Todd Rosenberg
Audio By Carbonatix
Bert Kreischer is bringing his Permission to Party tour to Desert Diamond Arena on October 17, and he may or may not be wearing a shirt.
To be honest, I didn’t ask. There are a zillion pictures online of the man performing shirtless, and even more comments on it. Sure, it’s annoyingly meta to comment about not commenting on it, but here we are.
Bare and hairy or covered in fabric, Kreischer is planning to roll up with his standard arsenal: observational jokes, energy-fueled anecdotes and party vibes. What’s different about this tour, he says, is that it’s not coming on the heels of a comedy special.
“I took a year and a half to get ready for it, instead of just grabbing that material and taking it on the road. So, I think it’s a little more well thought out and it’s a little more dense with material.”
Kreischer has his hands simultaneously on a slew of projects in addition to the tour, but says it doesn’t distract him from comedy; it all just lends itself to creating more material.
“I have a lot of plates spinning. A TV show, a movie in development, three podcasts and a cooking show. Then also, I’m thinking about promos for different things, but I think the way standup works is you always have your ear open to any bit you think would stand out — anytime you think of something or hear something sideways. I just write it down or put it in my Notes app. I write one thought down, and the next minute I’m thinking about bands from the ‘70s that I can put on this show in Florida we’re doing, and that just leads to more thoughts, like, ‘I should listen to 38 Special, is John Cougar Mellencamp still touring, is Bob Seger still alive?’ My brain doesn’t shut off.”
It wasn’t always that way. He wasn’t always a person in overdrive. “I was stereotypical,” he says.
“Before I met my wife and we had Georgia (their daughter), I had huge periods where I did nothing. I thought about standup all the time, but at that time, podcasting wasn’t around, and you couldn’t be in charge of your own career. You kind of had to wait for the gatekeepers to greenlight you; you’d have ideas for five sitcoms and five movies and were just waiting to be called upon.”
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Shifts in media, he says, turned things around for him. “The second that media shifted, probably for me around 2017, all of a sudden I’m in control of my own ship and decided to just make my own ideas happen. I could do a cooking show without having to wait on Food Network.”
With those changes in social media allowing comics to create and share work immediately and reach a global audience, I ask Kreischer if he feels like the younger generations have it easier. He says he can see where that seems beneficial — broader reaches, quicker rises to fame. They also don’t have to hit the road for grueling tour schedules as much, and that bums him out a bit.
“I almost feel bad for them because we got to fail in front of people who couldn’t run home and comment on us failing or record us failing. We just failed, and then people went home, and that show sucked. You got (the chance) to fail for 10,000 hours before you got your 10,000 good hours in.”
“Crowd work” is a hot topic in comedy these days as more and more comedians have gone from doing battle with random hecklers to whole shows that feature continuous interactions with audience members; some shows are even built with the audience giving the prompts.
“Though I can’t do it in arenas so much, I would argue that crowd work is awesome. Trust me, I lived on it when I was on the road. When you’re doing a rough show and they don’t want to hear your material, it’s very valuable,” he says.
It’s also no easy feat, in his opinion. “Knowing how to do it is integral to being a great comedian, and that’s the truth. Any great comedian is phenomenal at it — that’s just how it works. It’s an art form. The real art form is getting on stage with a microphone and talking, and not needing participation to get things going. Just creating an idea from nothing and making a stranger laugh.”
Throughout the conversation, Kreischer mentions a lot of comedians — Mark Normand, Sam Morril, John Mulaney and Matt Rife, to name a few — whose skills and success excite him. He says that watching people drop out of his life the more he succeeded gave him a different perspective.
“People who I thought were friends when I was nobody, who I hoped would be excited for my success — it didn’t happen. Some people turned on me, said wild things about me behind my back and on podcasts. So, I’m doing something I love until I don’t feel that way anymore, and I want to allow them to enjoy their success and root for them as much as possible. I found the friends who root for me.”
There’s a lot of chatter online about where Kreischer falls on the political spectrum, and I ask him if he keeps it blurry because he doesn’t want to be defined, and why.
“It’s a very complicated question,” he says, and a lot of it traces back to his relationship with his father.
“It’s almost like he didn’t want me to form opinions on social issues. No matter my view on something, he’d try and show me where I was wrong, always trying to point out another side. In high school, I came home an absolute hippie raging against war when the Iraq war broke out, and he immediately shut me down, took the other side and then later came and talked to me about it.”
“As far as politics and comedy, maybe I’m old-school a little. I have always felt that if people know your politics, it can make you predictable, and if you’re predictable, you’re not funny. I think you can probably figure out my politics if you are listening. I’m gonna talk about issues that audience members are for or against. My goal is to make you laugh.”
After this tour, Kreischer says that he’s focused on finishing his projects and maybe taking some time off.
“I’d like to become a mogul with my vodka business and make money to create projects for younger comics and friends and create festivals.
“I just want to be healthy and have fun. I want to giggle and work out and not have anyone tell me what to do, and I wanna see my kids grow up. I’m really basic. I keep telling myself I need to get more complicated.”
