Mike Birbiglia — Closing in for the kill

Comedian and storyteller Mike Birbiglia has mastered a fusion of the two forms, turning jokes into stories that become radio, one-man theater, books and movies. His newest stage show finds him going back to his first love, jokes, while still uniting them in a larger story. LEO caught up with him by phone last week.

LEO: You worked over and over to hone (your last show) “My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend.” How have you learned to finesse your show while you’re on stage?
Mike Birbiglia: I edit a lot of stuff based on audience response. That helps. There’s a bar near where I live in Brooklyn, called Union Hall, which is actually where I shot a lot of (the movie) “Sleepwalk With Me.” I do this show called “Working It Out” there every Monday night, and I go and put a ton of writing on stage. Lots of times, I’ll bring notes up with me, and I’ll see what sticks, what does well with the audience. I’ll put them up the next night, cut the things that didn’t work and add new stuff.

I used to work a lot more joke to joke, when I was starting out. When I wrote my (2006) album, Two Drink Mike, it was very much, “Here’s my 50 jokes.” Now it’s, “Here’s my 10 stories.” I’m just trying to figure out how to squeeze the most jokes into those 10 stories. I’ll go on stage and I’ll know what the beginnings and the ends of a story are, but I’ll improvise the middle until I find what’s the best middle of the story.

LEO: So you’re not a comic who keeps trying to make his favorite joke work even when it’s not?
MB: Not really. I do my shows now all over the world — I did the last one in London, Australia, Canada and 70 cities in America — and I really want everything to work everywhere. I want to find the most human version of the joke that I’m writing. And I actually find traveling to be the best thing for that. It’s good to do shows in the South, in the Northeast, in the Pacific Northwest — it helps you understand what’s human about what you’re writing.

LEO: You have a love for the films of Woody Allen and James L. Brooks —
MB: Sure!

LEO: They are more interested in exploring emotions, even if it means losing a joke here and there. Since you’re starting out from that place, and it took Woody a while to get to, how do you think you can continue to grow when you’ve already got the right idea?
MB: Yeah, yeah, I know what you’re saying, yeah. I think the key is to continue to go places that are uncomfortable for you. Like, in my new show, I really try to dive into “Why are jokes uncomfortable?” Why can’t you tell jokes at work? Why can you only tell jokes with your close friends? Which are the types of jokes that are taboo, and why? That’s what’s exciting about the show for me right now.

LEO: And you’re still doing stories?
MB: Yeah, 10 stories, exactly, at this point. But it’s a little less single-narrative than “Girlfriend’s Boyfriend” and “Sleepwalk With Me” were; I wanted to get back to a show that … I was itching to do something that was the funniest bunch of bits I can possibly think of. And what I found while I was creating that, over the last couple of years, was the through line of that had to do with jokes; jokes themselves and mistakes that have to do with jokes. That’s why I called it “Thank God for Jokes.”

LEO: But people shouldn’t assume it’s about religion, correct?
MB: No — at one point I was going to call it “Religion, Sex and Politics,” because those are the three topics you’re not allowed to talk about at parties. And those happened to be the three topics I wanted — all I wanted to talk about at parties (laughs). I dip my toe in religion, I dip my toe in sex and politics, but more than anything, I try to dig into “What is it about humor that alienates us from people?” But then, ultimately, for me, it makes me feel closer to people.

Mike Birbiglia’s ‘Thank God for Jokes’
Saturday, Jan. 18
Brown Theatre
315 W. Broadway
kentuckycenter.org
$25; 7:30 p.m.

Here
c. 2014 LEO Weekly

Man Man’s business plan

The deconstructionist band has been popping up in unexpected places



Man Man ended 2013 with CNN’s Anderson Cooper mangling their name. It was the perfect capper for a band that has spent a decade baffling both fans and critics, a band led by a man named Ryan Kattner, who also calls himself Honus Honus.

The CNN shout-out, following up on a story Cooper reported in September, was for the band’s song “End Boss,” which imagines Cooper’s colleague Wolf Blitzer as a “vodka-swilling baby eater.” “He’s very sweet — I love that man,” Kattner says about Cooper. “I’d love to meet him someday. And if he could grace me with a kiss, I’d be so happy … That whole experience was ridiculous. I don’t know, out of the millions of people watching, if that even registers as anything, but it’s still fucking amazing.”

The song is on Man Man’s most recent album, On Oni Pond, arguably their most accessible and mature album to date. But accessible is relative here; the band still sounds like a swirling circus, though their chaos has coalesced into something relatively easier to digest.

Kattner, now 35, calls diehard fans of their early material “those pony-tail guys clinging to me writing the kind of songs I wrote when I was 22.”

“I can’t keep writing the songs I wrote 10 years ago,” says the singer/keyboardist. “I’d rather swallow a bullet than do that.”

Kattner says he didn’t intend to write any songs for the pop charts this time, but recognizes that one song, “Head First (Hold On To Your Heart),” could be a hit, if presented more straightforwardly. The right woman, he says, could sing that song pretty well.

“That’s a song — I wish I could have written that 10 years ago. But I don’t think I could have done it sincerely … I just don’t think I had enough life experience to actually feel the feelings to write that kind of song.

“I’m proud of the song,” he adds. “I’m happy that it’s been able to have some legs. It’s pretty surreal for us that that song has been able to get on Modern (rock) radio. That’s as surreal as the CNN stuff, to have the song on rotation with Korn and stuff.”

He acknowledges that “we didn’t make things easy for ourselves” by naming the band Man Man, “or even, in the case of this single, by calling it ‘Head On’ instead of ‘Hold On To Your Heart’ — I don’t know what I was thinking.”

The band has flirted with mainstream success before, with their songs popping up in commercials and on TV shows, but find themselves now in a more difficult phase of their career — doing some of their best work, but no longer being the hot new thing. It’s a dilemma others have faced before, like the Flaming Lips in the mid-’90s, and Man Man’s most popular days may be coming soon. That is, if Kattner and drummer cohort Chris Powell (aka Pow Pow) can keep the band together.

Asked how many members have passed through Man Man, Kattner sighs and laughs simultaneously. “Eh, it doesn’t matter … All that matters is that Chris and I are sticking around.”

Kattner summarizes their plan as: “Hopefully, we can keep percolating up through the cracks of the mainstream.”

This time around, the band has, like a wolf, acquired some new, younger blood that has kept its leaders alert. “These are their after-school activities,” Kattner jokes. “It counts toward college credit.”

Kattner’s mostly joking advice to younger musicians who want to start a band? Maybe go to business school instead. “Don’t start a band ’cause you want to have a livelihood, ’cause there isn’t one. Maybe there is for, like, 1 percent of people that do it, but it’s no way to live,” he says.

But you’ve made it this far, I argue. “Have I?” he laughs. “I think (I have) just out of sheer determination and maniacal fortitude. It’s also borderline delusional. I think that’s why I’ve made it this far. If you’re willing to sacrifice relationships, creature comforts, stability, the prospect of ending up on the street someday — if these are all things that you can turn a blind eye to past your 20s, then you’re good to go. But, you know, do it while you’re young.”

Man Man with Xenia Rubinos
Friday, Jan. 17
Zanzabar
2100 S. Preston St.
zanzabarlouisville.ticketfly.com
$16-$18; 9 p.m.

Here
c. 2014 LEO Weekly

No strings attached

“I’ve been traveling (to Santa Fe, N.M.) because my girlfriend is going to grad school,” Evan Patterson says. “She had this old parlor guitar that didn’t have any strings on it. You really couldn’t play past the fifth fret and make anything that was in tune. So I worked with what I had and starting writing songs.”

Jaye Jayle wasn’t planned. Patterson already had two bands, Young Widows and Old Baby. Young Widows is the oldest, and heaviest, of his bands. Old Baby takes more of a classic rock/psych approach, driven by Patterson and co-leader Jonathan Wood. Jaye Jayle is Patterson with a rotating group of players jumping in as needed. While all three sound distinct from each other, Patterson’s intense approach to his instrument unites them with the lonesome, brutal cries he coaxes.

He wrote five Jaye Jayle songs on his first visit to Santa Fe, then three or four more the next time, and then a couple more. He sent them to friends and realized, “Oh shit, I’ve got a record here!”

Even the recording circumstances were different for him this time. The album, ... It's Jayle Time, was put together over two weekends by sound recordist Warren Christopher Gray in his home. Friends were invited to show up and improvise parts to add.

Patterson says recording in a welcoming family setting was “a really positive experience.” The setting made him feel safer to try new approaches than he would in a conventional studio, and the minimalist songs, too, left extra room for experimenting.

He’s also trying something different with the release of the songs. The whole piece can be purchased now on the site Bandcamp, and limited edition 7” singles will be released on vinyl each month, on different labels.

Having different outlets has made his original love, Young Widows, “easier” in some ways. They have recorded a new album, which Patterson says is “the heaviest thing I think I’ve done.”

“I really don’t know what I would do if I wasn’t being productive in music in some way.”

Here
Jaye Jayle plays Zanzabar on Wednesday, Jan. 22, at 9 p.m.