Tragedy Plus Time takes us into the world of comedy in Toronto. With reviews of venues and shows as well as interviews and profiles with some of Toronto’s comics. Follow @TIAComedy

Photo: Poster by Kurt Firla and Kathleen Phillips-Locke

Toronto comic Chris Locke is recording his debut album, The World is Embarrassing. The recording will take place at The Ossington over two evenings, December 10th and 11th.

Read the interview we did with him a couple of months ago for his JFL42 show, which we also reviewed.

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 10:

Hosted by:

Adam Christie

And also featuring:

Dylan Gott
Tim Gilbert

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 11:

Hosted by:
David Dineen-Porter & Tom Henry

And also featuring:

Kathleen Phillips-Locke
James Hartnett

$10
Please email theossington@gmail.com for tickets!

Another cool thing that’s happening this December is Moshe Kasher is performing two shows at Comedy Bar on the 21st at 8 and 10:30 pm.

Kasher released his special Live in Oakland last year as well as his acclaimed autobiography Kasher in the Rye: The True Tale of a White Boy from Oakland Who Became a Drug Addict, Criminal, Mental Patient, and Then Turned 16

Buy tickets here.

The Hot Assassins of Comedy

This Saturday, January 11th at TALLBOYS Toronto comics John Hastings and Dylan Gott are recording a split album as part of the show The Hot Assassins of Comedy.

That’s right – a split album, like Napalm Death and S.O.B  in 1989.

Hastings has been making a name for himself across Britain since moving there in 2012, periodically returning to Canada for features on MTV, JFL, and The Comedy Network.

Gott too has been featured at JFL and currently co-hosts Sirius XM’s The Sports Brahs with Graham Kay (who himself is about to perform on a comedy showcase for The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon.)

Also on the show are Ben Beauchemin (HBO Canada, MTV, Much Music) and Ryan Kukec (Opened for Emo Phillips, Tim and Eric). The show will be hosted by Jordan Foisy (North by Northeast, Canadian Music Week).

Date: Saturday, January 11th 
Time: 9pm
Place: Tallboys (838 Bloor West Toronto)
Cost: $5

Tragedy Plus Time takes us into the world of comedy in Toronto. With reviews of venues and shows as well as interviews and profiles with some of Toronto’s comics. Follow @TIAComedy

Superstars of comedy

Toronto stand-up comics seem to have encountered popularity lately, so we have appropriately seen a spate of album recordings. (Previously Chris Locke, then Dylan Gott with John Hastings).

The Superstars of Comedy is next among them, returning to Comedy Bar after multiple sold-out shows for a special Sirius XM Radio album recording. There will be two shows, at 8 and 10 pm. This night of comedy is hosted by the hilarious Matt O’Brien (Yuk Yuks and way too much other stuff to name), and will feature performances by:

Alex Pavone (Yuk Yuk’s)

Pat MacDonald (The Comedy Network)

Ben Miner (Just For Laughs, Sirus XM)

Comedy Bar (945 Bloor Street West)
Saturday, January 25th at 8 (tickets) & 10pm (tickets)
$10 in advance/$12 at the door

Tragedy Plus Time takes us into the world of comedy in Toronto. With reviews of venues and shows as well as interviews and profiles with some of Toronto’s comics. Follow @TIAComedy

Photo: Underground Comedy Railroad Show

In honour of Black History Month, the Underground Comedy Railroad Tour is travelling across Canada from February 7 – 28th for its third year running!

The tour kicks off in Toronto, which is apt as it features a disproportionate number of Toronto comics. This is only to be expected as, we are proud to say, most of Canada’s top comics live here.

This all-black comedy cavalcade was founded by Rodney Ramsey and Andrew Searles in 2012 to promote the rich presence of black performers in Canadian comedy. The comics are all favorites both in their local scenes and on the various festivals and TV shows where they’ve been featured.

(Get your tickets!)

The tour includes:

TRIXX –  A regular on Much Music’s Video On Trial and Stars Gone Wild. He has opened for some of the biggest names in comedy, including Russell Peters, Sugar Sammy, and Tracy Morgan. He is a favorite on Kenny Robinson’s monthly show at Yuk Yuks – which you should definitely check out-  The Nubian Disciples of Pryor.

GILSON LUBIN –  His appearances include HBO’s Russell Simmons Def Comedy Jam, Comedy Central’s Premium Blend, The Comedy Network’s Comedy Now, and all of comedy’s most important festival, Just For Laughs in Montreal.

KEESHA BROWNIE –  Keesha was recently featured on CBC’s George Stroumboulopoulos Tonight, and created the popular Jokers Corner show in Brampton.

RODNEY RAMSEY – A Montreal-based comedian who has been featured on CBC’s The Debaters and This Hour Has 22 Minutes, and Super Channel’s 24 Hour Rental. Rodney’s charming persona and magnetic stage presence made him an audience favorite in the Just for Laughs Homegrown Comic Competition in Montreal. He also performs with Second City’s The Bench in Toronto.

ANDREW SEARLES – The Montreal Mirror has named him one of the “Top 10 Best Stand-up Comedians in Montreal” four years in a row. He has been featured on XM Satellite Radio’s Laugh Attack, NBC’s Last Comic Standing and iChannel’s No Kidding.

KWASI THOMAS – A member of The Dead Comics Society sketch troupe and producer of a series of successful comedy events in Montreal.  He has already made himself known across Canada, performing in such disparate locations as Montreal’s ComedyWorks, Ottawa’s Yuk Yuk’s and Vancouver’s own Comedy Mix.

DANIEL WOODROW – Comics who have been at it for this little time shouldn’t be this talented. He has performed across North America in support of huge comedians, including Todd Glass, Jon Dore and Debra DiGiovanni.

DATES

Friday, February 7 – TORONTO
Baltic Avenue (875 Bloor Street West)
10pm Tickets: $20
Featuring Keesha Brownie, Gilson Lubin, Rodney Ramsey,
Andrew Searles, Daniel Woodrow and Trixx

Sunday, February 9 – BRAMPTON
Rose Theatre (1 Theatre Lane)
8pm Tickets: $25
Featuring Keesha Brownie, Zabrina Chevannes, Andrew Searles,
Sharif and Trixx. Hosted by Jay Martin

Monday, February 17 – OTTAWA
Absolute Comedy (412 Preston Street)
8:30pm Tickets: $15
Featuring Keesha Brownie, Rodney Ramsey,
Andrew Searles, Daniel Woodrow and Trixx

Thursday, February 20 – VICTORIA
Hecklers Bar (123 Gorge Road East)
8:30pm Tickets: $20
Featuring Rodney Ramsey, Kwasi Thomas and Andrew Searles

Saturday, February 22 – VANCOUVER
Rio Theatre (1660 East Broadway)
8:30pm Tickets: $25
Featuring Gilson Lubin, Rodney Ramsey, Kwasi Thomas and Andrew Searles

Sunday, February 23 – CALGARY
The Laugh Shop Comedy Club (5940 Blackfoot Trail SE)
8pm Tickets: $20
Featuring Gilson Lubin, Rodney Ramsey and Andrew Searles

Tuesday, February 25 – EDMONTON
The Comic Strip (8882 170 Street NW)
7:30pm Tickets: $20
Featuring Featuring Gilson Lubin, Rodney Ramsey and Andrew Searles

Thursday, February 27 – WINNIPEG
Chill Bar (423 McMillan Avenue)
8:30pm Tickets: $25
Featuring Keesha Brownie, Rodney Ramsey and Andrew Searles

Friday, February 28 – MONTREAL
Théâtre Sainte Catherine (264 Rue Sainte-Catherine Est)
8:30pm Tickets: $20
Featuring Keesha Brownie, Rodney Ramsey, Andrew Searles and Daniel Woodrow

For tickets and more information: www.undergroundcomedyrailroad.com

Tragedy Plus Time takes us into the world of comedy in Toronto. With reviews of venues and shows as well as interviews and profiles with some of Toronto’s comics. Follow @TIAComedy

Photo; The Superstars of Comedy

The Superstars of Comedy, presented by Sirius XM Radio, is returning to Comedy Bar after a series of sold out shows this Saturday, March 1st. The show is hosted by Tim Nasiopoulos (Comedy Records) and will be headlined by the jubilant and psychedelic Chris Locke, who we interviewed a few months back for his four JFL42 shows.

The night will also feature Pat Macdonald and Darryl Orr.

Darryl Orr is someone I don’t think I’ve mentioned here before but I’ll take the opportunity now as he’s on a lot of people’s Favorites list. His perspective is inherently self-deprecating and his jokes are exceptionally well-crafted, occasionally venturing in to the surreal and unresolved.

Comedy Bar (945 Bloor Street West)
Saturday, March 1st at 9:30pm (tickets)
$10 in advance/$12 at the door

Tragedy Plus Time takes us into the world of comedy in Toronto. With reviews of venues and shows as well as interviews and profiles with some of Toronto’s comics. Follow @TIAComedy

Photo: Hunter Collins

The point of sketch comedy has always been the same, and that point is silly and fun. The are satirical or even dramatic forms of sketch, but on the whole it is a craft based on being silly. For this reason many people might find it difficult to get in to. (Including myself.) Unlike stand-up there’s usually (usually) no moral or existential lesson to take home, and it doesn’t have that rawness. People don’t tend to hold their favorite sketch dear to their heart like they do with stand-up. Nobody ever says “that sketch really spoke to me, man.” At least not today.

Toronto comic Hunter Collins’ debut sketch album Nincompoop continues this tradition of pure silliness and fun. This is not a criticism at all, and I don’t think he’d take it that way. It would be surprising to find out he’s super bummed his 3 minute and 25 second track trying to get his buddy to eat his ass didn’t speak to the people. (Track 10, ‘Would You Rather’.)

The opening track, ‘Police Cape’, is about a police academy student who seems to think a cop is a kind of superhero who gets to fight crime wearing a cape. It is one of the stronger sketches and sets the comedic tone for the album.

The are a couple of recurring themes through the album, ‘Jim the Unimaginative Sexual Innuendo Guy’ – a guy who is terrible at dirty talk – and ’9-11 Tapes’ – dumb calls to the police. This is a fun strategy to provide some cohesion and narrative to the album. It would perhaps be nice to see more of this in comedy in general.

The production on tracks such as, most notably, ‘Elect Larry Hextal’ is reminiscent of Tim and Eric in its deliberate corniness, catching the vibe of being created by a part time session musician in the San Fernando Valley.

This is a fun debut sketch album. I just hope he considers producing some of the tracks as videos.

Buy Nincompoop here. Follow Hunter Collins here. 

Toronto based comic Fraser Young has just released his stand-up album, Food, Medicine & a Surprising Amount of Math.

Anyone who has been to a Strombo recording will know who Fraser Young is. He warms up the crowd with his goofy and energetic stand-up before the cameras roll. Young has also written for Almost Heroes, The Genie Awards, The NHL Awards, and The Latest Buzz, which earned him a Writer’s Guild Award nomination.

His material is quite classicaly observational, yet his delivery and persona is modernly unreserved and eccentric.

Most of the album is recounting the absurdities of everyday events and interactions, such as the store who had no change for his cash purchase, “maybe you’re not ready to be a store!” or the guy he met who claimed to speak over five languages, “you mean 6?”

There are a couple of dark punchlines during the album which work great as they’re totally unexpected when juxtaposed against the rest of his lighter-hearted subject matter.

Young’s performance style is upbeat and fun. It’s clear why this is utilized to loosen up the Strombo audience and get them feeling fun and receptive.

One complaint is there are a lot of superfluous ad libs which, were they coming from a greener comic, would sound like nervousness. Someone might excuse this as “that’s just his style,” which wouldn’t be completely incorrect. It is congruent with his bouncy “HEY. YEAH. WOAH. HO!!!” energy. But I would be curious to hear how it sounds trimmed.

Available on iTunes.

A brief promotion of two events this weekend. On Friday, April 4th we have the Comedy Inferno, hosted by Katherine Ferns (JFL42, ichannel, Dark Comedy Festival), featuring Monty Scott (Comedy Records), Amanda Day (NXNE), and Ryan Dillon (Fresh Meat), headlined by Rob Mailloux, curator of the Dark Comedy Festival, performer at JFL42 and Vancouver Comedy Fest, and touring opener for Jim Jeffries and the legendary Doug Stanhope.

Johnny Jackson, 587 College Street, Toronto
Doors at 7pm
Show at 8pm

Tickets $10 at the door

Then on Saturday, April 5th returning to Comedy Bar after a series of sold out shows is The Superstars of Comedy, presented by Sirius XM Radio. The evening will be hosted by Hunter Collins (Comedy Records), featuring Darryl Orr (Yuk Yuks), Pat Macdonald (MTV), and headliner Kieth Pedro (Halifax Comedy festival).

Comedy Bar
9:30 pm
Tickets $12 at the door or $10 advance (buy here).

Follow @TIAComedy

Some of the contents of this post may be offensive to some people.

Tonight is the last Toke n’ Joke Friday show at Church and Wellesley’s Village Vapor Lounge, the city’s most infamous weekly.

There is one big reason this show has burned a hole in every comic’s self-esteem – for some, the hole remains, for others, they return and it heals over with stronger scar tissue – and that is resident heckler, Rutiger.

Rutiger is a maniacal old queen whose appearance could be described as Anton LaVey if Satan were actually real and had cooked his nervous system for 30 years with amyl nitrates.

His crazy eyes, frenetic movements, and piercing witch cackle could fool an unfamiliar comic in to thinking he’s too mentally disorganized to pose a real threat. A familiar comic knows this is not so. His wit is impressively quick and has left many a comic dumbfounded on stage.

He enters the building, wearing his ridiculous backpack and chugging a 1.5L grapefruit soda, “I smell, *sniff sniff*, FEAR!”

A comic tries leveraging his confidence with a pre-show jab in response, “I smell raw cum.”

Without a pause Rutiger fires back, “then brush your teeth, bitch.”

When battling Rutiger a comic has to abandon any constraints imposed by political correctness or even common decency. He is not at all bound by these concerns so for the comic to worry about this would be a losing strategy. Despite being a gay man, he will randomly shout, as an insult, and at the most inopportune moment, “YOU’RE GAY!” The worst of his insults cannot be printed here. This can be pretty threatening coming from, as his scene would categorize him, a 6’2 bear. (Albeit a little emaciated these days.) I have seen newer comics visibly shaken coming off stage.

Comedy is largely based on timing and momentum. Rutiger has a talent for feeling out exactly when a bit has built to fifth gear and aggressively yanking up the hand-brake from the passenger’s seat, yelling “TELL US A FUNNY JOKE!” or “BOOOOO!” or if it’s a female comic, “WHORE!” or “GROW SOME TITS!”

Whenever I’ve told people about Rutiger they invariably ask why he isn’t thrown out. The answer is partially because he’s been a regular for years, but primarily because he is actually funny. He is perhaps the one heckler in the world who genuinely adds to the show. (Most hecklers erroneously think they’re an asset to the show but are really just drunk and annoying.)

Standing onstage in his crosshairs is a thoroughly uncomfortable experience, but watching him eviscerate another comic is hilarious. Most of us sit there secretly waiting and hoping for him to screech a ridiculous non-sequitur and destroy their joke.

Those of us who regularly perform there also owe him that we are now unphased by hecklers. He is Bowser while every other heckler is a mere Koopa. And after battling him enough times, most of us can boast at least a couple of victories.

One time last year I found out his real name. I dutifully went through my jokes, waiting for him to heckle, then exposed him. His name, serendipitously, is an androgynous name so it was easy to make fun of. Everyone in the room started chanting his name in unison, thrilled to see him shaken like never before. Host Dred Lee came on to say he can’t take him seriously now knowing that’s his name. Rutiger charges the stage, screaming the N-word in Dred’s face (Dred is black), then storms out not to be seen for five weeks.

Upon his return he was wearing a leather sex mask and a padlocked dog chain around his neck. He was not on form though. It took months for him to recover to full set-ruining capacity.

This show will be weirdly missed. The last Toke n’ Joke Friday with Dred Lee and Company will be tonight (Friday) at 10pm.

We Farted is a split album by Toronto comic Dylan Gott and Toronto/London (England) comic John Hastings. That does not mean they split an album in two and took a part each, but rather the tracks alternate between them for the length of it.

I’m not sure if this format of split album has been done before, but I personally would rather a solid “side” each. Mixing two comedic voices this way is still an interesting and worthwhile experiment however. They’re not so starkly different that it’s at all dissonant. It also has the advantage that you won’t get bored listening to the same voice and narrative for a whole set. This is fine live, but even recordings of Louis CK have me thinking about what I want for dinner at around the 35-minute mark.

Gott’s style is overtly self-deprecating and mostly about being a balding gamer who lives in a basement apartment and survives on fast-food. His delivery is flippant but upbeat, conveying something like comfort and even reveling in the piece of garbage he accepts himself as. Upon repeated listens I noticed a bunch of great lines I previously missed, which is kind of the hallmark of a rich writer.

Hastings’ delivery contrasts with this in that he comes across like a campy, overly eloquent stage actor. However this is nicely moderated by a combination of shameful scenarios he has found himself in and absurd ideas such as wanting to own a falcon. His storytelling is commanding, dynamic, and his bits always resolve full circle as if Larry David wrote them. His observations are simply interesting, such as his concept of “opinion-face,” the face someone makes when they absolutely need in that moment to share an opinion. I am happy I now have a term for this very particular bit of body language.

This is a pretty strong debut album. I will leave the last words of promotion to Gott with an excerpt from here:

Let’s face it: I’m a fragile, incompetent man. So much so, that I’ve dedicated my whole life to pointing out how incompetent I am. I truly have no other options. However, I can only laugh at these shortcomings for so long before I start to honestly consider them. This never goes well. But, if enough people buy this album I can feel like I made the right call by not learning a trade.

Buy We Farted.

Follow @TIAComedy