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May 22, 2011 Web Exclusive By Matt Fink

Under the Radar's Music vs. Comedy Issue, which is on stands now, features an article entitled "A Mutual Admiration Society: Where Comedy and Music Meet." For that article we interviewed Eugene Mirman, among others, and included a few quotes from him. Below is the full transcript of our interview with Mirman.

It's hard to say exactly what it is that makes Eugene Mirman such an obvious fit for indie rock listeners—his distinctly absurdist outsider perspective, his understatedly shrugging demeanor, his full embrace of non-mainstream media—but few comedians have been as widely embraced by fans of underground music. In fact, wherever Mirman appears, it seems that musicians aren't far away, as he typically performs in music venues, records albums for indie rock labels (Sub Pop, Suicide Squeeze), and built his audience touring with The Shins and Modest Mouse and appearing as a cast member of The Flight of the Conchords. And just as indie rock has made inroads into mainstream culture in recent years, Mirman is doing the same, voicing Gene Belcher of FOX's animated comedy Bob's Burgers. Here, he gives a brief history of comedy clubs and comedy labels and explains why his career arc is more similar to a musician's than a comedian's.

Matt Fink: Since you've long been associated with the indie rock scene, I was wondering when you first started to notice that there was a real overlap between the two.

Eugene Mirman: Probably when that started happen. Possibly when Yo La Tengo would have comics on their shows. I knew that they did the music for Todd Barry's one-man show in the '90s. So that was when bands and comedians that were well known started to do stuff. And, then, of course, David Cross and his tour with Ultrababyfat.

So when you started to tour with bands, did you talk to other comedians to get a sense of what you could expect?

No, no. It also goes back to the '50s and Vaudeville and probably even way before that. There were comedians opening for Frank Sinatra for years. So, in a sense, this has been around for a very long time.

When you started opening for bands, did that experience match what you were expecting?

Yeah. It can be fun, and it can be work. For me, the difference between tours was that at the time I wasn't that well known, so it was a way for me to get exposure. So whether it was easy or hard or what I was expecting, it didn't matter as much as if it was fun and also a thing I could do, something that I was offered.

Is it difficult to find a band that matches your style of comedy? I assume a band can find another band that is complementary to their sound, but I would think it's difficult to find a comedian that does the same thing.

Sort of. It's not like my jokes are really pretty, so The Shins fit me perfectly [laughs]. It's more that you find bands whose audiences fit you, who cultivate a certain thing.

Is there much of a difference between a comedy audience and a music audience?

Well, it depends. If there's a band involved, there's an expectation that there will be music. For me, the ideal situation is playing with all comedians in a seated rock club. That's my favorite, where you get the experience of being in a rock club instead of a comedy club but you don't necessarily have to perform for people who are standing and expecting music.

What is the main difference between a typical comedy club and a rock club?

A typical rock club doesn't have a two-drink minimum or sell silly sounding food.

That has been the trend over the past 15 years, right? To have comedians move into the rock clubs.

Yes. Comedy clubs were a thing of the '70s and '80s. There were about 15 years where comedy clubs were very common. Before that, people just performed in cabaret spaces or theaters and rock clubs. So as a result of comedy clubs in huge numbers existing in the '70s and '80s, people now think of comedy moving into rock clubs. But if those 15 years were removed, it would have always been in the same spaces.

How about the emergence of the indie comedy scene? Did that happen at the same time?

Sort of. That happened as comedy clubs crashed and burned in the early '90s. That emerged in New York and L.A., and, originally, it came from being simply an alternative space to a traditional comedy club.

In the way that indie rock has taken advantage of the Internet and has found a much bigger audience, has the same thing happen to comedy?

Oh yeah. Twenty years ago you had to be on one of three channels, and 10 years ago it was one of 40. The difference is now that with Twitter or YouTube and blogs, you can just put stuff online. There is no gatekeeper. It won't necessarily become popular, but you can certainly put things online and they can catch on, and you can create a career for yourself in a way that you couldn't 40 years or 20 years ago. The Internet has massively helped. You can promote shows and figure out a way to get 100 to show up with two days' notice. It used to be very hard to do that.

I was also wondering about releasing records for an indie rock label. Is that different than releasing an album for a comedy label?

I guess. But what comedy label are you thinking of?

I guess Comedy Central and things like that.

Right, and before that, people used to put out records on Columbia and regular record labels, so in terms of the experience of putting out records on a music label, there's probably one or two comedy labels that exist in the world. So, aside from that, you put out records on record labels. It's awesome. I just love the people at Sub Pop, and it's really exciting to be on a label that you really admire. But aside from that, there are very few comedy labels that exist in the world, and at the scope you're discussing, there's only Comedy Central.

I didn't realize that.

Yeah, I think so. There's also Warner Brothers' comedy division, but I'm assuming you wouldn't mean them as a comedy exclusive label. Comedy records were also a thing of the '60s and '70s. There were tons of records, because that's the way you'd get your material out. So, for me, I used to collect comedy records and loved to sit and listen to them. That's why I did it, as opposed to trying to do several one hour specials. Also, a comedy record is much less expensive to do and you can just work with a handful of people to put it out.

Does Sub Pop offer you more freedom than a mainstream label might?

I doubt it. I would be shocked to find out that Warner Bros. told Patton [Oswalt] which bits he could and couldn't do. That's an absurd notion. In that sense, Sub Pop didn't tell me what I could and couldn't do, but I'd be shocked if any label would. We're not trying to make hit songs. No one is like, "This isn't going to make #5 on the charts, this joke about going to the store." So, yeah, Sub Pop allows freedom, but I'd be shocked to find a label that didn't. Have you spoken to anyone who has had a label try to limit what they can do?

Not yet.

There you go. I guess what I'm trying to say is that there's an idea of a major record label, but if you talk to people, I don't think anyone has ever been told [what jokes they can use]. Was George Carlin or Lenny Bruce told that? Maybe. But Lenny Bruce put out plenty of records, and I can't imagine his record label doing that. Until he was deemed illegal and it was harder for him to record live.

Right. Would you say that comedians and musicians have similar creative personalities?

I would say so, yeah. I think that a lot of musicians I know have similar processes for writing stuff, especially in certain ways that they do things that are not dissimilar.

Do you find that most bands you come across like your comedy?

Um, I don't know. It's hard thing to say. "Yes, the people I like like me." I don't know for sure. Certainly there are a lot of bands that I like that seem to like what I do, but I wouldn't speak on their behalf.

Have you ever mixed music and comedy in your work?

Vaguely. I have no musical skill, but I do play a Theremin on stage as a joke. So the answer is not really but sort of.

Having worked with the guys in Flight of the Conchords, did you see any of their creative process?

Not really. It's not like they would write a song and gather the cast to try it on them. A lot of the first season was something that they had written years earlier and had done for years in Edinburgh and England and stuff. Listening to them, it's clear to them how the two can be combined, but it's same as listening to Weird Al, except their stuff isn't song parodies.

It seems like what they do must be really difficult—to be able to write songs that are good as music and as jokes.

Yeah, at the level that the Conchords do it is pretty amazing. Musically, it was really great and then it was very, very funny. Lots of people try to write funny songs, but they can do it as this incredible level and also cross so many genres.

Is it difficult to get a sense of how a music audience is receiving your material?

No. They're either laughing or not laughing or yelling or not yelling.

Have you had hostile reactions in that setting?

Not hostile in that people have thrown things. When I toured with Modest Mouse, I definitely had it say "comedian Eugene Mirman," just so more people can be informed. My goal isn't to trick audiences. My goal is for them to be aware. It's the same reason that I like doing comedy in a rock club, because if you go to a comedy club, you're just there to see comedy. But if you're going to a rock club to see comedy, you really know what you're going to get. I don't want to trick audiences. I want audiences to go to the things that they might like and not accidentally end up at something that they won't enjoy. One way to avoid that is to put on your own shows and promote them and put them on at rock clubs.

There's also this standard trope that comedians want to be musicians and musicians want to be comedians. Do you think there's truth to that?
There is probably truth to that. Certainly, if I could play music, that would make me very excited. Every day, I am bummed out that I can't play guitar. I'm tone-deaf. I can't sing karaoke or do any of those things. It's like a crippling disability with music.

I've heard from musicians that they can't imagine being up on stage and tell jokes, just because it's so naked and vulnerable.

That's all true. They are all weak and we are so powerful [laughs]. And I know a lot of musicians who are like, "I just could never do that." And I say, "Well, I could never get up on stage and sing about my feelings, so we're even."

I also read a quote from you where you said your career has been more like a musician than a typical comedian. What did you mean by that?

Well, it meant literally that I toured rock clubs and put out records on record labels. I did the sort of things that bands do to become more popular, more so than progressing through a comedy club. I didn't do residencies, where you start as an opener and then you become a middle act and then you become a headliner and then you try to get a sitcom or pitch TV shows. Only recently have I begun pitching TV shows, whereas most people I know would have done it years ago. Obviously, I'm on TV shows now, but it all came about in a different way. It's more collaborations with people that I'm friends with than auditions. It's more like the way that bands typically work.

Do you think that has offered you advantages that you wouldn't have had otherwise?

I don't know if it has offered me advantages, but it means that I enjoy my career and am less mad at people. I also developed by performing for audiences that might like the thing that I'm doing by creating my own shows.

So it's a more DIY approach.

Yeah. A lot of comedians do it, but for me it was an aesthetic that I gained through college and when I moved to Boston to do comedy. In general, it seemed more preferable.

Do you think it's a model that more comedians will start adopting?

I don't know. I guess. To the extent that the Internet and things have made possible, but it might eventually become too cluttered and people will have to do different things. Who knows?

Do you do a lot of shows with bands right now?

If Yo La Tengo or some band I really like wants me to perform with them or do a show with them, I usually will do it. But, generally, I do less opening for bands because it's so much work. But the one thing I do that's like that is that John Wesley Harding and I do a variety show that he created that has musicians, authors, and comedians and is actually a really great blend. A lot of times if you do comedy at a music show, you'll do pretty good, and that will equivalent to doing very well at a comedy show. But on his show, it's actually different. Authors and comedians are elevated in a way that's blended together very well, and, as a result, comedy works particularly well.

That sounds like a really interesting hybrid that no one else is really experimenting with right now.

No. I don't think anyone else actually is. He does a great thing.

Well, thanks for your time, Eugene. It was very helpful to talk to someone who has been standing at the intersection of music and comedy for so long.

Yes, I have. I am its hero.

(www.eugenemirman.com)

(www.twitter.com/eugenemirman)