with songs and with other videos, other tour diary type videos, which I have yet to shoot. I’m trying to give it some sort of storyline instead of just song after song after song. I think, I mean, that’s the plan now. Don’t hold me to any of this. I have no idea how it’s going to turn out. I have some interesting ideas.

So Comedy Central’s going to have an hour version of it, you’ve got a version that’s going to be going around to film festivals, and the version that winds up on the DVD. Are those going to be three different versions?

No, I would assume that the one that winds up on the DVD will be the official work, and then if we chose to send that out to festivals, great. But what we give to Comedy Central will just be an abbreviated version. I don’t know what they want, I don’t know if they want just the songs or if they want the shortened version of the story I’m going to come up with. I don’t know. I’m really wracking me brain trying to figure out how to make this all come together.

How did you choose Gregory Dark to direct the concert film?

Somebody suggested him, I can’t remember who it was, exactly. But he came to see a show I did in Los Angeles and we spoke after the show, and he seemed to really be on board and have some good ideas and be on the same page as I was, so we just sort of clicked.

Had you seen any of his work before?

You mean his work in the music video world or the pornography world?

I’m unaware of his work in the pornography world.

Apparently he did some early work, in the 80s, I think, in the porno world. No, I wasn’t really familiar with any of his work. I just saw that he had a lot of experience, and then when I talked to him, we seemed to hit it off. That was enough for me.

Did he try to make you wear a big fuzzy mustache?

Yeah. It turned into a whole porn shoot. There were fluffers there before the show.

When does this get released in the different iterations?

You know what, I don’t know. I have to finish it first. Obviously people are waiting for me, waiting very patiently for me to do this. We did film it several months ago. But I like to take my time with these things. I want to make sure it’s quality before I put it out.

Do you have any plans for once the tour is over?

Hopefully I’ll have started writing new songs and I can get into the studio again and start recording. The last record, we did the whole thing in a week in a studio in Brooklyn. And this time what I’d like to do is sort of record in chunks, so when it comes time to put out the new record I don’t have to rush in and finish everything. I’ll have things that are already done. And that way I can tweak things to my version of perfection and change things as I go. So that’s the plan for now, just keep writing, recording.

Any idea, other than the method of recording, how you want things to be different from previous recordings?

I wouldn’t mind doing something with more of a through line to it. Maybe I’ll take a stab at a rock opera one of these days. Or even a mini rock opera and the rest can be unrelated songs. The idea of telling a little story seems intriguing to me. It’s something I’ve been thinking about for the past few months.

Read my previous interview with Lynch here.
Or watch my post-show interview from Boston here.

Weekend Comedy -- Stephen Lynch, Whitest Kids U'Know, DJ Hazard

It was a busy weekend in Boston comedy with three great sold-out shows from a couple of out of town acts and a Boston treasure coming back to his old stomping grounds. Starting with Saturday and working backwards, DJ Hazard at Mottley's Comedy Club was the show to see. The club holds just shy of one hundred people, and it was packed to maximum capacity to see Hazard, who now lives in New York City.

It was a hot crowd, and they were didn't take long to warm up to Tim McIntire and Bethany Van Delft, who hosted and middled the show. Van Delft was especially on, with material about her modeling days and efforts to conceive. She mixed drier, headier material with a couple of well-placed, more graphic punchlines. Ira Proctor did a drop-in set, working on material for a tape to send to the Tonight Show. He did what you'd call an extremely tight five, talking about running to get in shape after not having done it in a while ("It's changed," he said), and the type of lazy it takes to not get off the couch, even to go to bed.

But it was Hazard's night, and he absolutely crushed. Material new and old -- a few things you'll hear on his new CD, Man of Hazardium,and a few things I'd never heard him do. He compared going on a first date to bringing your balls to the Antique Roadshow (I won't spoil the punchline for you), talked about gun violence (I'm beginning to think if more people got shot, less people would get shot"), performing on cruise ships, and a variety of topics for about an hour's set with not a single lull.

He closed with a classic Hazard tune, "Untie My Ankles," which is so far removed from the original Juice Newton song from which Hazard borrows the tune that it had no right to go over as well as it does. Attribute that to Hazard's skill at feeling out a crowd and timing a set. The song went right into his "DJ Hazard -- Nightclub Comedian" routine, wherein an animatronic DJ mouths a prerecorded message from the future. If you're a Hazard fan and haven't seen this bit, see him every time you can until he does it. It's offbeat, inventive, and it was just the right way to sign off for a well-satisfied audience.

Friday, I pulled double-duty, catching the Whitest Kids U'Know at Great Scott and the late Stephen Lynch show at the Comedy Connection Wilbur Theatre. The Whitest Kids were playing Anderson Comedy's usual Friday night show, The Gas, and sold it out about an hour before show time. They brought a mix of sketch comedy and video, material most of the audience seemed to recognize from their Tuesday night show on IFC, like the Deer Hunter sketch and "Slow Jerk" (check my interview post from earlier this week for videos of the original sketches). I spoke with Sam Brown (a Sandwich native) after the show, and him to describe what you missed if you didn't see the show.

Here's the quick interview:


Stpehen Lynch played two sold out shows at the Wilbur, each of them about two hours of music drawn mostly from his new album, 3 Balloons. I caught the second show, which was literally the second show of the tour, and the second time Lynch had performed this material together the way he will for the rest of the tour (he's done a bunch of the songs for one-off gigs, and you can find a few of the songs if you search YouTube). He did twelve of the fourteen songs on 3 Balloons, a few old favorites like "Special," showed a couple of video shorts, and even covered Prince. He had a bit of support from friends David Josefsberg (whom he perfomed with on Broadway doing The Wedding Singer) and Rod Cone, who helped with the banter and the background singing. For the encore, he played piano for what he said was the first time onstage in front of an audience.

I spoke with the very tired Lynch backsstage after the show about the show and the tour:

Stephen Lynch On Baby Seals and Peanuts Kids

Stephen Lynch will be in town tomorrow, playing the Comedy Connection Wilbur Theatre for two shows I am told are now sold out (never hurts to check Ticketmaster if you are still looking for tickets, though). Not a bad kickoff for his Comedy Central Live: 3 Balloons Tour, which will eventually take him across the US and into London, Ireland, Sweden, and Holland, with more dates still to be announced. And that's before his new album, also named 3 Balloons (coincidence?), hits shelves on March 24.

The album can get a bit raunchy, with tunes like "Medieval Bush" (self-explanatory) and "Hallelujah," in which Lynch professes his thankfulness for a certain part of the female anatomy. Lynch is coming off a Tony-nominated run in the title role of The Wedding Singer on Broadway, and getting right back to work -- he has a new DVD and a new special due by the end of the year. I caught up to him by e-mail this week.

So when can we expect your children’s album?

I don't need to do a children's album. I feel my records are appropriate for any age. Next time your baby is crying and won't sleep, try humming a few bars of "Waiting for My AIDS Test to Come Back," for example. Your child will be both entertained and lulled into sleep.

3 Balloons goes even a bit further into the scatological – did you have all of this to get out of your system after having to be a bit cleaner on Broadway?

I don't think this album has much in the way of scatological humor at all. It covers a wide array of topics, from those bad-ass Peanuts kids to my experience as a grade school teacher to Marvin Gaye's diary entries. I certainly felt a sense of freedom in what I could write having done squeaky-clean Broadway for a year, but as is always the case, I never decide to write for shock value or gross out value. It's what i think is funny. By the way, I did manage to sneak a line about "clubbing baby seals" into The Wedding Singer, so it wasn't all bad...

I can hear “The Ballad of Scarface” or “America” playing on college folk stations or at coffeehouses with no one quite noticing the lyrics at first. Do you listen that genre of folk music?

I've always loved the folk music. Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Pete Seeger, It's the simplest way to tell a story, and sometimes the most effective. So it works for what I try to do too. Plus, it's easier to write jokes in that style, as opposed to say, Pantera or Yes. Although "Roundabout" IS hilarious...

“America” almost seems heartfelt at times – is that something you think about? Trying to write something you actually feel sometimes, while still going for the joke?

I wrote "America" in London a couple years ago, when the world's view of our country was probably at its worst. The more hopeful ending came as a burst of inspiration after the Presidential election. That song is the closest thing to sincere that you'll find on one of my records. Well, that and the AIDS test song.

Have you ever performed Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah?” Maybe a medley of yours and his?

That medley would be 73 minutes long. But very profound. And moving. His is a song about spirituality, sin, regret, repentance, and longing. Mine is about tits.

You used fan videos to help promote the show in your newsletter. Do you approve of people posting their videos of your shows online? Is it something you explicitly condone?

I love the fact that everything is online. It's like free advertising. I just did sold out shows in Scandinavia, where I've never been on t.v. or the radio, and I can only credit YouTube for the fact that anyone knows any of my material over there. It does get a little weird when you perform a song for the first time, and the next night people are singing along to it. Very creepy.

Did you take anything valuable away from having been on Broadway with “The Wedding Singer?” Did you find a different audience there?

The first few months of shows I did after The Wedding Singer brought a few curious Broadway fans, most of whom left after the first song. Let's just say that I don't have the same demographic appeal as "The Lion King."

Were you surprised by the Tony Award nomination?

What are you insinuating? That I SHOULD have been surprised? How dare you? No, I wasn't surprised- I was expecting the Goddamn nomination! And I should have won, too! Son of a Bitch Jersey Boys! Ok, I was surprised.

How did you approach the arrangements since you had a full band to work with this time?

I just played them like I play them live onstage, then added other instruments in to fill out the sound. That way I hopefully avoid overshadowing the comedy. I actually think the other instruments make some of the songs funnier. Especially that crazy slide whistle- always hilarious!!! there's no slide whistle.

Are you bringing a band on tour?

No, but I will be performing some of the songs karaoke style to a track with full band and orchestration. This allows me the freedom to move around the stage, go out into the audience and do quick bong hits backstage during a song.

Is this the same show that’s going to make it to the DVD?

I'm not sure what the DVD is going to be yet. It could be the new show. Or maybe a combination of the new show and the show from the last tour. Or the new show, the old show and some Klezmer music. Or the new show, the old show, some Klezmer music and a few Lionel Ritchie covers. Yeah. I've just decided. THAT'S what the DVD will be.

What are the “multi-media” elements of the show?

I'm still working on these, even a couple days before the first show. It will most likely consist of short videos, slides, images to accompany songs as I play them live, etc.

Does having Comedy Central behind this tour help get you into venues you haven’t played before, or help you get more people in the seats?

Every time one of my specials air on Comedy Central I see an increase in ticket and record sales, so yes.

Your father has a folk trio in Saginaw – do you ever play together? If so, what do you play?

We usually sit around the piano and do Klezmer music. And Lionel Ritchie covers.

Stephen Lynch Kicks Off 3 Balloons Tour at the Wilbur Feb. 27

Musical comedian Stephen Lynch, last seen on Broadway playing the Adam Sandler role in the Broadway adaptation of The Wedding Singer, announced plans for a new tour, album, Comedy Central special, and DVD on his mailing list today. The 3 Balloons Tour, named for his new album due in March, kicks off at the Wilbur Theatre Feburay 27. Lynch also mentions a new 1-hour Comedy Central special to be released later this year, with a DVD of the special expected "around Christmas."

Here's a link to the title track of 3 Balloons, which I will just say is not about children's parties, from September.



Complete Tour Listing:
02/27/2009 Boston, MA Wilbur Theater
02/28/2009 Buffalo, NY UB Center For The Arts

03/06/2009 Chicago, IL Congers Theater
03/07/2009 Madison, WI Barrymore Theater
03/13/2009 Minneapolis, MN State Theater
03/14/2009 Detroit, MI Fillmore
03/19/2009 Indianapolis, IN Egyptian Room
03/20/2009 Cleveland, OH Lorain Theater
03/21/2009 Wilkes Barre, PA Kirby Center
03/26/2009 Rochester, NY St. John Fisher College
03/27/2009 Montclair, NJ Wellmont Theater
03/28/2009 Washington, DC Warner Theater

04/02/2009 Austin, TX Paramount Theater
04/03/2009 Dallas, TX Majestic Theater
04/04/2009 Houston, TX Verizon Theater
04/16/2009 Stamford, CT Palace Theater
04/17/2009 Poughkeepsie, NY Bardovan Center
04/18/2009 Albany, NY The Egg
04/23/2009 Westbury, NY Capitol One Theater
04/24 & 4/25/2009 Atlantic City NJ Borgata Music Box

05/01/2009 Los Angeles, CA Wiltern Theater
05/02/2009 Las Vegas, NV House Of Blues
05/07/2009 West Palm, FL Improv
05/08/2009 Orlando, FL Hard Rock
05/09/2009 Atlanta, GA Tabernacle
05/14/2009 San Francisco, CA Warfield
05/15/2009 Seattle,WA Moore Theater
05/16/2009 Portland, OR Alladin Theater