 |
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 |
Comedy Records presents Legends In The Making, the live stand-up comedy album taping, starring DAVE MERHEJE (MTV, Just For Laughs) and ARTHUR SIMEON (HBO, Just For Laughs) on Thursday, August 15 at the Randolph Theatre. (Buy tickets here.)
I interviewed Dave for the occassion:
(Dave) We got the same shirt.
H&M?
Yeah, mine’s lighter yellow though.
$6.95…
I like $6.95. A lot actually.
Alright…I want to start by asking – I’ve never seen you do the same set twice. Do you actually write down material?
I used to actually write everything down, I’d sit in a coffee shop and write everything. Then as I was trying to find my voice I wanted to be funny how I was off-stage, on-stage. So when I was walking around or on the bus or streetcar I would train myself to write in my head. I always wanted to be free on-stage.
I remember a bit of yours I thought was hilarious where you were talking about someone you knew who was smoking crack and claimed they could take a brick out of a wall. Is that a bit you still do, for example?
That’s actually a real story, I should do it again. Me and my buddies – I don’t want to say their names – we were doing drugs and we went from weed to ecstacy then one of our friends started talking about crystal meth. Me and the other dude were like “we don’t want any part of that, if you’re gonna do that just don’t call us.” And then we saw him after he did it the next day and he was like “you’re not gonna understand how awesome it is” and I’m like “how awesome is it?” Then he’s like “I could take a fuckin’ brick out of a wall.” And I’m like “that is not awesome.”
As far as I’m aware you’ve taken a more independent route in your career as opposed to the more traditional club route. Could you speak a bit about that?
I would do spots downtown but nothing really official where I was on tour or anything, then I drifted away from Yuk Yuks and started doing my own thing and I continued on that path.
Would you recommend that path if someone was coming up in comedy?
I would love to have worked with them at the time but it didn’t pan out. I would say to anyone just find where you’re comfortable.
So what’s happening with this upcoming DVD?
Me and Arthur Simeon did a tour last year and we had this concept; I read something about where Chappelle and Chris Rock were gonna tour together ’cause they were inspired by Watch the Throne, the Kanye West and Jay-Z album, and I thought that was super cool. I’d like to pair up with someone I really wanna work with in Toronto and tour around. We did Kingston, Windsor, Ottawa, Montreal, Toronto. We called it Legends in the Making. We had a lot of fun, we learned a lot. We worked well together, our styles are different. This year we wanted to do it again and focus on Toronto and also tape our DVDs.
I’m doing material about my family that I did at ZooFest. Kevin Hart’s Seriously Funny I thought was an awesome comedy special ’cause it’s about his family and his kids. I’ve always wanted to talk about my family for a 45 minute set.
Something I wanted to ask you about – this isn’t really comedy related – but you have a distinctive style. I’ve literally seen you from a hundred meters away down the street and I can immediately spot you. Is this at all deliberate? Because I feel like it’s perhaps a good marketing thing.
I would grow my beard out in the winter, or maybe when I was depressed. Then I just kept it one year and people dug it. Then I shaved it and people gave me weird looks and my friends were like “yugh, go back to the beard.” And I’m big in to fashion. I like clothes and shopping for them and building outfits and styles. Then I needed new glasses and got these Ray Bans so started looking like a hipster without trying to. I guess that’s where the style came from; kind of half on purpose and half not.
Toronto is one of the few cities in the world where you’re going to do weed rooms; it’s just part of doing comedy here. How do you find that?
Some weed rooms the energy is high, other’s it’s low. It’s cool, I’ve been a part of it since I’ve lived here. I remember rooms starting off with like four people and now they’ve grown to be huge successes. Bryan O’gorman does a great job, Chris Robinson, Mike Rita. It’s good vibes. I like certain ones for the energy of the crowd, some I don’t like as much. But I think it’s a really good thing for this city. It creates more rooms. But I don’t really smoke weed, I get too much anxiety.
Same.
Well thanks, Dave.
Thank you, man. And Arthur appreciates it. He hasn’t told me he appreciates it but I’m pretty sure he will.
He might get real mad and start sending you abusive tweets, “don’t speak on my behalf!”
Well I appreciate it! Thank you very much.
Follow Dave @DaveMerheje and Arthur @ArthurSimeon