In the Key of Chuck

In the Key of Chuck

When we last saw our hero (Chuck Watkins), he had embarked on a magical (tipsy) journey westward – barefoot with a jug of bathtub wine in one hand and an amplified ukulele in the other… or at least that’s how we pictured it in our minds. It’s been almost a year since Austin’s crown prince of bards and barbs made the move to Los Angeles. Since then, Chuck’s been extremely busy, filming an appearance on Comedy Central’s Live at Gotham, recording and producing a full-length album on Rooftop Records, and finishing “Autumn,” the final cycle of his Vivaldian four-part album series.

Next week, Chuck makes a long-awaited visit back to Austin, armed with a gunny sack of new tunes, anecdotes and jokes, which he plans to unload in a series of shows that include headlining appearances at The Velveeta Room (June 18 & 19), a feature appearance with Dan Cummins at Cap City Comedy Club (June 23-26) and a musical performance aptly titled, "The Chuck Watkins Show,” at Coldtowne Theater (June 21st). We managed to catch up with the devilish troubadour to talk about his upcoming shows, jokes and songs.

ALBERT IM: I remember shortly after you got to L.A. you were putting together songs for a children’s album. You have a penchant for the whimsical and funny stories. What is it about children’s stories and songs that have such an influence on you?
CHARLIE WATKINS: Hm. I think it’s just because that’s how I best communicate with my brain – I don’t know how to be a grown-up so I have to communicate through these kind of silly child-like anecdotes and forms. Anytime I sit down with my notebook and try to write things down like, “This is how I feel about the world!” I’ll write pages worth of stuff and think, “God this is… fucking boring! This is awful! This is just me being grumpy or something.” So it’s usually just a reminder in me to lighten the hell up a little bit. And kids are just naturally blessed with the kind of innate ability to see the more fuzzy and fun side of things ‘cause they don’t wanna do anything serious. So that’s how we communicate – we’re both looking for ways to not be grown-ups.

AI: Let’s talk about coming to Austin. You’ll be doing a series of shows – Cap City Comedy Club, The Velveeta Room and Coldtowne Theater…
CW: Yeah, I’m really excited about the Coldtowne one.

AI: What was the thought behind lining up all of those shows? You’ve been in L.A. for a while now and we’ve had comics that move to L.A. and come back just for a quick club engagement before they skip town but you really wanted to come back and paint the town red. Is this some sort of a release for you?
CW: Oh absolutely, because when you get to [L.A.], you have to just “go kill” every show, do “that seven-minute set that you know is gold” or whatever – it sort of takes the fun out of it. I mean, I always mix new things in as much as I can, but I do feel like I’ve definitely been hunkered into a mold. That and I don’t even get to perform as much as I’d like to so I want to evolve beyond that – to be more freed up in my thinking. I don’t get to do the ukulele stuff or my piano stuff or any of my music stuff as much as I’d like because it’s hard to do those in these seven-minute sets where I’m like “Okay I’m gonna go set up my looper, my piano and my guitar and find a way to do it all in ten minutes and then I have to wait around before I go to my next show and break all that stuff down and then go set it up at the next one… so it gets to be logistically very complicated. So to have the ability to be like, “This is my night of musical fun and expression that I can just have as my own” is really exciting.

AI: So what’s the concept behind the Coldtowne show? I know it’s going to be very music-based – it’s not gonna be just going up and telling jokes. What’s the idea behind it?
CW: For me music and comedy, I express them in the same way. Most musical comedy songs, they don’t really appeal to anybody outside of comedy nerds and even with just the regular music that I perform on my own, I try and keep things light because that’s just the way I write songs – they’re just funny. There’s humor in them, but you’d want to listen to them in the same way someone would want to listen to them outside of a comedy context.

AI: I understand what you’re saying – someone will go up on stage and say, “this is a song about something ironic… and here it is!” But if someone were to just take that song and listen to it on their iPod they’d think, “what the hell is this? It’s just a shitty song.”
CW: Exactly. The idea behind the show is that it’s really a release party for the fourth of a series of albums that I did, one for every season, which is like a culmination of five years worth of work. So it’s like a giant cathartic release for me as well to just be done with this obsession that I’ve had for five years and move on with my life a little bit and share it with the world because it’s not on iTunes or anything, I just give it away to friends and I hand-make all the albums and wrap them up myself. They’re gifts that are a part of me and I need to share that too. From a performance standpoint I’ve always wanted to take musical comedy and blend it with stand-up in a way that’s incredibly naturalistic and, hopefully, sincere – it could start out with a couple jokes that might bleed into some funny songs that could easily transition right into some songs that are funny but are just generally good tunes and from there maybe do an instrumental where I can segue into some comedy. There’s that term now, “alternative comedy,” which basically means it’s some jackass with a flute performing some god-awful music and maybe throwing some one-liners in…
AI: So basically you’re saying “alternative comedy” is Jethro Tull?
CW: Yeah, completely! (Laughs) I’ve always wanted to perform in music venues and do comedy specifically because I can do both music and comedy instead of music-and-then-“this is why I think Trader Joe’s is stupid!”

AI: So the CD you’re releasing is the fourth in the cycle…
CW: It started with “Winter” because that’s technically the beginning of the year and then we went to “Spring,” then “Summer,” and this one’s “Autumn.” There are themes throughout the albums and this one is the wrapping up of all of the themes from the first three albums. So there are some nice songs in there but there are definitely some epic tunes in there too that weave this little world that I’ve created over the years.

AI: I wanted to clear that up because you also had an album on Rooftop Records come out recently where you weave musical tracks with stand-up performances…
CW: Yeah, I really like that album because I think it does things with musical comedy that you don’t typically hear on either stand-up CDs or musical comedy CDs and it goes into some interesting directions, hopefully. I also think it’s one of the most heavily-produced stand-up albums ever made – I’m sure there aren’t any stats on that but I spent months editing and producing it, which is pretty funny.

AI: When you’re talking about editing and producing it, do you mean the tracks or the whole album?
CW: I did everything. I conceptualized it before-hand because I knew it was gonna be different so when I did my actual show I knew there was some interesting musical stuff that I had to do live and then some musical transitions/sketches and then a couple of straight-up songs… I tried to blend it all together so it would be completely fluid. If you listen to it, it opens up with me and someone coming into the show walking into a hallway, then we take an intermission where everybody disperses, then through the crowd and I’m taking an intermission in my own act. Then I go downstairs and rock out at another party then I come back up to my own show… it took a lot of conceptualizing to figure out “that’s exactly how I want to do it” so it took a little bit of planning to make it happen.

AI: That’s what I think is really interesting because with most comedy CDs, the standard format is, “Hey, this is…”
CW: “…every joke I’ve ever written.” (Laughs)
AI: Yeah! And there’s also the actual CD itself, where they just turn on the microphones at a club and then give a really great performance… and that’s it. I had no idea that you had produced the whole thing. I thought maybe you came up with the concept, told Rooftop, “here are some tracks and I want it to be edited this way,” but you actually did it yourself! How did you and Rooftop come to that arrangement? Did they approach you to do an album and you said, “Okay, but these are my conditions…?”
CW: I edited another friend’s album and I thought, “well I should do an album,” so I contacted them and they were super into it and then when it came time to have that conversation they thought, “well yeah, we’ll just turn on the mic and you do the rest as far as performance. Then you send us some tracks and we’ll cut ‘em together.” But I am pretty obsessive about these things… I’ve been making albums for like, twelve years non-stop – I’m always making something as far as music so I felt confident in saying “I will control every aspect of this,” which is probably why it took a lot longer to produce than if I had made it a little simpler, but it’s not what my body allows me to do.

AI: Do you feel like that Rooftop album is pretty close to what you want to do in a stage show? In other words, is the Coldtowne show going to be more or less a live version of the Rooftop CD experience or is it going to be different?
CW: It’s definitely going to be different because it’s gonna be heavily musical. I’m gonna be sharing a lot of songs from all four albums and mixing it in with a little bit of stand-up on my part but with lots of surprises. I’ve got some friends that are gonna come in and tell jokes and I might accompany them musically. It’s gonna have the same tone as that Rooftop album where things blend together so you’re being entertained with things moving naturally from music to comedy but I definitely want to focus more on the music. So the idea of “The Chuck Watkins Show” at Coldtowne is kinda the comedy show I’ve always wanted to put on: a lot of music and outright fun.

Catch “The Chuck Watkins Show” at Coldtowne Theater, June 21st at 10 pm. Tickets are $10 and come with a free copy of Chuck’s “Autumn” CD! CLICK HERE for more information.

Chuck’s Rooftop Records release, “The Sophistimicated Wit of Chuck Watkins, Esquire,” is also available for purchase HERE.

 

Comments

HelS's picture
by HelS (not verified) - Jul 20 2010 - 6:10am

What a great interview! I really enjoyed it. Everything is as clear as essay writing help :)