Photo by Douglas McDaniel

This weekend, I had the privilege of sitting down to chat with comedy legend Kevin McDonald. My friend and Ooh Ooh Revue captain Moxie Easton assembled a comedy extravaganza at Modern Studio with stand-up, improv, sketch, and Kevin at the core. We began the second act with this live interview, where Moxie and I picked his brain about how sketch comedy has changed, the bizarre dynamics of voice acting, and how Flaming Lips albums compare to one another. It was a lot of fun to get all academic about comedy in front of a crowd with someone who (as I said in my intro) is fairly responsible for the current state of it. I look forward to doing this again.

Enjoy the live recording here and feel free to pass it along to other fans of Kids in the Hall, Lilo & Stitch, Invader Zim, Toronto’s comedy history, or… that covers pretty much everyone. A couple of notes on the recording:

• At the beginning, Moxie refers to Kevin as resembling someone called “hair asshole,” which referred to a story Kevin had told 20 minutes prior during his storytelling performance. I believe that his story about an awkward show he and Dave Foley did at University of Toronto in 1986 is available on an episode of his podcast, Kevin McDonald’s Kevin McDonald Show.
• When Kevin alludes to the state of Michael Ivins’ hair from 1985-1986, I erroneously cited In a Priest Driven Ambulance, which actually came out in 1990 (when Ivins had shed his mop of hair). I can’t help but feel guilty for letting The Flaming Lips down, and I won’t let it happen again.
• I don’t have to time to hunt down and post links to all of the sketches that Kevin and I mentioned, but he did bring up “The King of Empty Promises,” which I’d somehow never seen before this weekend. It’s a masterful showcase of not only his chemistry with Dave Foley, but how funny someone known for funny faces could be barely moving a muscle on his face.

Enjoy the interview! If you’re in Eastern Tennessee and are interested in checking out what’s sure to be a riot of a musical revue, tickets are now available for Ooh Ooh’s First Friday show, which I’m excited to guest-MC. This will start at 10pm on August 4th (after the 7pm stand-up show at Pretentious Beer Co.).