For a person who makes a living being funny, Scott Aukerman sure can make a town feel good with a sincere compliment.
“I think it was my favorite city on the tour last year,” the Comedy Bang Bang creator said of his 2012 show at the Howard Theatre. “It was so fantastic. The crowd was so great. It was sold out. It was a beautiful theater. I remember the crowd being amazing.”
We’ll take the flattery, especially from a person as funny as Aukerman. For the past few years, he’s hosted the weird, hilarious podcast Comedy Bang Bang, née Comedy Death-Ray/a.k.a. Comedy Bing Bong, and now has his own IFC show Comedy! Bang! Bang! (The latter was just renewed for a third season.) While both shows include Aukerman, celebrity guests and impressions, the podcast tends to feel like one big, snowballing riff while the TV show is something more absurd, more plotted and way more surreal.
Tonight Aukerman and his regular Comedy Bang Bang compatriot Paul F. Tompkins will perform at the 9:30 Club, the last stop on an IFC tour. During a recent, brief phone conversation, Aukerman explained that the live act is a mix between the podcast and TV show.
Part of the show will be a live improvised podcast, while the beginning is “a little like the TV show,” with Aukerman doing “sketch type stuff.” The Birthday Boys – Aukerman’s “favorite sketch group” – will open the show. “I think it will be a really interesting mixture of different types of comedy,” he said.
Aukerman will also be joined by Tompkins, who has been doing a different character every night. Like the podcast, Aukerman doesn’t know what Tompkins is going to do until he does it: “Some of his more obscure characters, like Mike the Janitor, might show up.”
“Who knows what we have in store? That’s the fun part about it for me,” Aukerman said. “Until we do it, I don’t know exactly how it’s going to go.”
Of course, doing a live show in front of a living, breathing audience is quite different than sitting in a studio.
“When I first started doing the lives one, it was difficult for me to adjust to the rhythm of like waiting for people to laugh, sort of playing to them a little more,” Aukerman said. “But now I’ve done them so many times, it really is such a joy to be able to do it in front of a live audience. It’s opened us up more. We do a lot of really special things. I’m going to try to let the audience interact with us a little bit more on this tour as well.”
With a podcast, TV show and live act under his belt, Aukerman said he doesn’t have any plans for what to do next with Comedy Bang Bang, but he’d love to do a movie.
“If people are making movies based on tiny cable talk shows, I’d be happy to do one,” he said. “At one point, we were going to do a comic book, and I’d still like to do something with that.”
“Right now 20 episodes of the TV show is taking up most of out time, as well as one or two podcasts a week,” he added. “What else? Broadway shows? Penny dreadfuls?”
Comedy Bang! Bang! LIVE! featuring Paul F. Tompkins and the Birthday Boys makes a stop at the 9:30 Club Tuesday at 7 p.m. (sold out) and 10:00 p.m. Tickets $25.
