SUN., JULY 30, 2006
How to Make a Comedy Album
by Todd Barry
I've recorded two comedy CDs: Medium Energy and Falling Off the Bone. I'll pause while you download them.
If you've listened to a comedy album, you probably had the same reaction as you did the first time you saw The Matrix. How do they do that? That seems like a production nightmare.
The first thing you need to make a comedy album is a collection of jokes. About 45-50 minutes of them. This might sound easy enough, but the thing about jokes is...they're short. For instance, my joke about a guy I saw masturbating at an automatic teller machine clocks in at about 47 seconds — 47 luscious, wonderful seconds, but still only 47 seconds. And that's one of my longer ones. So even if I craft five new gems like that, I've added less than three new minutes to my repertoire. (You heard me: repertoire.) Luckily, when I made my first album, I'd been doing comedy for nearly 14 years, so I had a fairly large collection of jokes. Combine them with a healthy dose of annoying crowd banter, and you have more than enough for a full album. "But Todd," I can hear you say, "what if you have nothing to 'banter' about?" As long as there are distractions like someone breathing too loud, or a guy who shows up with a skateboard, there's always something to banter about.
Now that you've gathered your jokes, you need a place to record them. It's always nice to record a comedy album in front of a packed house. That's why I always choose to record in a really small house. I did my first album at the old Upright Citizen's Brigade Theater in New York, and the second one at a Lower East Side rock club called Pianos, which has a recording studio downstairs, so it's really easy to make an album there.
Okay, now you've filled a tiny venue, you still have to do a show. More to the point, you have to do a show and not bomb. That's why you record at least two real shows, which you now must edit into one seamless, fake show.
You probably think editing is easy because comics love listening to themselves. This is not true. It's actually torture, hearing yourself torturing an audience. But you get through it, overanalyzing which version of a joke worked better. For example, I recorded two different versions of the track "Two Drummers," from Falling Off The Bone. In one version, I had the imaginary drummer hitting a hi-hat cymbal. In another, he was hitting a ride cymbal, for a more "pingy" sound. I think I went with the hi-hat version. (That's the kind of fascinating "behind the scenes" tidbit that I should save if I ever want to write a memoir, but I just felt like giving it to you now.)
After you edit down the shows it's time to work on the cover art and packaging. I know what you're thinking: "Can't you work on the packaging before you finish editing the album?" Yes, you can. And you probably should. And maybe I did. I don't really remember. But I do remember that I didn't want the typical "wacky comedian photo" for the cover of my CD. That's why I chose an unsmiling photo of me trying to look cooler than I really am. In order to get myself in the proper mindset for this photo, I tried to imagine myself being cooler than I am.
A few months later, your CD gets released. You send out a mass email telling everyone the big news. And then the fun part: you get boxes of CDs sent to you, that you can sell at your shows. One thing I've learned is that you never know how many you're going to sell. I've done shows where I got many laughs and sold (whatever the opposite of "many" is) CD's. Then there was the show I did in South Bend, Indiana. A woman was sitting up front with a look that said, "I hear what you're saying, but I'm not enjoying it. And you will watch lack of enjoyment for the next 45 minutes." After the show, she approached the table where I was selling, pulled out a wad of cash and said "Gimme four." She had just gotten her tax refund and wanted to treat herself. I guess she wasn't a laugher.
If you've listened to a comedy album, you probably had the same reaction as you did the first time you saw The Matrix. How do they do that? That seems like a production nightmare.
The first thing you need to make a comedy album is a collection of jokes. About 45-50 minutes of them. This might sound easy enough, but the thing about jokes is...they're short. For instance, my joke about a guy I saw masturbating at an automatic teller machine clocks in at about 47 seconds — 47 luscious, wonderful seconds, but still only 47 seconds. And that's one of my longer ones. So even if I craft five new gems like that, I've added less than three new minutes to my repertoire. (You heard me: repertoire.) Luckily, when I made my first album, I'd been doing comedy for nearly 14 years, so I had a fairly large collection of jokes. Combine them with a healthy dose of annoying crowd banter, and you have more than enough for a full album. "But Todd," I can hear you say, "what if you have nothing to 'banter' about?" As long as there are distractions like someone breathing too loud, or a guy who shows up with a skateboard, there's always something to banter about.
Now that you've gathered your jokes, you need a place to record them. It's always nice to record a comedy album in front of a packed house. That's why I always choose to record in a really small house. I did my first album at the old Upright Citizen's Brigade Theater in New York, and the second one at a Lower East Side rock club called Pianos, which has a recording studio downstairs, so it's really easy to make an album there.
Okay, now you've filled a tiny venue, you still have to do a show. More to the point, you have to do a show and not bomb. That's why you record at least two real shows, which you now must edit into one seamless, fake show.
You probably think editing is easy because comics love listening to themselves. This is not true. It's actually torture, hearing yourself torturing an audience. But you get through it, overanalyzing which version of a joke worked better. For example, I recorded two different versions of the track "Two Drummers," from Falling Off The Bone. In one version, I had the imaginary drummer hitting a hi-hat cymbal. In another, he was hitting a ride cymbal, for a more "pingy" sound. I think I went with the hi-hat version. (That's the kind of fascinating "behind the scenes" tidbit that I should save if I ever want to write a memoir, but I just felt like giving it to you now.)
After you edit down the shows it's time to work on the cover art and packaging. I know what you're thinking: "Can't you work on the packaging before you finish editing the album?" Yes, you can. And you probably should. And maybe I did. I don't really remember. But I do remember that I didn't want the typical "wacky comedian photo" for the cover of my CD. That's why I chose an unsmiling photo of me trying to look cooler than I really am. In order to get myself in the proper mindset for this photo, I tried to imagine myself being cooler than I am.
A few months later, your CD gets released. You send out a mass email telling everyone the big news. And then the fun part: you get boxes of CDs sent to you, that you can sell at your shows. One thing I've learned is that you never know how many you're going to sell. I've done shows where I got many laughs and sold (whatever the opposite of "many" is) CD's. Then there was the show I did in South Bend, Indiana. A woman was sitting up front with a look that said, "I hear what you're saying, but I'm not enjoying it. And you will watch lack of enjoyment for the next 45 minutes." After the show, she approached the table where I was selling, pulled out a wad of cash and said "Gimme four." She had just gotten her tax refund and wanted to treat herself. I guess she wasn't a laugher.
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