Episode 1391 - Tommy Tiernan

Episode 1391 • Released December 12, 2022 • Speakers detected

00:00:00Marc:all right let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fucking ears what's happening i'm mark maron this is my podcast wtf welcome to it

00:00:20Marc:I'm back home, man.

00:00:21Marc:I've been back home a day or two.

00:00:23Marc:I got back home on Saturday and I recorded my HBO special on Thursday.

00:00:31Marc:On Friday, I just hung around New York.

00:00:35Marc:Ate a giant meat sandwich, tried to relax, tried to feel like I'd accomplished something great as opposed to feel like, oh, it's over.

00:00:46Marc:I'm done.

00:00:47Marc:It was OK.

00:00:48Marc:I tried to I tried to sort of ease out of it.

00:00:52Marc:But now I'm back home and I'm exhausted.

00:00:54Marc:Today on the show, I talked to Tommy Tiernan, Irish comic, actor, writer.

00:01:00Marc:You may know him as Jerry in the show Dairy Girls.

00:01:03Marc:He co-hosts the Tommy Hector and Loretta podcast.

00:01:07Marc:He's also the host of the Tommy Tiernan show on RTE TV in Ireland.

00:01:12Marc:He's a guy I've seen around and said hi to for years.

00:01:16Marc:And I finally got a chance to sit down and talk to him on that last trip to Ireland.

00:01:22Marc:Tell you how it all unfolded.

00:01:25Marc:I can walk you through it.

00:01:27Marc:I mean, I woke up pretty normal.

00:01:29Marc:I know I've been paying a lot of lip service to freaking out or not taking care of myself in order to comfort myself, which is probably true.

00:01:39Marc:But ultimately, on the day of the taping, when I was going to do two shows for the HBO taping, I was sort of calm.

00:01:47Marc:And I think all of that comes from working the fuck out of this stuff for a year and a half.

00:01:53Marc:I mean, I definitely was confident in the material.

00:01:56Marc:I could have done it in my sleep in a way.

00:01:59Marc:I mean, the jokes were dug in.

00:02:01Marc:They were dug into my neural pathways.

00:02:02Marc:They were dug into my sense of timing.

00:02:05Marc:They were dug into...

00:02:07Marc:They were just ready to go.

00:02:08Marc:But I wasn't really bored with them, which was good.

00:02:12Marc:So the day of the show, I got up and actually ended up was weird because I thought my manager texted me to have coffee, David Martin.

00:02:22Marc:And I was like, sure, let's have coffee.

00:02:24Marc:And turned out it was Dave Manheim, Dopey Dave from the Dopey podcast.

00:02:28Marc:And, you know, he texted me.

00:02:30Marc:I'm here and I'm like, why?

00:02:32Marc:Oh, that David.

00:02:35Marc:But it was actually the perfect David to hang out with before the show, you know, because Mannheim is a recovery guy.

00:02:40Marc:We went and got some breakfast.

00:02:42Marc:We talked a real shit for a while.

00:02:44Marc:Got my head clear.

00:02:45Marc:Got me to purge some demons by talking to another sober drug addict.

00:02:51Marc:And it was a perfect way to start the day of the special.

00:02:55Marc:But we did not record it.

00:02:57Marc:Much to his chagrin, probably, we did not record that because he's always trying to get me to be on his show.

00:03:01Marc:But this was just a couple of guys hanging out.

00:03:04Marc:And he was grateful that I didn't make him go to Katz's because he works there.

00:03:07Marc:But he's trying to spend his life there.

00:03:09Marc:He doesn't want to spend his life at Katz's or hook me up with meat.

00:03:12Marc:I didn't need meat.

00:03:13Marc:The morning of the show, I did not need to fill up on meat.

00:03:19Marc:So about 1245, a car takes me almost to the theater.

00:03:23Marc:Here's the thing about taking cars in New York.

00:03:25Marc:Take the fucking train.

00:03:26Marc:Just take the train.

00:03:27Marc:No matter what, even if you're dressed for the opera, take the fucking train.

00:03:32Marc:Jesus, man.

00:03:33Marc:Guy got me about a block away, said this ain't moving.

00:03:35Marc:I'm like, all right, I'll get out.

00:03:37Marc:I'll get out with my fancy pants.

00:03:40Marc:They weren't that fancy.

00:03:42Marc:So I walked to the theater and kind of took it in.

00:03:45Marc:Took in the... They got the lighting up, the backdrop up.

00:03:48Marc:Everything looking great.

00:03:50Marc:Then I had to do a bunch of still photographs.

00:03:52Marc:Do a little hair and makeup.

00:03:53Marc:I was trying on the clothes.

00:03:55Marc:I worked with a stylist this time.

00:03:58Marc:I've never done that before.

00:04:00Marc:And I still have mixed feelings about it.

00:04:02Marc:But I'm told that it's going to look great.

00:04:05Marc:It's a little awkward for me because I tend to wear my own shit.

00:04:09Marc:So I try the outfits on.

00:04:11Marc:I get the hair and makeup.

00:04:13Marc:I choose an outfit.

00:04:14Marc:Then we do a bunch of still photographs.

00:04:16Marc:And all this is going on while there is Russ and Daughter's food in the backstage area.

00:04:22Marc:That's what we had brought in.

00:04:23Marc:About five or six kinds of herring.

00:04:25Marc:sable, smoked sable, smoked salmon, couple kinds of cream cheese, whitefish salad, baked salmon salad, all kinds of bagels, pickles, full Ashkenaz.

00:04:35Marc:We're going full Ashkenaz for pre-show, which is fine.

00:04:39Marc:Nothing like salted everything to maybe put on some water weight right before you get on stage.

00:04:45Marc:Now, generally, in my past, I've been shredding inside, just kind of losing my mind and anticipation for

00:04:54Marc:to do the special, to get on stage, just panic and worry and just wondering if anything will work.

00:05:01Marc:None of that happened.

00:05:02Marc:I was so prepared in my mind to do this thing that I was just sort of excited and kind of trying to eat as much smoked fish as possible because I didn't want any of it to go bad.

00:05:12Marc:These were the two places I was putting my energy.

00:05:15Marc:I was trying to pace myself so I could eat as much smoked fish as possible, but also get out there and focus on the set at hand.

00:05:23Marc:We used the music that I composed with the fellas.

00:05:26Marc:I don't have a name for it, but it came out pretty good.

00:05:29Marc:Came out really good.

00:05:30Marc:So the plan was to, you know, Brendan McDonald did some of the offstage announcements.

00:05:38Marc:I did an offstage announcement and then we just brought the lights down, popped up the backdrop.

00:05:44Marc:When you're sitting in the audience before the show, it's just a bunch of white screens up there.

00:05:48Marc:And then the lights come down.

00:05:50Marc:Boom.

00:05:50Marc:Backdrop pops up.

00:05:52Marc:My big riff comes on.

00:05:53Marc:Bang.

00:05:54Marc:Then I walk out like 30 seconds later and do it.

00:05:59Marc:So.

00:06:00Marc:The first show was hot as fuck, not hot temperature wise.

00:06:04Marc:The audience was lit, almost too lit.

00:06:07Marc:They were very excited.

00:06:08Marc:All the jokes were, you know, popping.

00:06:11Marc:Everything was good.

00:06:11Marc:But I fucked up the opening joke and I felt like I was a little too amped, a little too excited, caffeinated, full of smoked fish.

00:06:20Marc:So the subtext of everything that's going on is I'm digesting the history of the Jewish people in my stomach.

00:06:28Marc:Well, at least Ashkenaz.

00:06:30Marc:I had fucking Ashkenaz food buzz going on.

00:06:34Marc:But the show went great, and we tried to light this thing a certain way, this bit I was doing, and that completely got all fucked up, which is fine.

00:06:43Marc:And then I finished the show.

00:06:44Marc:I went back out, and I shot that thing again with the same audience.

00:06:47Marc:It was funny because they weren't told to wait in case we needed to shoot something else.

00:06:52Marc:So I closed the show.

00:06:53Marc:Everyone's getting up, putting their coats on.

00:06:55Marc:And then Steven, my director, is like, go back out there.

00:06:58Marc:Go back out there.

00:06:59Marc:Tell them to hang out.

00:07:00Marc:So I got to go back out there, tell him to hang out.

00:07:02Marc:And then we I told the story.

00:07:03Marc:I just made it loose and we reshot something.

00:07:05Marc:That was fine.

00:07:07Marc:And then it was sort of getting ready, fucking filling back up again for the second show, which was different because I was looser in a way.

00:07:19Marc:I ate a bunch of babka in between shows.

00:07:21Marc:So now we're going with dessert Ashkenazh.

00:07:24Marc:And Rugla.

00:07:27Marc:So I'm kind of cranked on the fatty cookies and cake.

00:07:33Marc:But I get out there and it's a totally different show, man.

00:07:36Marc:The second show is totally different in that the audience was not as lit up.

00:07:41Marc:I had to earn it.

00:07:43Marc:They were a great audience, but they weren't all jacked.

00:07:47Marc:I would say it was a more honest show in a way because I could tell.

00:07:54Marc:I've been doing this a long time.

00:07:55Marc:They weren't going to laugh unless I made them laugh.

00:07:58Marc:The first show, I'm not sure.

00:07:59Marc:I think the first show, they were just so excited, I probably could have done anything.

00:08:02Marc:But this show, it was like I had to work for it, and it was good.

00:08:06Marc:It was good that I had to work for it because it made the jokes tighter and better, and it made them work more.

00:08:12Marc:The jokes.

00:08:13Marc:But I found room to improvise second show, and a few things happened that I believe we'll use in some of the material.

00:08:20Marc:I did stuff that night of the HBO special, and this is something I do generally at all my specials, is that...

00:08:28Marc:Stuff happened that never happened before and probably never will again that night.

00:08:35Marc:I know where they are.

00:08:36Marc:I know which things they are.

00:08:38Marc:Maybe after the show runs, I'll tell you.

00:08:40Marc:But I improvised some stuff.

00:08:41Marc:I made some choices around the emotional drive of a couple of jokes.

00:08:45Marc:But a couple of beats...

00:08:46Marc:Just deliver themselves out of the ether from the muse from the great unknown, which is how I generate material.

00:08:53Marc:It's given to me by forces I don't really understand in a moment.

00:08:57Marc:And that happened like two times second show.

00:08:59Marc:And one of them really brought a lot of the Lynn stuff and the grief stuff together.

00:09:04Marc:There was just a funny beat that wasn't there before.

00:09:08Marc:And it was delivered to me, perhaps by Lynn.

00:09:12Marc:I don't know, but it makes everything very present and very alive.

00:09:16Marc:And that second show was it was longer, but it gives us a lot to work with.

00:09:21Marc:So all in all, it went great and I feel good about it.

00:09:25Marc:And Friday, I just hung out with Deborah Winger and I'm not name dropping.

00:09:28Marc:I love Deborah Winger, but we were kind of.

00:09:31Marc:She used to come around on my Instagram lives.

00:09:33Marc:And then, you know, I met her.

00:09:35Marc:She came to the screening.

00:09:36Marc:I told you that.

00:09:37Marc:But then we went out and had some some Katz's deli and just talked for like three hours.

00:09:43Marc:It was great.

00:09:44Marc:It was a pleasure.

00:09:45Marc:What?

00:09:46Marc:No mics.

00:09:47Marc:It was fun.

00:09:48Marc:The whole thing was great.

00:09:50Marc:And now I just have to, you know, start eating like a person, get off the fucking cigars, start hiking up the mountain.

00:09:57Marc:And I don't know if I'm going to take it easy.

00:10:00Marc:I put in for spots at the comedy store.

00:10:02Marc:So here we go.

00:10:03Marc:I've actually got some ideas I want to work out here.

00:10:06Marc:I thought, like, I'm done.

00:10:08Marc:It's over.

00:10:09Marc:And I'm just going to go right back to it.

00:10:11Marc:But all that being said, if you came to either of the shows in New York, thank you for coming.

00:10:16Marc:It was a tremendous experience for me.

00:10:18Marc:I hope it was for you.

00:10:19Marc:For the rest of you, you'll see it at some point, hopefully earlier than later next year.

00:10:24Marc:And today you're going to hear me talking to Tommy Tiernan.

00:10:28Marc:You can get the Tommy Hector and Loretta podcast wherever you listen to podcasts.

00:10:33Marc:The Dairy Girls is on wherever that's on.

00:10:36Marc:Kit loves it.

00:10:38Marc:She watches it all the time.

00:10:39Marc:She loves it.

00:10:40Marc:But this is me basically talking to Tommy Tiernan for the first time in Ireland.

00:10:46Marc:Ireland.

00:10:54Ireland.

00:10:54Marc:But what I was saying about expectations in show business is, you know, after having so much resentment for so long.

00:11:01Guest:Yeah, but you're fluent in resentment.

00:11:04Guest:I know, I am.

00:11:05Marc:Aren't you?

00:11:05Marc:No, I'm fluent in hope.

00:11:09Marc:Come on.

00:11:11Marc:Come on.

00:11:11Marc:Really?

00:11:13Marc:But are they the same when you're Irish?

00:11:16Marc:Hope and resentment.

00:11:17Marc:Yeah.

00:11:21Marc:Yeah, there you go.

00:11:23Guest:Let's start philosophically.

00:11:25Guest:Do you know they have these radio stations, these Christian radio stations called Spirit and Endeavor?

00:11:32Guest:It'd be good to have one, Resentment.

00:11:35Guest:Well, yeah.

00:11:35Guest:Resentment FM presents...

00:11:37Marc:Well, I think that part of what we do, honestly, is that we are able to... I mean, you can't process bitterness specifically on stage.

00:11:44Marc:I tried that.

00:11:45Marc:I tried to be bitter on stage when I was younger.

00:11:47Marc:I was prematurely bitter.

00:11:48Marc:And my assumption was that everybody is a little bitter.

00:11:52Marc:And that may be true, it may not be true, but it's not entertaining.

00:11:55Guest:Well, I used to find that very attractive, Mark.

00:11:59Guest:You did?

00:12:01Guest:Yeah.

00:12:02Guest:I love listening to stand-up as opposed to watching it.

00:12:05Guest:So I'd always prefer a good CD rather than a Netflix thing.

00:12:10Guest:Sure.

00:12:11Guest:So I remember all those, you know...

00:12:14Marc:tickets still available yeah yeah uh this had better work not sold out not sold out the trilogy uh not sold out tickets still available and um oh what was the other one i can't was the one with the hope the word hope in it i hope this is oh yeah yeah this this has to be funny i think and uh but i thought they were all fantastic mark i i didn't see it as a final engagement

00:12:38Guest:Final engagement.

00:12:39Guest:That was the one.

00:12:40Guest:Yeah, yeah.

00:12:40Marc:That was the one totally unprocessed material and in the middle of my wife leaving me.

00:12:46Guest:Great, two hours.

00:12:47Guest:To be a passenger on that trauma for you was entertaining.

00:12:50Guest:Yeah, well, but I think that's why I... No, it was a brilliant stand-up.

00:12:54Guest:So I don't think that resentment, unprocessed resentment, it might have something to do with control.

00:13:01Guest:When you're totally in control of the product, it becomes less interesting.

00:13:08Guest:Right.

00:13:09Guest:So you don't listen to my podcast.

00:13:13Guest:So when it's a little bit unprocessed, it's like a horseshoe.

00:13:19Guest:There's shape for the public to come in.

00:13:23Guest:There's space for the public to come in.

00:13:25Marc:So that's why I found those early CDs.

00:13:27Marc:That's a shape metaphor.

00:13:30Marc:You might get it around the pole.

00:13:31Marc:Both.

00:13:32Guest:Yeah.

00:13:33Guest:And there'll be a clang when you don't...

00:13:36Guest:that's it so I find that interesting you know just that it's probably about in a sense authenticity you know that you want to be listening to somebody who's not quite like for me and I hope you don't mind me being fantastic I'll take this opportunity to be judgemental and talk to you as a fellow traveller yeah do it so say George Carlin's later stuff right

00:14:03Guest:which I found it was so together.

00:14:06Guest:It was so chiseled that there was almost there wasn't room for the audience.

00:14:11Guest:Whereas Lenny Bruce's kind of... He needed the audience.

00:14:16Guest:Yeah, but he was kind of like he was flushing stuff out of himself.

00:14:20Guest:And some of that was messy and some of it was unformed and some of it was oohs and ahhs.

00:14:24Guest:But it was more interesting.

00:14:26Guest:But he was always checking in to the audience.

00:14:28Marc:I mean, even when Lenny was, he was always sort of like, dig, dig, dig.

00:14:32Marc:Dig this, yeah.

00:14:32Marc:Right, right.

00:14:33Marc:Whereas Carlin later was just sort of like, I don't give a fuck.

00:14:36Marc:This is how I think.

00:14:38Marc:Fuck you.

00:14:39Marc:Take it.

00:14:40Marc:Which is just a bit, it's a bit harder to spend time with.

00:14:43Marc:But intellectually, philosophically, I found it satisfying.

00:14:48Marc:And I dismissed him.

00:14:49Marc:It wasn't until I watched the Judd Apatow documentary recently that I really started to reassess some of that older Carlin.

00:14:56Guest:Sure, yeah.

00:14:57Marc:Because I found a distance with him.

00:14:58Marc:Because unlike you or I, that was a guy that wrote down everything.

00:15:03Marc:Yeah.

00:15:03Marc:And that everything was worked out like a fucking math problem.

00:15:07Marc:Like, you know, when I watch you work or when I know my process, I don't know your particular process, but...

00:15:13Marc:you're going to talk and you're going to see what happens and over time something will evolve eventually right but that's the way i do it too there's a tremendous risk in that but once you know that the beginning of it is funny then you're good i think you're probably more of the stuff i've seen i think you're probably more of a risk taker

00:15:33Guest:a certain type of risk taker than I am.

00:15:35Guest:I think, I remember you saying to me one time, you just load up and go, you know?

00:15:41Guest:And that whole idea of caffeinated angst with verbal dexterity, plus anger and resentment.

00:15:52Marc:I've gotten softer though.

00:15:53Marc:I've gotten softer.

00:15:54Marc:Have you?

00:15:55Marc:Yes, I've broken a bit.

00:15:57Marc:I'm a bit more open-hearted out of necessity.

00:16:01Guest:out of uh because you can't hold on to it uh anymore no but that's but you've paid a high price for that that doesn't that's not you know that place doesn't come easy no and you wouldn't choose it no you know you can be you can say well you know this softening has benefits but you know

00:16:20Marc:It's just like, oh, the loveliness of age just made me wiser and a little more.

00:16:25Marc:It's like, no, I got you get beat up.

00:16:27Marc:You get hurt.

00:16:28Marc:You get heartbroken.

00:16:29Marc:Heartbroken.

00:16:30Marc:Then, you know, you get agree.

00:16:32Marc:You know, you're in grief.

00:16:34Marc:But I think like, you know, I feel like I've always been those things.

00:16:39Marc:But anger is a way to avoid those things and also to express those things.

00:16:47Marc:But the type of grief that I was in in the last few years is different because it's not preemptive.

00:16:54Marc:You're not making it up.

00:16:56Marc:Real loss is real loss.

00:16:58Marc:You know, I don't think I acknowledged it as much, you know, when I got divorced or whatever, because you can still be angry and you can still be angry when somebody dies that you love, but it doesn't go anywhere.

00:17:08Marc:And eventually you have to surrender to what life is.

00:17:11Marc:Right.

00:17:11Guest:I don't know.

00:17:13Guest:I'm not going to challenge you on that, but I don't I don't know.

00:17:16Marc:What do you mean you don't know?

00:17:17Marc:This is why, this is like, I'm trying to understand why I like and feel psychically and emotionally connected to this fucking country and I'm a Jew.

00:17:29Marc:And I need answers from you.

00:17:31Guest:I used to do this line, the Irish are like the Jews but not as focused.

00:17:36Yeah.

00:17:36Marc:Right, right, right.

00:17:38Guest:Not as ambitious, you know.

00:17:40Guest:True.

00:17:42Guest:I know we're both people of the word.

00:17:46Marc:What about the sorrow, man?

00:17:47Marc:What about the sorrow?

00:17:49Guest:Yeah, well, where does drunkenness come into it?

00:17:55Guest:That's a treatment.

00:17:56Guest:Is it?

00:17:57Guest:Well, I wonder about, okay, so again, speaking very broadly, we are a people, the Irish, who had our country, we were colonised, we were starved, and we had our language taken from us.

00:18:13Guest:And that's to be communicating in another people's tongue has its advantages, because you come with an Irish mind to the English language.

00:18:26Guest:So it's kind of like a, you become more creative with it.

00:18:32Guest:You know what I mean?

00:18:32Guest:You're naturally not operating from the same source as the English.

00:18:40Guest:But we always had our own country in the sense that, you know, we weren't looking for a homeland.

00:18:44Guest:We were here.

00:18:45Guest:I think the Jewish experience is radically different.

00:18:49Guest:Of course, there was the getting of the homeland after the Second World War, but there was also a survival thing in other societies.

00:19:01Marc:A need to adapt and find the places where we could thrive.

00:19:08Marc:In the midst of pure.

00:19:09Guest:And be protected.

00:19:10Guest:Yeah.

00:19:11Guest:And but the thing that the word is really interesting.

00:19:14Guest:I'm very, very drawn to the Bible.

00:19:16Guest:Yeah.

00:19:16Guest:And those stories and.

00:19:18Marc:Both testaments.

00:19:19Guest:Absolutely.

00:19:20Guest:And I, you know, I was when I was thinking about talking to you because Christian means something very different in America than it does here.

00:19:27Guest:It's not good in America.

00:19:28Guest:No, it's a little bit heightened and very sure of itself.

00:19:32Marc:It's half fascist too, right?

00:19:33Guest:Yeah, it is.

00:19:34Guest:And it's a bit clean cut.

00:19:35Guest:It doesn't seem to be... Not about service or acts.

00:19:40Guest:No, it doesn't seem to embrace poverty the way Jesus might have suggested it.

00:19:43Marc:Not at all.

00:19:46Marc:It's been turned around into an anti-poverty stance.

00:19:48Marc:Yeah, you know, which is... How to transcend from poverty.

00:19:52Marc:Like you talked about in one of your bits, you talked about Joel Osteen.

00:19:55Marc:And, you know, that seems to be the tone of spirituality.

00:19:59Marc:And then politically, it's just straight up fascism.

00:20:01Guest:Whereas over here, I think it retains a bit more of its radical agenda.

00:20:06Guest:And for me, it's about being a pilgrim as opposed to a president.

00:20:11Guest:It's a bit more... Yeah, both testaments, it's an interesting map.

00:20:18Guest:It's an interesting interior map as much as an exterior story of a people.

00:20:24Guest:But I find the whole thing fascinating.

00:20:26Marc:An interior map.

00:20:27Guest:Yeah.

00:20:27Guest:Well, that something happened with Christ that was evolutionary, that, you know, of transcending, of making some kind of link between the human and the divine in an evolutionary way, not just in a...

00:20:47Guest:philosophical way.

00:20:49Guest:And were you brought up with it?

00:20:50Guest:Not at all.

00:20:51Guest:We had, I mean, I had such a radically strange upbringing that I'm only kind of learning to appreciate now.

00:21:00Marc:How so?

00:21:00Guest:Well, I was born in the mountains, in the wind and the rain on the cold northwest coast of Ireland.

00:21:11Marc:Is this the myth of Tiernan?

00:21:14Guest:The myth of Tiernan.

00:21:16Guest:Don't, I'm just... Try and tell it again in a sociological way.

00:21:24Guest:No, no, I like it.

00:21:25Guest:I love it.

00:21:26Guest:You either want the poetry or you don't.

00:21:27Guest:I want the poetry.

00:21:28Guest:It's why I'm here.

00:21:30Guest:Can I take a shot occasionally?

00:21:31Guest:No, you can't.

00:21:32Guest:Just relax.

00:21:33Guest:Don't be interrupting.

00:21:35Guest:Take the tablet and if it works well and good.

00:21:39Guest:Okay, so you're up there.

00:21:40Guest:So I'm up there.

00:21:40Guest:And that part of Ireland back then was...

00:21:46Guest:I mean, for American listeners, it's Appalachian.

00:21:51Guest:Oh, really?

00:21:52Guest:So what part is it?

00:21:53Guest:It's Donegal.

00:21:54Marc:That's where I went with Lynn the last time I was here.

00:21:57Guest:Oh, yeah.

00:21:57Guest:So you've been there.

00:21:58Guest:So if you can imagine that 50 years ago.

00:22:00Guest:Wow.

00:22:01Guest:And then at the age of three...

00:22:05Guest:We moved to Africa.

00:22:06Guest:So there's no explaining that to a child.

00:22:09Guest:Was that for what reason?

00:22:10Guest:For my dad.

00:22:11Guest:My dad said because he thought Donegal was too remote.

00:22:14Guest:So we went to Africa.

00:22:18Guest:For work?

00:22:19Guest:Even my dad's work.

00:22:20Guest:What work was that?

00:22:21Guest:He worked with farmers.

00:22:22Guest:Okay.

00:22:24Guest:And he gave up up there?

00:22:25Guest:Well, I mean, give up what, like?

00:22:29Guest:I don't know.

00:22:29Guest:The farms weren't working out?

00:22:31Guest:Oh, no, no.

00:22:31Guest:He was working as a teacher.

00:22:32Guest:Okay.

00:22:33Guest:He taught religion and science.

00:22:36Guest:Okay.

00:22:37Guest:Okay.

00:22:37Guest:So he's a man who's used to living with paradoxes.

00:22:42Guest:Yeah.

00:22:43Guest:Wow, that is interesting.

00:22:44Guest:So it's an extreme, at the age of three, it's an imaginatively brutal thing to happen.

00:22:52Guest:So you go from wind and rain and rocks and mountain

00:22:58Guest:um and also a very slow way of speaking how's it going there now you tell me this is the way we're going here and there's all this kind of talking and it's all slow and easy and there's no hard corners or nothing it's just beautiful there's no like there's no yeah you know it wouldn't it's not an accent that would suit you yeah right i like it that was very soothing even for four seconds yeah then suddenly i'm in africa

00:23:25Guest:And, you know, I used to do a line about it, which is it was like moving from a photograph to its negative.

00:23:34Guest:So all of a sudden you are an uninterrupted landscape.

00:23:37Guest:It's heat, it's red dust, it's animals, it's different noises.

00:23:43Guest:So I lived there for three years and all my pals were African.

00:23:47Marc:And you remember it from three to six.

00:23:49Guest:I have a sense of it.

00:23:50Guest:I look at photos.

00:23:52Guest:I don't remember...

00:23:54Guest:But I'm committed to it through storytelling.

00:23:57Guest:Yeah.

00:23:58Guest:So I know that it happened.

00:24:01Guest:So I'll wander with words to try and understand it.

00:24:04Guest:So it is almost a memoryless jaunt.

00:24:08Guest:Yeah.

00:24:09Guest:But it happened.

00:24:09Guest:Right.

00:24:10Guest:So I can talk about it.

00:24:11Guest:Sure.

00:24:12Guest:Imaginatively, because I don't have actual experiences to draw on.

00:24:15Guest:Sure.

00:24:16Guest:Three years of that.

00:24:18Guest:And then as daft and sudden the move from Africa to Africa was, then we went to London.

00:24:28Guest:So all of a sudden it's cement, big buildings, the rain.

00:24:33Yeah.

00:24:34Guest:And then to Ireland.

00:24:35Guest:Yeah.

00:24:36Guest:Back.

00:24:37Guest:And a few different towns in Ireland then.

00:24:40Guest:But religion was never part of our house.

00:24:43Guest:Huh.

00:24:43Guest:Never.

00:24:44Guest:Do you have siblings?

00:24:45Guest:I have three younger siblings, yeah.

00:24:47Guest:And no religion.

00:24:49Marc:They were dragging all of them or they had some of them along the way?

00:24:52Guest:My sister Anne, who's a novelist, was born in Africa.

00:24:55Guest:And then my two, Niamh and Brian, were born in Ireland.

00:25:00Guest:So, I think that that, I mean, what we do is, I was going to say it's beneath us.

00:25:12Guest:Is it though?

00:25:13Guest:It's a kind of a very...

00:25:15Guest:It's a strange thing we do, Mark.

00:25:19Marc:We talk.

00:25:21Marc:But, you know, I've seen you talk about it, and you see it the same way I do, I think, kind of.

00:25:26Marc:I never set out to be an entertainer.

00:25:29Marc:It seems like it was more of a calling.

00:25:31Marc:You know, I set out to, I thought that stand-up was some sort of- Hang on, so we've moved from the mythology of Tommy Tiernan now to the myth of Marc Maron.

00:25:39Guest:It was a calling.

00:25:40Marc:It's the way I look at it in retrospect, because when I watched comedy when I was a kid, it made me laugh, but I thought they were geniuses.

00:25:49Marc:I mean, to make people see things in a way that was palatable and manageable because it was funny, you could break down the biggest concepts into something understandable.

00:25:57Marc:It gave me relief.

00:25:59Marc:It gave me a point of view.

00:25:59Guest:Who did you like when you were?

00:26:01Marc:Well, early on, I just liked some of the older, you know, the comics I used to watch on TV, Buddy Hackett, Jackie Vernon.

00:26:08Marc:And I liked, I think when I had records, I had Cheech and Chong, I had Carlin records and the Richard Pryor records.

00:26:15Marc:But I think that the real birth for me was, you know, seeing when I was in high school, I saw the Richard Pryor's first movie.

00:26:21Marc:You know, when it was a movie.

00:26:23Marc:Yeah.

00:26:23Marc:And I remember going and just being just shattered by, you know, the power of it.

00:26:28Marc:But when I just knowing for myself, when I started doing comedy, I didn't set out to be an entertainer.

00:26:34Marc:Like, I didn't say, like, you know, I'm going to go entertain people.

00:26:37Marc:I need to figure shit out.

00:26:39Marc:And I thought I had something to say.

00:26:40Guest:So who gave you permission to do that in the sense of who did you see that was doing that and you thought, okay, I don't care if nobody else has heard of this person.

00:26:52Guest:The fact that I've seen their work has given me permission to try what I want to do.

00:26:58Marc:Well, oddly, I think it had to do with going to a comedy club.

00:27:02Marc:Maybe when I was in college, I went to... Also in college, who gave me permission?

00:27:10Marc:Who were you copying when you started?

00:27:13Marc:Jews, probably.

00:27:15Marc:I mean, I remember seeing...

00:27:17Marc:Paul Reiser at the comic strip in New York, and the same night that Eddie Murphy dropped by, and I must have been in college, early in college, and I sat with Paul Reiser, and I brought this up to him, and I talked to him, because I said, how do you do it?

00:27:27Marc:How do you start doing comedy?

00:27:29Marc:And he said, I don't know, you just gotta do it.

00:27:32Marc:And that was the end of advice.

00:27:34Marc:So when I was in college, I wrote a bit with a guy and we auditioned for a thing, me and him, as a comedy team.

00:27:43Marc:And then we were told to do it at a club and we failed miserably.

00:27:46Marc:And then we were told to do it at another club and it failed miserably again.

00:27:49Marc:But I think then, I don't know if there was somebody, it was not one of these things where I looked at comics and I thought there's no way, I don't even understand how people do that.

00:27:58Marc:I knew there were comedy clubs by the time I was coming up.

00:28:01Marc:But I started doing open mics and started, you know.

00:28:03Guest:I remember I tried to work as an actor for a little while.

00:28:09Guest:It's the worst.

00:28:11Guest:I also, I saw a guy called Phelan Drew, whose father was Ronnie Drew, who was in the famous Irish ballad group, the Dubliners.

00:28:22Guest:And I saw him in a show called Love and a Bottle by a guy called George Farquhar.

00:28:30Guest:And he played this kind of knee-length, boot-wearing rake who was seducing women and just kind of moving through society, riding all around him and drinking.

00:28:43Guest:And I had no idea how that actor was doing what he was doing.

00:28:47Guest:I just couldn't...

00:28:48Guest:I couldn't forensically understand his performance.

00:28:54Guest:And I've never had that feeling with a comic.

00:28:56Guest:No matter what comic I go and see, I can, ah, you're doing that.

00:29:01Guest:Ah, okay.

00:29:02Guest:So it's that thing of what you can do, isn't it?

00:29:05Guest:And kind of going, well, I know I can do that.

00:29:08Guest:So even the strangest, most brilliant comic, I can go, oh, I can see.

00:29:14Guest:So I was never intimidated by... And with the... It's one of those things where I kind of feel as if it's slightly unfair that I can do this.

00:29:28Guest:Because to me it's like walking.

00:29:31Guest:Yeah.

00:29:32Marc:I wish it was... I understand.

00:29:35Marc:But I think I was intimidated watching comics.

00:29:37Marc:I think I was less intimidated watching actors.

00:29:40Marc:And I think I'm still intimidated watching comics.

00:29:42Marc:I think there's still guys I watch and I'm like, fuck.

00:29:45Marc:I'm never going to be that easy.

00:29:48Marc:It's never going to be that easy for me.

00:29:50Guest:Well, I still find you attractive.

00:29:53Guest:Well, I appreciate that.

00:29:54Guest:As a comic.

00:29:55Guest:You know what I mean?

00:29:55Guest:So I'm still very drawn to you as a... Because I think... And I've always... The first one for me was Lenny Bruce.

00:30:04Guest:And I got into Lenny Bruce via...

00:30:07Guest:I was in school and I saw this guy walk past.

00:30:10Guest:It was 1985 with the cover.

00:30:12Guest:He was holding the vinyl version of Infidels by Bob Dylan.

00:30:17Guest:Yeah.

00:30:18Guest:I went, okay, who's that guy?

00:30:19Guest:Yeah.

00:30:20Guest:So I got into Dylan.

00:30:21Guest:Yeah.

00:30:21Guest:And from Dylan then, 12 months later, you end up hearing about Ginsburg and the Beats.

00:30:28Guest:Yeah.

00:30:29Guest:And then you get into Howl.

00:30:31Guest:Yeah.

00:30:31Guest:And I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, angel-headed hipsters, you know, and you kind of go,

00:30:36Guest:Jesus what is that yeah and then you kind of plow into that a bit more and all of a sudden this guy called Lenny Bruce right appears and you're going you I loved him before I'd even heard a word of course mouth right that's the way it's exactly the way you know and then I started listening to live at Carnegie Hall oh that's the one and lost wages yeah

00:31:00Guest:Tits and ass.

00:31:01Guest:Everybody's vulnerable, baby.

00:31:02Guest:Everybody's assed up for grabs.

00:31:05Guest:It's not that Lenny Bruce is a sick comedian.

00:31:07Guest:It's rather that he comments on the parts of society that are sick.

00:31:12Guest:Yeah.

00:31:12Guest:It's from the intro.

00:31:13Guest:Is it Paul Krasner or somebody?

00:31:14Guest:Anyway, so I didn't understand what Lenny Bruce was doing.

00:31:19Guest:And I'm in the west coast of Ireland.

00:31:23Guest:But that's the most accessible record.

00:31:25Guest:That one?

00:31:25Guest:Yeah.

00:31:26Yeah.

00:31:26Guest:I don't think so.

00:31:27Guest:I think the earlier stuff is more obvious, kind of Father Flotsky's triumph.

00:31:30Guest:With the bits and pieces.

00:31:31Marc:But like the Berklee concert, it's like physics.

00:31:34Marc:It's more difficult.

00:31:36Marc:Yeah, but I think that the fact that they waited for him.

00:31:39Marc:It's an insurance test.

00:31:40Marc:Yeah, yeah.

00:31:41Marc:But it all connects if you listen to it over and over again.

00:31:44Guest:But I fell in... I'm still in love with the architecture of what Lenny Bruce did, even though I don't fully get everything.

00:31:51Guest:Yeah, architecture.

00:31:52Guest:How does it...

00:31:53Guest:So the drama of it That fantastic bit He does Comic at the Palladian Oh yeah And that's about Four hours Well it's about 28 minutes long But it's so perfect The guy's bombing Yeah yeah And then he goes Fuck the Irish Yeah right Yeah that's right So

00:32:12Guest:I think I fell in love with... I think that's the thing that made me fall in love with stand-up, is that it was possible to be dramatic.

00:32:19Guest:It was possible to tell stories.

00:32:23Guest:So he'd be the one for me that...

00:32:26Guest:that I was excited.

00:32:28Guest:And then when I started doing stand-up... Where did you start?

00:32:30Marc:Here?

00:32:31Guest:I started in Galway.

00:32:33Guest:What was the scene?

00:32:33Guest:There was no scene.

00:32:34Guest:There was a comedy club once a week.

00:32:37Guest:Who was there?

00:32:39Guest:So the guys were passing through were all... There weren't any...

00:32:43Guest:kind of North Americans.

00:32:44Guest:Rich Hall might have passed by every now and again.

00:32:46Guest:Do you remember Scott Capuro?

00:32:47Guest:Yeah.

00:32:48Guest:Scott would have been through, Mike Wilmot would have been through every now and again.

00:32:51Guest:Mike.

00:32:52Guest:We would have, maybe Dom Herrera would have passed through.

00:32:55Guest:All guys who were just at a level of

00:32:58Guest:professionalism.

00:33:00Guest:But I knew I could do it.

00:33:01Guest:Yeah.

00:33:02Guest:I knew I could do stand-up.

00:33:03Guest:And I knew coming from a failed acting background.

00:33:08Guest:How much did you act though, really?

00:33:09Guest:That I wasn't afraid of silence.

00:33:10Guest:Yeah.

00:33:11Guest:Oh, really?

00:33:11Guest:Yeah.

00:33:12Guest:So sometimes you get guys, I remember seeing guys getting up on stage and it was all fast and it was all, there was no enjoyment of the actual theatrics of the situation.

00:33:25Guest:well i think we all start that way you know yeah because i started i i started the other way i emerged from the silence to the word you know definitely you go now i mean and for you know most of your career you you keep go you move and then i'm physical

00:33:40Marc:Physical, but also you got a pace to you, got an energy to you.

00:33:43Guest:Sometimes, you know, but it's all, I'm still figuring it out.

00:33:47Guest:I'm still, and you know, so now my thing, I used to breathe ridiculously.

00:33:58Guest:before going on stage.

00:33:59Guest:What do you mean?

00:34:00Guest:Oh, you mean you freak out?

00:34:01Guest:No, I would kind of, I would do 30 minutes of deep breathing and holding my breath.

00:34:07Marc:An exercise?

00:34:08Marc:This was an exercise?

00:34:09Guest:Yeah, and it was kind of an, it was an altered state.

00:34:11Guest:Yeah.

00:34:11Guest:So it was like being slightly stoned going on.

00:34:14Guest:Hyperventilating.

00:34:14Guest:Yeah, yeah, all that, you know.

00:34:17Guest:And that worked for a while.

00:34:18Guest:You weren't drinking at the time?

00:34:20Guest:No.

00:34:22Guest:Do you know the way, first time you take cocaine on stage and you kind of go, this is obviously my method now.

00:34:31Marc:Yeah.

00:34:31Marc:This is the key.

00:34:32Marc:It always made me a little too fast.

00:34:35Guest:But it works the first time.

00:34:37Marc:And then you go.

00:34:37Marc:Everything works the first time.

00:34:40Guest:Yeah.

00:34:40Guest:That's the name of your next album.

00:34:42Marc:Except sex, oddly.

00:34:46Marc:You'll nail it, but it won't work.

00:34:50Guest:I like that.

00:34:51Marc:That's a good title.

00:34:53Guest:And then the first time you're a little bit drunk on stage, it works.

00:34:57Marc:Oh, yeah.

00:34:57Marc:I used to like weed.

00:34:58Marc:That was an okay place to be because then you kind of entertain yourself.

00:35:03Marc:That's what I got.

00:35:04Guest:Where are you with sex now?

00:35:07Marc:Do you mind me asking?

00:35:08Marc:After watching some bit you did about having a hard time keeping it hard.

00:35:12Marc:Well, just so you brought it up that you mentioned.

00:35:14Marc:Where are you?

00:35:15Marc:Where am I?

00:35:16Marc:Yeah.

00:35:16Marc:In general.

00:35:17Marc:I'm trying to.

00:35:19Marc:It means a lot to me still.

00:35:22Marc:Sex.

00:35:23Marc:And having it be good, it means a lot to me still.

00:35:27Marc:I still, I think I put, you know, I'm 59 and I still think, you know, it is right up there with probably the most, one of the most important things to me in terms of making life enjoyable.

00:35:40Marc:You?

00:35:41Guest:Um...

00:35:44Guest:The mechanics of it can be stressful, but the physicality of it is a marvel.

00:35:51Guest:The skin on skin is a marvel.

00:35:53Marc:The mechanics, you just have to find someone with patience.

00:35:56Marc:You just have to find someone with patience.

00:35:57Marc:After a certain point, you reach a level of desperation when you're a certain age.

00:36:01Marc:And yeah, sure, it'll work with two people who want to make it work.

00:36:05Marc:And it's a different...

00:36:06Guest:Because I'm married now and... How long have you been married?

00:36:12Guest:Since 2009.

00:36:13Guest:Was that 13 years?

00:36:15Guest:Okay.

00:36:19Guest:So the familiarity of that never...

00:36:24Guest:And I'm able to say it out loud because it's true.

00:36:28Guest:It never becomes, I never take it for granted and it never becomes boring.

00:36:35Guest:I can't believe sometimes that this other human being wants to get naked with me.

00:36:41Marc:I think that as you get older, it becomes harder to be with strangers or trying to be out there doing that.

00:36:50Marc:It's a little sad and a little exhausting.

00:36:53Marc:But I think as I get older and what I just told you, which is if you know what you want, you can be honest about it and then work it out.

00:37:04Marc:You find out what the other person wants.

00:37:05Marc:I think that evolves in a relationship.

00:37:07Marc:Yeah.

00:37:07Guest:Is there a kind of, there's a tension between what you want, what you're capable of?

00:37:12Marc:Sometimes, but you keep at it.

00:37:16Guest:It gets a little sweaty, but you'll get there.

00:37:22Guest:A friend of mine said many years ago, he said, there comes a stage in your life when you move from the love adventure to the death adventure.

00:37:29Guest:Yeah, I'm definitely there.

00:37:30Guest:And he said the death adventure is actually more interesting.

00:37:33Marc:Well, what is the spectrum of that?

00:37:36Marc:What are the signposts of the death adventure?

00:37:40Marc:I mean, at some point you realize, I think first intellectually that we're all on a death adventure, but then it becomes very practical and day to day, the death adventure.

00:37:50Marc:When you go to the doctor or when you wake up and you feel a certain way and your concerns become different.

00:37:56Marc:Like I did it last night.

00:37:57Marc:I had heartburn last night and I'm like, am I going to fucking die in my sleep in Ireland?

00:38:00Marc:I guess there are worse ways to go.

00:38:02Marc:Did you write a note or anything?

00:38:04Marc:No, no.

00:38:06Marc:That would be sad if you wake up.

00:38:08Marc:This might be the night.

00:38:10Marc:Every day, that's the note you leave.

00:38:14Marc:I don't know if it's going to happen, but I love everybody and whatever.

00:38:17Marc:But the... What is the death adventure really?

00:38:21Guest:It's part of it taking yourself seriously and taking your soul seriously and saying, okay, I can run around the world and I can sociologically, financially, creatively, I can try and make a name for myself or feel good about what I do or survive and

00:38:47Guest:but actually is there something else going on is there something else I need to pay attention to I don't know how long

00:38:58Guest:I met a friend of mine recently and he said he had a tremendous heart attack and was rescued from the edge and brought back.

00:39:10Guest:And he said to me, if I die now, I know that there are two or three people out there who have benefited from the fact that I was alive.

00:39:19Guest:So he told me the story.

00:39:23Guest:it happened when he was 26 or 27 and he was working as a teacher in a small Irish town.

00:39:31Guest:A 16-year-old girl that he knew from his hometown arrived on his doorstep pregnant.

00:39:39Guest:She'd been thrown out.

00:39:42Guest:And disregarding the optics of what it looked like, a 26-year-old guy and a 16-year-old pregnant girl, he said, move in with me.

00:39:53Guest:And she more or less stayed indoors in the house for the rest of the pregnancy.

00:39:59Guest:Went to give birth.

00:40:01Guest:He contacted the parents.

00:40:04Guest:Had a big fight with them.

00:40:04Guest:Persuaded them.

00:40:06Guest:They never wanted to see her again.

00:40:07Guest:Persuaded them to come and meet the baby.

00:40:10Guest:Everything was all fine.

00:40:11Guest:He says, I know that that girl, that 16-year-old girl who's now a 45-year-old mother, benefited from the fact that I was alive.

00:40:20Guest:So when I started thinking about that, Jesus, am I able to look back on my life and say the same thing?

00:40:24Guest:I can say that I entertained people.

00:40:27Guest:I can say that I, you know, that made people laugh or with the chat show that I do here, that it was kind of, you know, it meant something to Irish people.

00:40:38Guest:But I mean, does the same, where does my life fall on that kind of measuring scale?

00:40:46Guest:Yeah.

00:40:46Guest:So stuff like that, I think, comes up when you start thinking about death.

00:40:50Guest:You know, that the death adventure asks big questions of you.

00:40:55Guest:And this guy said to me that he thought the death adventure was more interesting.

00:40:58Marc:Well, there's also the list of people you might want to apologize to.

00:41:03Marc:You know, how can I... Is there any way I can... That great Cohen line, I know you can't forgive me, but forgive me anyhow.

00:41:11Guest:Yeah.

00:41:13Marc:That's, you know... Well, that's one of the genius things.

00:41:15Marc:If there's any genius to...

00:41:18Marc:to 12-step recovery, it's that fourth step.

00:41:21Marc:It's that list of the inventory of where you're at fault.

00:41:28Marc:So you can see exactly who you are on a character defect basis and you can make that amends list.

00:41:34Marc:Who do you owe this to?

00:41:35Marc:Who can you do this to where it won't damage yourself or others or put you in a problem?

00:41:40Marc:What's that list look like?

00:41:42Marc:And you get to do that.

00:41:43Marc:That's a good one.

00:41:44Marc:Are you good at having fun?

00:41:47Marc:I'm getting better.

00:41:48Marc:That's my part of my death experience.

00:41:50Marc:My death awareness is that, you know, I know I have limited time.

00:41:54Marc:What are, I don't know about fun, but what are the things?

00:41:57Marc:That's another great album title.

00:42:01Marc:I don't know about fun.

00:42:02Marc:But I think joy might be possible.

00:42:04Marc:in a genuine way and allowing myself to feel that.

00:42:10Marc:I have a very pretty strong defense mechanism against the vulnerability of happiness and joy.

00:42:18Marc:I don't know why.

00:42:19Marc:I don't know why I don't allow myself or it doesn't happen naturally to feel it.

00:42:25Guest:I'm curious about fun and how to have fun.

00:42:29Guest:I don't think I'm very good at it.

00:42:31Guest:I have extremes.

00:42:33Guest:So the extreme of being on stage, you know, and that gallop of laughter that is, you can hear the hooves.

00:42:44Guest:Are you still hooked on it?

00:42:45Guest:Oh, totally.

00:42:46Guest:Totally.

00:42:47Guest:If I could, I'd probably gig seven nights a week.

00:42:53Marc:I've been gigging more than I ever have, and I've never been more engaged with it and excited about it.

00:42:59Marc:And I think it comes on the heels of not just the pandemic, but also the passing of somebody.

00:43:05Marc:And I think it is saving me to a certain degree.

00:43:08Marc:I've never enjoyed it as much as I do now.

00:43:11Marc:But it's been a long time since I've been feeling, a lot of people talk about the addiction to getting the laugh.

00:43:19Marc:I don't know, I've been sort of preoccupied with the craft of it and molding it and figuring out ways I can take off and improvise and stuff.

00:43:31Marc:But I'm not beat to beat, I'm not hooked on that.

00:43:35Marc:There's always a risk to it with me still, and I imagine with you too, that I don't know if the next thing's gonna work.

00:43:42Marc:But I like getting in the groove.

00:43:45Guest:Yeah, my approach is slightly different now, which is I have a show.

00:43:50Guest:Yeah.

00:43:50Guest:You have a talk show.

00:43:52Guest:I mean, I have a talk show, but I also have a stand-up.

00:43:54Guest:I have a set.

00:43:56Marc:That you've been working on?

00:43:57Guest:Yeah.

00:43:58Guest:So it's that thing then of, okay, how do I make this fresh every night?

00:44:05Guest:And how do you?

00:44:06Guest:Well, I've hit on a few kind of things.

00:44:09Yeah.

00:44:09Guest:And they're all sentences that people say to me.

00:44:12Guest:So I'm very open to suggestion.

00:44:14Guest:I'm very taken by and something that somebody like load up and go.

00:44:17Guest:That thing that I heard you say, that's been with me for years, you know.

00:44:24Guest:So I take sentences that I hear and they just they I live with them for a long time.

00:44:32Guest:So a guy that I was touring with said to me one time, he said, prepare meticulously, but once you step onto the stage, abandon all preparation.

00:44:41Marc:For sure.

00:44:42Guest:So that lives with me.

00:44:44Marc:That's a jazz thing.

00:44:45Guest:You know what I mean?

00:44:46Guest:And that just, I...

00:44:49Marc:It's an acting thing too.

00:44:51Marc:Is it?

00:44:52Marc:Well, I mean, that's the thing that people say that like, you know, you do all the work and then, you know, when the time comes to, you know, do it, you do all the preparation, you lose the work.

00:45:03Marc:You know, you don't, you don't think of the work.

00:45:05Guest:Yeah.

00:45:06Guest:That's a hard thing to do.

00:45:07Guest:That's it.

00:45:07Guest:Well, we've been doing it all our lives.

00:45:10Guest:Yeah.

00:45:11Guest:And I found when I was the past, say, four or five years of doing stand up, it was taking me so much longer to get a show together.

00:45:19Guest:And I wasn't as inventive on stage as I used to be.

00:45:22Guest:I used to go on.

00:45:24Guest:I would start a tour with a fairly shit show and I would know within 10 days it would be flying.

00:45:29Guest:Yeah.

00:45:30Guest:I just would have that.

00:45:31Marc:Well, you just have some ideas, some stories, some things that were interesting to you that you needed to work out.

00:45:37Guest:But in the past four or five years, after six months, I'd still feel as if the show was shit.

00:45:42Marc:Do you have less to work out?

00:45:43Guest:Are you more comfortable?

00:45:44Guest:No, do you know what it was?

00:45:45Guest:I turned a corner and again, it's something you hear.

00:45:48Guest:Yeah.

00:45:50Guest:Words.

00:45:51Guest:No, relax, this guy said.

00:45:52Guest:relax as much as you possibly can and I just started doing that and all of a sudden I'm thinking of stuff on stage now so to me it was so now I'm on that buzz as opposed to the hyperventilating buzz got me through the first six months of the year and now this relax just walk out relax yeah so you're a little rusty or something

00:46:15Guest:No, not rusty.

00:46:16Guest:It's just that you're calm.

00:46:18Guest:You're in charge.

00:46:19Guest:Sure.

00:46:20Guest:You're thinking.

00:46:21Guest:Yeah.

00:46:22Guest:You're working stuff out while at the same time you know that in your arms you have these wonderful stories you can drop in anytime you want.

00:46:29Marc:And you're also, you know, here anyways, you know, people love you.

00:46:34Marc:Thousands of people come to see you and they have a tremendous amount of patience and excitement.

00:46:42Marc:They know you.

00:46:43Marc:So if you relax, they relax, and then you can all sort of organically move towards something.

00:46:49Guest:Yeah, you know, it's easier said than done.

00:46:51Guest:No, I get it.

00:46:52Guest:You want to show up with new shit.

00:46:54Guest:You want to be creative.

00:46:55Guest:You want to feel alive.

00:46:57Marc:But where are you at in terms of disposition?

00:46:59Marc:I mean, like, you know, the arc of you.

00:47:01Marc:I mean, how has your style changed, do you think?

00:47:05Guest:More than what I was saying earlier on about if you're fully in control of something, it's not interesting.

00:47:11Guest:So I don't know what the style is or...

00:47:15Guest:I try not to question it too much.

00:47:18Guest:You're more relaxed.

00:47:19Guest:I'm more relaxed.

00:47:21Guest:But what that also does is, Bob Dylan said this amazing thing.

00:47:26Guest:He said, never give 100%.

00:47:29Marc:Yeah, I'm all about that.

00:47:32Marc:Good for you.

00:47:33Guest:And...

00:47:36Marc:That's... And don't prepare.

00:47:38Marc:That's good.

00:47:39Guest:That's... And that is... I find that liberating.

00:47:44Guest:Because I would have been somebody who tried to eat the audience while I was on stage.

00:47:48Guest:You know, just try and gather them and claw them and devour the room.

00:47:55Marc:Oh, so you heard this mid-career.

00:47:56Marc:You heard that one.

00:47:57Guest:Yeah, recently.

00:47:59Guest:Six months ago.

00:47:59Marc:Oh, wow.

00:48:00Guest:Never give a hundred percent.

00:48:02Guest:And that is just... So I've been watching some of his performances...

00:48:05Guest:you know, and there are times when he's just, what are you doing?

00:48:10Marc:You can't even understand it.

00:48:11Guest:He's just, he's like, he's, he's there in front of you, but he's actually, he's moonwalked off the stage and he's in the van.

00:48:20Guest:But what I've found that that, so I consciously try and do that as well.

00:48:23Guest:Yeah.

00:48:23Guest:Consciously try and just pull back.

00:48:26Guest:And what I found is that that, that in terms of an energized performance, then you get like taking ecstasy.

00:48:34Yeah.

00:48:34Guest:when you all of a sudden this rush of energy comes up and you have no option but to express it yeah so I find that that's it's not just not giving 100% and the whole performance is lethargic it's it opens a door for other energies and Dylan is the same like he'd be Dylan might play two or three songs where you're going okay it's a little a little something or I can't

00:48:58Guest:And then all of a sudden he's in his full body and he's glinting.

00:49:04Guest:But each one makes the other possible.

00:49:05Guest:So as a performer, I'll take advice from anybody.

00:49:12Guest:And I'm inspired by loads of different things.

00:49:17Guest:But I'm still intrigued by it.

00:49:19Guest:I still walk off stage every night going, oh, that was great, but I could push that bit.

00:49:26Guest:So I still love it.

00:49:27Guest:Yeah.

00:49:27Guest:What I'm not in love with so much, perhaps, is the road.

00:49:31Guest:Oh, yeah.

00:49:33Marc:It's hard for me internationally, but I tend to like it when I'm at home.

00:49:36Marc:If I can stay at a nice place and I'm only away for a few days at a time.

00:49:40Marc:This trip has been two and a half weeks too long for me at this point.

00:49:43Marc:I get a little squirrely, untethered.

00:49:46Marc:But in terms of what you're saying about performing, yeah, I always try to make interesting choices with the freedom you have from being relaxed after a lifetime of doing this.

00:49:55Marc:That at some point you sort of have total liberty and total freedom to kind of try whatever you want.

00:50:02Marc:Because you know in your mind that if something doesn't land, you've got plenty.

00:50:09Marc:It's not going to be the end of you.

00:50:11Guest:That's not my thing.

00:50:13Guest:My thing is that, is to give the audience, it's paradoxical.

00:50:17Guest:I want to give the, I want the audience to be swept away.

00:50:22Guest:I want them to, I want the show to whirl and lift away.

00:50:30Guest:and stop and drive and quiet and loud.

00:50:37Guest:But it's about, so it's not about allowing failure.

00:50:42Guest:It's about somehow accessing the engine, my engine that is, this all sounds highfalutin, that is

00:50:57Guest:is in simpatico, is that the right word?

00:50:59Guest:It's in tandem with theirs.

00:51:01Guest:So it's not so much about embracing failure, it's about risk.

00:51:07Marc:I don't know if, right, okay, right.

00:51:09Marc:Maybe failure was the wrong word, but you know that if you're in that, no matter what risk you take, that it's not going to undermine you, that you're in a zone.

00:51:21Marc:So if you're going somewhere and it doesn't go where you want it to go, you just go another place.

00:51:26Marc:It's that thing about finding the zone Sure But going back to the sort of Like it seems that like Are we lonely Mark?

00:51:36Guest:Are we lonely people?

00:51:39Uh

00:51:40Marc:Yeah.

00:51:42Guest:This is an opportunity.

00:51:43Guest:So I've been a huge, you're always someone that I would listen to.

00:51:49Guest:We're not necessarily going to spend a fierce amount of time together off stage.

00:51:55Guest:But I recognize in you, like I said earlier on, a fellow traveler.

00:52:01Guest:yeah so this is an opportunity yeah for me in a to talk to somebody in an honest way okay who i feel is somehow is you're my cousin okay yeah i feel that yeah yeah you know what i mean so i'm happy you look better in montreal you looked a little frazzled

00:52:24Guest:Well, I'm trying to do the Larry David thing of being unashamedly bald.

00:52:30Marc:I think you look a lot better.

00:52:31Marc:When I saw you in Montreal, there was frizzes.

00:52:33Marc:There was no haircut.

00:52:34Marc:And I'm like, oh, my God.

00:52:36Marc:What's happening to Tommy?

00:52:38Marc:He looks like he's aged 40 years.

00:52:39Marc:I haven't seen him in a couple of years.

00:52:40Guest:It was like a Danny DeVito across Nick Nolte look.

00:52:43Guest:Oh, so you know what I'm talking about.

00:52:44Guest:I was going for you.

00:52:44Guest:But I was embracing that.

00:52:46Guest:I was going, I'm not going to hide my bald spot.

00:52:48Guest:I'm not going to.

00:52:48Marc:You look great now.

00:52:49Marc:It's not hiding anything, but the hair is cut and it's trimmed.

00:52:52Marc:I was like, is he all right?

00:52:54Marc:I literally said, is he all right?

00:52:56Marc:Yeah.

00:52:58Marc:Are you?

00:52:59Marc:It gave me energy.

00:53:00Marc:I was concerned.

00:53:02Marc:I'm like, it must have been hard.

00:53:04Guest:You have a full head of tremendous hair.

00:53:05Guest:You're starting to look like a character from Deadwood.

00:53:07Guest:It's a magnificent mustache, great sideburns, stubble.

00:53:10Guest:It's fine hair.

00:53:11Guest:And anger.

00:53:12Guest:I'm lucky.

00:53:12Guest:Yes.

00:53:13Marc:But I was literally asking people, like, what's going on with him in the last couple... It was a decision.

00:53:20Guest:It was a decision.

00:53:23Guest:But like... Well, what were you saying about loneliness?

00:53:26Guest:Just about, I mean, you know, the... And I don't know how... You've interviewed so many comics and performers and all that type of stuff.

00:53:34Guest:Yeah.

00:53:34Guest:That thing of... If you have that moment of extreme communion... Yeah.

00:53:38Guest:...with other people, guaranteed at night... Yeah, yeah.

00:53:43Guest:It kind of gives you permission to be solitary during the day because you know you've got this mass in the evening.

00:53:51Marc:Are you good at solitary?

00:53:53Marc:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:53:53Marc:What do you do with it, though?

00:53:55Marc:I mean, like for me, like I'm really, especially when I travel, the world of my head and the world of the world are profoundly different places.

00:54:04Marc:And, you know, and I can react to what's going on in my head as if it's real.

00:54:08Marc:And sometimes it's being generated against my will.

00:54:11Marc:And like sometimes solitary time.

00:54:14Marc:I live to be in connection like like this, like you and I talking like the podcast has become, you know, a big part of my social life and sort of nurturing to me in terms of.

00:54:25Marc:the type of conversations we have.

00:54:26Marc:But if I wander alone, eventually I feel invisible.

00:54:29Marc:As a cloud?

00:54:30Marc:Yeah, exactly.

00:54:32Marc:It feels like that.

00:54:33Marc:I'm just a vapor moving through the world.

00:54:35Marc:But so like in part of the challenge just that I've been dealing with even in this two weeks is

00:54:41Marc:Because this is the longest trip I've taken post-pandemic.

00:54:45Marc:It's just sort of like, dude, you're still tethered.

00:54:49Marc:You're of the world.

00:54:51Marc:Don't lose your fucking mind just because you're away for two weeks.

00:54:56Marc:do you have enough gigs in the two weeks to keep you tethered not this time okay but but i have had a lot of conversations so yes i've had you know three there's going to be three stand-up shows in like five conversations okay so yeah it's been good and i love coming here i like coming to dublin yeah yeah i like the bread i like the feel of the air i like the way the place looks no i don't drink i

00:55:21Marc:No, it's bad.

00:55:22Marc:I haven't drank in 23 years, 24 years.

00:55:25Marc:Well, you were sober for a while.

00:55:27Guest:For eight years, and then my wife asked me to start drinking again.

00:55:30Guest:And have you handled it?

00:55:32Guest:Sometimes.

00:55:33Guest:I drink whiskey.

00:55:35Guest:I think it's too... Why were you sober?

00:55:38Guest:I was sober because I was a splash of a man.

00:55:42Guest:Does that make sense?

00:55:44Guest:I was just splashing everywhere.

00:55:47LAUGHTER

00:55:47Marc:It's a nice way to say something.

00:55:53Marc:Yeah.

00:55:54Marc:It's the Disney version.

00:55:56Marc:I imagine there were some violent waves during the splashing.

00:55:59Marc:Yeah, a couple of close calls.

00:56:01Marc:There was some drowning.

00:56:04Marc:There you go.

00:56:04Marc:So the splashing a lot of times was you flailing in the water.

00:56:09Marc:I was just too...

00:56:11Marc:But you knew this when you were a young man, obviously, in order to stop.

00:56:18Guest:No, I think sometimes you need three warnings.

00:56:26Guest:Yeah.

00:56:26Guest:And I got my first warning.

00:56:29Guest:I kind of went, oh, okay.

00:56:32Guest:That's interesting.

00:56:33Guest:I got the second warning.

00:56:35Guest:I went, yeah, yeah.

00:56:38Guest:And the third one, it was real easy.

00:56:40Guest:The third warning came.

00:56:41Guest:I went, okay, this is real easy.

00:56:43Guest:I'm stopping.

00:56:43Guest:What was it?

00:56:44Guest:I can't tell you.

00:56:45Guest:No, I'll tell you one of them, which I've kind of almost turned into a...

00:56:52Guest:Through the telling of the story Yeah You don't have to set responsibility For the seriousness of the situation Sure It becomes Cute A tale Yeah That you work Yeah So I was I

00:57:07Guest:Started taking, this particular day I started taking coke about two o'clock in the afternoon.

00:57:11Guest:It was a long, long time ago.

00:57:12Guest:For any bastard journalists out there listening, I might want to turn it into a headline.

00:57:17Marc:You started snorting some coke in the middle of the day?

00:57:19Guest:Yeah, about two or three o'clock in the afternoon.

00:57:21Guest:I know that day.

00:57:22Guest:Yeah.

00:57:22Guest:Then I got to the gig and I started drinking and taking the coke and then... God, you must have had a nice amount of coke.

00:57:30Guest:Yeah.

00:57:31Guest:Okay.

00:57:31Guest:And I wasn't sharing it.

00:57:32Guest:Yeah.

00:57:33Guest:one of those if you're gonna start at two and not want to go to the dealer by five you gotta have pretty well set up um yeah and then so i don't want to glorify any of this because i have you know i've got six kids six yeah and i don't want people to all i'd say about drugs is i'm glad i'm not curious anymore

00:57:53Marc:Yeah.

00:57:54Marc:Well, now's the terrible time to do them because everything could be the last drug you do just because of what someone puts in it.

00:57:59Guest:Sure.

00:58:00Marc:That should be.

00:58:01Marc:I mean, when when we were doing drugs, when I was doing drugs, it was like you kind of knew, you know, it might not be all the drug that you think you're taking, but whatever it wasn't wasn't going to kill you.

00:58:11Marc:You're robust enough.

00:58:12Guest:but no but no one's robust enough to fight fentanyl and they're just sticking that in everything yeah so it's very powders and pills are a big risk go ahead yeah so yeah I'm not I'm telling this story in a kind of slightly light hearted way but I because I have the privilege of survival yes you get to the gig

00:58:31Guest:Get to the gig I start drinking And then I take ecstasy Oh my god Then I leave the club Yeah At two o'clock in the morning Right With a full bottle of vodka Oh yeah I go to a 24 hour pool hall Where I play by myself

00:58:48Guest:You know, more drugs, more drink.

00:58:50Guest:And I go to an early house.

00:58:52Guest:Yeah.

00:58:53Marc:What's that?

00:58:53Guest:An early house, they're usually bars down by the docks where the sailors all come in.

00:59:00Guest:Perhaps you'll pick them out again.

00:59:02Marc:How long must he wait?

00:59:03Marc:This is going to be an interesting story.

00:59:05Marc:Yeah.

00:59:07Marc:Sounds like a lot.

00:59:08Guest:So I got talking to this guy with one eye who used to work on there.

00:59:11Guest:It's like a thing from a Tom Waits anecdote.

00:59:14Guest:I got talking to this guy with one eye who used to work on the railroad.

00:59:19Guest:And 11 o'clock in the morning I went in and that was the last of the cocaine.

00:59:23Guest:Yeah.

00:59:24Guest:Wow, that's a good amount.

00:59:26Guest:I went back to my hotel and on the way I collapsed in the street and woke up in hospital.

00:59:31Guest:And I had all these wires sticking out of me and I had a big cut on my head from where I collapsed.

00:59:38Guest:I collapsed outside a hairdresser's and the women inside called an ambulance.

00:59:43Guest:And I woke up and I was still a bit out of it and the doctors were asking me questions and I couldn't really respond to anything.

00:59:51Guest:And I had another gig in the same club that night.

00:59:55Guest:So at six o'clock, I just untethered myself from all the different things.

01:00:01Guest:Yeah.

01:00:01Guest:And walked down and did my next show.

01:00:04Marc:Yeah.

01:00:05Guest:So that was the first warning I got.

01:00:06Marc:That was the first one.

01:00:07Guest:Yeah.

01:00:07Marc:That's a pretty dramatic one.

01:00:09Guest:Yeah.

01:00:10Guest:But then, you know, I don't really, I haven't accepted anything.

01:00:15Guest:it's a story do you know sometimes you tell stories of course because you don't and then when somebody comes up to you and goes oh my god yeah that was horrible and you're like what yeah you don't it's almost it's like maybe that thing you were saying earlier on where you use the storytelling as a defense mechanism of having to deal with it sure because you're in control of the experience when it's a story that's true when somebody else comes at you and goes so can we dig into that a little bit and how did you feel

01:00:40Guest:yeah i can't fuck that you know look it's a story you know that's interesting though that element of it because like i've done you know material like that and people are like oh my god are you okay i'm like what are you talking about yeah it's a story don't you realize i do this to avoid the feelings yeah totally yeah um so i was i was eight years off drink and uh and i started again it was it was all fine really uh no fine stay fine i could i could

01:01:05Guest:too drunk sometimes you know but that's easily done with whiskey but it's not life ruining drunk no it's just what I realised about drink is that you know people say oh it's a depressant yeah and I would go what are you talking about I feel wonderful

01:01:21Guest:It's the next day that you feel depressed.

01:01:24Guest:Especially as you get older, right?

01:01:25Guest:You know, you kind of go, why is my mood so low at two o'clock in the afternoon?

01:01:32Guest:Depleted.

01:01:33Guest:When there is no need for me to be this, for me to be beating this slowly.

01:01:41Guest:There is no need.

01:01:42Guest:And then you kind of go, hang on a minute.

01:01:43Guest:I was a little bit twizzled last night.

01:01:45Guest:I drink every day.

01:01:47Guest:And I drink whiskey every day.

01:01:48Marc:Well, I mean, I guess the key is like when you have that moment in the afternoon, when you're feeling that and asking those questions, that you don't start drinking then.

01:01:58Guest:Oh, no, no, no.

01:01:58Guest:I always... I wait till everybody I love is in bed.

01:02:02Guest:And just drink alone?

01:02:04Guest:I drink alone a lot, yeah.

01:02:06Guest:But then, you know...

01:02:07Guest:So I was drinking alone in my hotel room last night.

01:02:10Guest:I was drinking whiskey.

01:02:12Guest:And I said, I kind of, is this weird?

01:02:14Guest:You know, people say we should never drink alone.

01:02:16Guest:And I met this man one time who lived on his own in a cottage on the side of a hill.

01:02:21Guest:And he says, I drink a lot, but I never drink on my own in the house.

01:02:26Guest:And then I remembered a photograph I saw of Bob Dylan drinking whiskey on his own.

01:02:30Guest:I said, well, that gives me permission.

01:02:32Guest:It seems like you used Dylan as a point of reference quite a bit.

01:02:36Guest:Yeah, he'd be a star in the sky that I'd navigate by.

01:02:39Guest:Yeah.

01:02:40Guest:I am a... I'm a minor, a kind of...

01:02:48Guest:I'm not a star.

01:02:51Guest:I'm a local poet.

01:02:54Guest:And sometimes local poets can be silenced when they get intimidated by the Nobel laureate.

01:03:05Guest:So I have to be careful with, say, someone with artists who are so much better than I am.

01:03:11Guest:I have to be really careful that they don't... Because they're so profoundly brilliant.

01:03:17Guest:Yeah.

01:03:18Guest:Like who?

01:03:19Marc:Well, I mean... I like the local poet thing and I like that, you know, you understand your place in the world that you occupy.

01:03:26Guest:Yeah.

01:03:27Guest:So, for example, if I...

01:03:29Marc:read too much about Dylan or I just I I can't I end up paralyzed by the fact that I'm so jealous that I'm not him I just want to they have a Bob Dylan center now in Tulsa yeah I went to the open oh no don't go to it oh really yeah but the weird thing is is like you know I saw the the sort of um all the different versions of Tangled Up in Blue the notebooks and notebooks and my thought was like I write in notebooks laughing

01:03:59Marc:I know I'm not going to be doing it with a less interesting museum, but I do write notes.

01:04:05Guest:There's a song called Dignity that he filled 59 pages, and it ends up, it's a four-minute song.

01:04:11Guest:Sure.

01:04:12Guest:And you just, you know, you end up comparing yourselves to these...

01:04:19Guest:I mean, he's a country and you're a village and you just go, is there even any reason in my trying to do what I do?

01:04:28Guest:So I need to be careful, maybe careful...

01:04:33Guest:Dylan would be the main one that I'm kind of very wary of becoming too enamored with.

01:04:40Guest:And you remember things he said.

01:04:41Guest:You'd never let other people get your kicks for you.

01:04:44Guest:You know what I mean?

01:04:44Guest:It's okay.

01:04:45Guest:That's the thing.

01:04:46Guest:Stop listening to me is what he's saying.

01:04:49Guest:You're not me.

01:04:50Guest:I'm not even me.

01:04:51Marc:He's got good boundaries.

01:04:52Marc:Yeah, exactly.

01:04:53Marc:Exactly.

01:04:54Marc:But also intimidation though.

01:04:56Marc:You've been getting in trouble for saying things before cancel culture.

01:05:01Guest:Yeah, I got into trouble for saying things, but I never got into trouble with the audience I was saying it to.

01:05:06Guest:So that makes it okay?

01:05:08Guest:That legitimizes it 100%.

01:05:11Guest:I'm in a room, I say something.

01:05:14Guest:If I say something to you and you laugh, it's automatically legitimate.

01:05:18Guest:If somebody hears what we've been talking about and takes exception to it, that's none of their business.

01:05:24Guest:It is none of their business.

01:05:26Guest:We were talking in the room.

01:05:28Guest:And we made each other laugh.

01:05:31Guest:That's all we were trying to do.

01:05:33Guest:If I'm talking in a room of 400 people and I say something shocking, but they laugh.

01:05:42Guest:You're off the hook.

01:05:45Guest:100%.

01:05:46Marc:Even if two people are crying?

01:05:51Guest:Now you're complicating the narrative.

01:05:55Marc:Well, it's really about the two people crying.

01:05:57Guest:That's a difference.

01:05:59Guest:In my memory, that's not what happened.

01:06:00Guest:In my memory, they were all laughing.

01:06:03Guest:Oh, okay.

01:06:03Guest:Yeah, I get it.

01:06:05Guest:If two people are crying, then the two people should come up and say, we took obsession to that.

01:06:10Guest:Yeah.

01:06:11Marc:And you will say what?

01:06:12Guest:I am often... I'm more upset by stuff I say than anybody else.

01:06:19Guest:When you get away with it?

01:06:21Guest:No, because I'm... It's a position of power being on stage.

01:06:29Guest:It's also a position of extreme irresponsibility.

01:06:32Guest:And that's the delight of it.

01:06:35Guest:Right.

01:06:35Guest:Is to come out and to be feckless.

01:06:40Guest:and to be the outsider and say whatever comes into your head and for people to know that you're joking.

01:06:50Guest:But if one person in the room gets upset at what I say, I feel awful.

01:06:56Guest:Sometimes that one person is just me and I feel awful.

01:07:00Guest:So it's not a thing of being a kind of a bulletproof blaster at all.

01:07:07Guest:But it is a thing of going, hang on, if it worked in the room, that's the only place it was supposed to work.

01:07:12Guest:You can't.

01:07:13Guest:I used to say it's like sometimes you might say something to your partner during sex.

01:07:18Guest:Yeah.

01:07:19Guest:That's not appropriate at the breakfast table.

01:07:21Marc:None of it is.

01:07:22Guest:OK, so stand up is the same to me that it worked in the moment.

01:07:26Guest:Leave it and move on.

01:07:28Marc:Given that Ireland in and of itself has become more progressive than America in a lot of ways, politically and otherwise, do you temper yourself at all?

01:07:40Marc:Do you change your disposition about the voices you do, about the approach you do?

01:07:44Marc:No, you can't.

01:07:46Guest:You have to be...

01:07:47Guest:Giddy.

01:07:51Guest:Once you start... But you're not doubling down.

01:07:54Guest:You're just being what you are.

01:07:55Guest:Yeah.

01:07:55Guest:I'm not after anything.

01:07:57Guest:I'm just going out and seeing what happens.

01:07:59Guest:And I trust everything.

01:08:00Guest:Because I trust my intention.

01:08:04Guest:And my intention is to... No, you can have more than one intention.

01:08:09Guest:But I trust myself on stage.

01:08:11Guest:Absolutely.

01:08:12Guest:And I know that if I stop, if I start censoring myself on stage, it's over.

01:08:18Guest:You're no longer energized and you're no longer unpredictable to watch.

01:08:24Guest:You're no longer thrilling.

01:08:26Guest:Because the instinct that can lead you to say something shocking is also the instinct that makes you reach for the sky in terms of saying something holy.

01:08:41Marc:No, there's nothing better than saying something profound, shocking, and new.

01:08:45Guest:Even reaching for a moment.

01:08:49Marc:Yes.

01:08:51Guest:That is so...

01:08:53Marc:other that is so yeah transgression no no not transgression no transcendence yes okay now you can be you can transgress a few minutes later but it's just to follow this follow the impulse sure but it's it's actually transcendence through transgression a lot of times when we're talking about taking the the risk of of saying the thing that you want to say even when you're trusting yourself but you we're talking about controversy we're talking about saying things

01:09:19Guest:No, I'm saying that you can say something that people can't believe you said, and then 10 minutes later,

01:09:29Guest:That's silence.

01:09:31Guest:And people are going, what's happening?

01:09:32Guest:What the fuck is happening?

01:09:34Marc:And you know in your heart that because you got a good heart, you didn't hurt anybody.

01:09:38Guest:It's exciting.

01:09:39Guest:And it's holy.

01:09:40Guest:And it's... So, you know, I... It's unfair sometimes, you know, to me.

01:09:47Guest:What is?

01:09:47Guest:It's unfair sometimes for journalists to...

01:09:50Guest:It doesn't seem to happen as much.

01:09:51Guest:There was a kind of a fever of it.

01:09:55Guest:A lot of people, you know, there was a fever.

01:09:59Guest:I think it's past.

01:10:00Guest:I think people in the room, I think if people in the room get offended, it's stand-up is theoretically democratic.

01:10:08Guest:So they're entitled to say, that's not funny.

01:10:11Guest:And then you deal with it there and then.

01:10:12Guest:Right.

01:10:12Guest:Or they can leave.

01:10:13Guest:or they can leave but I really that would I really do I remember doing material before many many years ago that it was a character that was racist and sexist and everything and would go through a list of his grievances and

01:10:39Guest:And through the telling of the story, you realise that at the end of it, the character was on his own in a room, hoping and praying that the people that he said that he hated would actually come and visit him.

01:10:55Guest:But it was a very subtle revelation and it was...

01:11:00Guest:I didn't do the character in a different voice I didn't introduce the character I just launched into this tirade I hate and I just fill in the gap and I remember once a person walked out of the show and I remember going okay I'm not doing that anymore it's not working it's not clear enough to everybody what I'm doing it's clear to me but it's not clear to them so I'm dropping it

01:11:28Marc:So that was a sort of craft issue.

01:11:32Marc:It was also a hurt issue.

01:11:33Marc:But you didn't want to contextualize it.

01:11:36Marc:You'd rather drop it.

01:11:37Marc:You didn't want to set it up differently.

01:11:39Guest:No, I don't want to over explain it.

01:11:40Guest:It made sense to me, not to them.

01:11:43Guest:Okay, it's gone.

01:11:43Guest:We're done with this.

01:11:44Guest:Move on.

01:11:44Guest:What's the new show about?

01:11:47Guest:I don't know.

01:11:47Guest:If I knew what the new show was about, there'd be no point in doing it.

01:11:50Marc:But it's coming together.

01:11:52Marc:It's ready to go.

01:11:52Guest:No, it's been together for the past 10 months.

01:11:55Guest:I have it.

01:11:56Guest:It's there.

01:11:57Guest:To me, it's about simultaneously being one step ahead of the audience and at the same time taking them with you.

01:12:05Guest:So you give them what they expect, but not in a way that they expect it.

01:12:09Guest:And there has to be times during the show where they have no idea what's happening or what's going to happen next.

01:12:16Guest:So I tell, there's some very clean stand-up.

01:12:20Guest:There's some very well-structured, classic, old-school story stand-up.

01:12:28Guest:Bulletproof in the sense that I know it works.

01:12:30Guest:There are other stories then where we talk about darker things and you have a sense of the audience going, where the fuck is this going?

01:12:39Guest:And then we get into a bit of filth at the end.

01:12:42Guest:Classic filth ending.

01:12:46Guest:Just, you know, yeah, so that's the shape of the show.

01:12:52Marc:Bill Hicks called it, I think, Dick Joke Island, where you land after the arc.

01:12:59Guest:Totally, everyone leaves.

01:13:01Guest:A friend of mine said something very interesting the other day.

01:13:03Guest:He said, the audience should leave in feeling better than they did when they came in.

01:13:12Guest:that's a good thing to ponder on for a while yeah and i guess it's like up to anybody uh in terms of who's doing it how how they're gonna try to make that happen but i i remember going to see you in montreal yeah and what made you feel like there wasn't a happy ending or anything but uh i know when was that

01:13:36Guest:It was in a very small room.

01:13:38Guest:It was probably... I'll tell you when it was.

01:13:42Guest:You were 200 episodes into the podcast.

01:13:44Marc:Okay, yeah.

01:13:45Guest:Because I remember you gave some sort of speech in... Oh, that was right.

01:13:48Guest:That was the keynote.

01:13:51Marc:No, this was in Starbucks.

01:13:52Marc:You just stood up and started talking.

01:13:53Marc:It felt like it was a very emotional thing to be asked to do that.

01:13:57Marc:Yeah.

01:13:57Marc:Because I was always so threatened in Montreal that there were just so many people that were so much funnier than me.

01:14:02Marc:So I had to sort of be honest.

01:14:04Marc:And I did that speech and it worked out okay.

01:14:06Guest:It was fantastic.

01:14:06Marc:Got some good laughs.

01:14:07Guest:I also remember you met your manager or your agent in the foyer of the hotel.

01:14:12Guest:And you said, hey, Marin, M-A-R-O-N.

01:14:15Guest:Remember me?

01:14:17Yeah.

01:14:17Guest:Yeah, that's right.

01:14:20Guest:Not with them anymore.

01:14:21Guest:Are you still with Becky?

01:14:22Guest:I don't do enough in America, really, to justify having representation.

01:14:26Marc:Is that a disappointment to you?

01:14:31Guest:I...

01:14:34Guest:I just want to do what I do.

01:14:37Guest:Yeah.

01:14:38Guest:Okay.

01:14:38Marc:That's a odd answer.

01:14:40Guest:I've kind of lost any geographical ambition.

01:14:47Guest:But do you feel like you tried?

01:14:50Guest:Not really.

01:14:51Guest:I kind of, I didn't knock on the door.

01:14:53Guest:I kind of looked in the window and I wasn't invited in.

01:14:57Guest:So I said, okay, that's okay.

01:15:00Guest:But I got a big thrill this year of playing Montreal, playing to people who didn't really know me.

01:15:08Guest:And I loved that.

01:15:09Guest:And I did a tour of the UK.

01:15:12Guest:Again, it's the same thing where people didn't really know me.

01:15:13Guest:I loved that.

01:15:14Guest:Why did they not know you?

01:15:15Guest:They came to see you, right?

01:15:17Guest:They came to see you, but it's kind of like a date as opposed to taking your wife out to dinner.

01:15:26Guest:Does that make sense?

01:15:27Marc:No, I get it.

01:15:28Marc:I get it.

01:15:28Marc:But there are people not unlike me.

01:15:31Marc:You must see people your age in the audience that have grown up with you.

01:15:35Guest:No, what I see is, say in Montreal, I saw people who maybe had seen me once or twice in Montreal before, but that was it.

01:15:43Guest:Seen a few things on TV.

01:15:44Guest:But here are people.

01:15:45Guest:In Ireland, it's a bit different.

01:15:48Guest:I'm almost part of the establishment here now.

01:15:50Guest:Right, okay, yeah.

01:15:51Guest:In that I started doing stand-up and I became very well-known quite quickly here.

01:15:58Guest:Yeah.

01:15:59Guest:and then I start to get into trouble for stuff that I've said but that was a some of that was accidental and joyful and some of it was it was like an assassination attempt by a

01:16:14Guest:scurrilous journalists and newspapers um so then people didn't know and then i went through a phase of being kind of wild and angry and that people kind of said i don't really like him anymore and then i started doing in the past year this chat show that's great don't you love doing that

01:16:36Guest:Well, I wouldn't say I love doing it because it's a little bit different.

01:16:40Guest:Again, no more than when I started stand-up, looking at Lenny Bruce and kind of going, wow.

01:16:46Guest:I started the chat show because of Letterman.

01:16:52Guest:And I loved the way he was able just to be funny and he never had to do that line again.

01:16:57Guest:and i said okay well well i'd like to do something like that but the twist that i have to my chat show is so it goes out it's it's prime time on saturday night but the twist of the chat show is i have no idea who's walking on oh i see you really don't i have no idea oh okay so there's three guests per night sometimes they're famous sometimes they're

01:17:24Guest:ordinary members of the public, but I have no idea who's coming on.

01:17:28Guest:That's exciting.

01:17:30Guest:And that has landed in a way with this country that is, again, I can't fully explain the show or understand why people like it or it's that thing of it's slightly beyond my control.

01:17:47Guest:I can't really define it.

01:17:50Guest:So that has kind of... They love it though.

01:17:53Guest:People love it.

01:17:53Guest:Yeah.

01:17:55Guest:That has re-established me in the minds of most people in Ireland as, okay, we like that.

01:18:02Guest:Yeah.

01:18:03Guest:He's okay.

01:18:04Guest:Whereas I was out, you know, I was the lunatic with the broken vodka bottle

01:18:10Guest:on the hill screaming at the primary school children and they were kind of going, we don't like him.

01:18:15Guest:But now I'm in the town making shoes as well.

01:18:19Marc:Oh, look, the cobbler.

01:18:21Guest:Remember when he was angry?

01:18:23Guest:Yeah.

01:18:23Guest:He still gets angry every now and again.

01:18:24Marc:He goes, is that him?

01:18:26Marc:Campy.

01:18:26Marc:But you're saying that when you go out and do the UK and stuff, that there is a new audience in Montreal.

01:18:31Marc:There is a new audience.

01:18:31Guest:And I love that.

01:18:32Guest:So someone said to me, OK, Tommy, your wife and kids are going to travel with you.

01:18:36Guest:You're going to spend the next year traipsing around the States doing shows.

01:18:42Guest:I'd say sign me up for that, please.

01:18:43Guest:I'd love that.

01:18:43Guest:Really, I would love to play to people who aren't familiar with me.

01:18:47Guest:I'm confident enough with what I do on stage to know I'm not going to be broken by the experience and I have enough competence to kind of manage the moment.

01:18:57Guest:When was the last time you did that, a tour of the States?

01:18:59Guest:I haven't been... I did a... Comics.

01:19:05Guest:I did Comics Comedy Club in New York a long time ago.

01:19:09Marc:That was a beautiful place that lasted 10 minutes.

01:19:11Marc:Really?

01:19:11Marc:That all?

01:19:12Marc:That was a lovely... Lovely place.

01:19:14Marc:Treated you well, paid you good.

01:19:15Guest:Absolutely.

01:19:16Marc:Put you up in a nice hotel.

01:19:16Marc:Absolutely.

01:19:17Marc:Closed in a year.

01:19:18Guest:Something like that.

01:19:21Guest:How old is your youngest kid?

01:19:23Guest:My youngest boy is 10.

01:19:24Guest:Oh, so you've really... And my oldest is 29.

01:19:26Guest:And I have a granddaughter as well.

01:19:28Guest:Two wives?

01:19:29Guest:Two people.

01:19:30Guest:One wife.

01:19:31Guest:Yeah.

01:19:32Guest:One girlfriend.

01:19:33Guest:Okay.

01:19:35Guest:So how many with the... Three and three.

01:19:37Guest:Oh, wow.

01:19:37Guest:Okay.

01:19:38Guest:So I started very young, you know.

01:19:41Guest:Get along with all of them?

01:19:44Guest:Yeah, I do.

01:19:45Guest:My kids are great.

01:19:45Guest:I think that the thing about my experience of having children is that it's a... It's the call to relationship.

01:19:58Guest:So there's an opportunity for relationship all the time.

01:20:02Guest:Yeah.

01:20:02Guest:Now, I'm not a great dad.

01:20:04Guest:I'm not practical.

01:20:08Guest:I'm not...

01:20:10Guest:Part of me actually doesn't know how to be a dad.

01:20:13Guest:I don't know what they want.

01:20:15Guest:A friend of mine said one time, shelter.

01:20:19Guest:Your duty as a father to provide shelter.

01:20:21Guest:And that can be physical, financial.

01:20:24Guest:I wouldn't be great at emotional shelter.

01:20:26Guest:But I'm there.

01:20:29Guest:And it's the call to relationship.

01:20:32Guest:So I need totems.

01:20:36Guest:I'm one of those people who need totems.

01:20:39Guest:So all the tattoos I have, they're all... My mind needs... Tommy, don't forget.

01:20:47Guest:Don't forget.

01:20:48Guest:Because I can guess I can...

01:20:52Guest:It's almost like living in a monastery that has, we pray at 7, we pray at 10, we have lunch at 12, we work from 2 to 5.

01:21:04Guest:The day is marked.

01:21:07Guest:And in a kind of fucked up way, the tattoos are like that for me.

01:21:12Guest:I kind of go, don't forget, don't forget, don't forget.

01:21:15Guest:So the next one I'm going to get is just the names of my kids as a thing of relationship.

01:21:22Guest:You have this relationship.

01:21:24Guest:Because a lot of time on your own, you know, in hotel rooms in towns where you don't live.

01:21:31Guest:And you're kind of, what am I going to do all day?

01:21:33Guest:I'm going to buy a book and I'll watch a movie.

01:21:35Guest:It's so self-indulgent, even though you have this orchestra of an evening waiting for you.

01:21:43Guest:So I need the totems.

01:21:45Guest:I need the kind of- What do the tattoos mean?

01:21:47Guest:So there's a tattoo of a bird on my hand.

01:21:51Guest:And to me, that's about instinct.

01:21:54Guest:And that maybe your instinct isn't always bad, Tommy.

01:21:59Guest:Maybe in the way that you look at a bird fluttering here, there and everywhere, obeying its own impulses.

01:22:05Guest:Do you have a dead bird on the other hand?

01:22:06Guest:No.

01:22:07Guest:And then, so I look at that and I go, okay, instinct.

01:22:13Guest:The four of my fingers are the four evangelists.

01:22:16Guest:And that's a reminder that outside of the church, outside of Catholicism and the Pope,

01:22:25Guest:that I get something out of reading the Gospels.

01:22:29Guest:Away from dogma, away from orthodoxy, away from just a private encounter between me and this story and the radical nature of the Gospels.

01:22:40Guest:I get something out of that.

01:22:42Guest:So they all mean something.

01:22:46Guest:So the thing with the children is that it's an opportunity.

01:22:53Guest:So say...

01:22:55Guest:A person without children is on their own.

01:22:59Guest:That's me.

01:23:00Guest:In a room in a hotel.

01:23:01Guest:Yeah, that's me.

01:23:01Guest:Okay.

01:23:01Guest:And you're thinking, what am I going to do today?

01:23:03Guest:And when I'm in that situation, I have a thing, okay, I have six children and I can phone any of them up and have a conversation.

01:23:15Guest:And they're like, oh, dad's in a hotel again.

01:23:17Guest:Yeah.

01:23:18Guest:I think one of my daughters is definitely, hey there.

01:23:21Guest:Yeah.

01:23:23Guest:Are you alone in a hotel?

01:23:26Guest:Okay, dad.

01:23:28Guest:So it's like that.

01:23:29Guest:So it's a cultural relationship.

01:23:32Marc:Where are you with Jesus?

01:23:35Guest:I don't understand most of it.

01:23:38Guest:I buy a lot of books about Jesus and I don't understand the vast majority of it.

01:23:45Guest:When people talk about I have a relationship with, I go, where, how?

01:23:50Guest:I don't know.

01:23:51Guest:I don't get that.

01:23:57Guest:There's a line from the Gospel according to Luke.

01:24:03Guest:Sell all you have and come follow me.

01:24:08Guest:Now, that is so counter-cultural.

01:24:16Marc:So it feels like a tremendous responsibility.

01:24:21Marc:On his half.

01:24:23Marc:Especially when you don't know what he looks like.

01:24:26Guest:Come follow me.

01:24:28Marc:You leave the hotel and you're looking for him.

01:24:30Guest:Yeah.

01:24:31Marc:I think that's one of the reasons why I always keep people at... In terms of when we were talking earlier, we didn't get to the part where I didn't have a happy ending when you saw me.

01:24:42Guest:Oh, yes.

01:24:43Marc:Yeah, yeah.

01:24:43Marc:More about you.

01:24:45Marc:No, I'm just saying that I don't know what to do with followers.

01:24:48Marc:I barely know what to do with fans.

01:24:50Marc:Oh, yeah.

01:24:51Marc:Because emotionally, it kind of...

01:24:54Marc:I have bad boundaries.

01:24:56Marc:So it exhausts me emotionally.

01:24:58Marc:So the idea of someone selling their things and following me to me is not that I'm Luke, but even just for him, you know, it'd be like, oh my God, then you get these people, you got to feed them.

01:25:08Marc:You got to tell them what to do with their lives.

01:25:10Marc:So if you met Jesus, you say, I feel bad for you.

01:25:14Guest:Yes.

01:25:14Guest:Good luck.

01:25:15Guest:Yeah.

01:25:16Guest:I hope everything works out.

01:25:18Guest:I got to go.

01:25:21Guest:Yeah.

01:25:21Guest:So that's what I'm... He'd be a hero.

01:25:26Guest:I'm constantly intrigued.

01:25:28Guest:And I would say, yeah, he's no more than... I'm very interested in him.

01:25:34Guest:Yeah.

01:25:34Guest:And I don't even know if him is the right word.

01:25:37Guest:Jesus.

01:25:38Guest:Yeah.

01:25:38Guest:I'm very interested.

01:25:39Marc:All right.

01:25:39Marc:So let's talk about my unhappy ending.

01:25:41Yeah.

01:25:41Guest:When I left that show, I remember it was in a thin room.

01:25:45Guest:There was a kind of a metal staircase towards the back.

01:25:48Guest:The seats were more than four or five per row.

01:25:53Guest:And what was refreshing was the... There wasn't a happy ending, but I kind of felt... You know when you see other unhappy people and I kind of...

01:26:02Marc:kind of yeah it kind of says you're not alone yeah that's uh yeah that's my job for the unhappy for the for the sensitive creative ones that just don't feel i just felt good that i'm not i have seen myself reflected there you go and that that explains my my very specific audience a glum lot looking for a little relief

01:26:27Guest:I was very taken by that.

01:26:28Guest:Because that's an unusual voice in stand-up.

01:26:31Guest:Because you're not a slave to the dick joke.

01:26:35Guest:You're not a slave to that rhythm.

01:26:39Guest:And that's very refreshing.

01:26:41Guest:There aren't that many people who speak honestly on stage.

01:26:45Guest:I think you do.

01:26:46Guest:I don't really, Mark.

01:26:46Guest:I play.

01:26:47Marc:You mix it up, though.

01:26:48Marc:I'm just saying that you do talk about yourself.

01:26:51Guest:Yes.

01:26:52Guest:Well, it was good talking to you.

01:26:54Marc:It was a pleasure talking to you.

01:27:00Marc:Tommy Tiernan.

01:27:02Marc:That was nice.

01:27:02Marc:Nice talking to an Irish fella.

01:27:04Marc:Tommy Hecker and Loretta, the podcast, is available wherever you get your podcasts.

01:27:08Marc:You can also watch him and the Dairy Girls on Netflix.

01:27:12Marc:And now we all hang out for a second.

01:27:18Marc:Folks, I told you we'd post some stand up for you, but then I got the HBO special and I wanted to wait until after that was done.

01:27:25Marc:This week, we're posting more than a half an hour of stuff I did over the past year that didn't make it into the special.

01:27:31Marc:I have post-its that I wrote today.

01:27:34Marc:This is what's going on today.

01:27:37Marc:Hard to decide who to listen to when nobody shuts the fuck up.

01:27:46Marc:Just fucking live in a culture filled with like amateur talk radio show hosts and wrestling heels.

01:27:51Marc:What the fuck happened?

01:27:56Marc:This is from two days ago.

01:27:58Marc:When I hate myself, I hate everyone who has ever liked me.

01:28:11Guest:Okay.

01:28:14Marc:This is what I do, and this is part of the show.

01:28:20Marc:This is not notes, this is all prepared.

01:28:23Marc:I know what I'm doing here.

01:28:24Marc:I'm sharing what I do.

01:28:26Marc:Sometimes I do it on bigger pieces of paper.

01:28:33Marc:The bigger writing, I had to, yeah, I had to pull the car over to do that.

01:28:40Marc:That was urgent.

01:28:41Marc:I'll share some of that with you.

01:28:46Marc:We are wired for duplicity.

01:28:48Marc:Our parents aren't who we think they are.

01:28:50Marc:I had to pull over for that.

01:28:54Marc:And then right under it, it says, Gaslighting Parenting.

01:29:00Marc:This isn't fucking lighthearted shit.

01:29:03Marc:Is this comedy?

01:29:03Marc:I think it is.

01:29:05Marc:That was my set from last year at Town Hall in New York.

01:29:08Marc:Last November.

01:29:09Marc:So a year and a month before I shot my special at Town Hall.

01:29:12Marc:You can sign up for the full Marin if you're not already subscribed.

01:29:15Marc:Go to the link in the episode description or click on WTF Plus at WTFPod.com.

01:29:21Marc:On Thursday, James Austin Johnson from Saturday Night Live is on the show.

01:29:27Marc:He just I was in Nashville and I was on stage.

01:29:30Marc:I was talking to Chad Ryden from the stage, a guy who went to Princess Chicken with me for the first time when I almost had to go to the emergency room.

01:29:37Marc:And I thought there was other people there.

01:29:38Marc:And I asked who was with us.

01:29:39Marc:And he said, James Austin Johnson.

01:29:41Marc:And I'm like, what?

01:29:42Marc:I don't remember that at all.

01:29:43Marc:So I thought I didn't know this guy and I knew this guy.

01:29:45Marc:And then there was another guy I didn't even know was there.

01:29:47Marc:I don't know if I'm getting dementia like my dad or what.

01:29:51Marc:But, but I just, I got, I got to talk to the guy and it was great talk.

01:29:56Marc:He's very funny.

01:29:57Marc:His Trump is hilarious.

01:29:58Marc:That thing he did, the Dylan thing he did on Fallon.

01:30:00Marc:Oh my God.

01:30:01Marc:Guy's a talented guy and a good guy.

01:30:03Marc:All right.

01:30:03Marc:Here's some, here's some chords that are familiar to anyone who hears me play guitar.

01:30:09Marc:But by the way, I've been fucking around with an open G tuning with just five strings like Keith.

01:30:14Marc:So fun.

01:30:16Marc:You know, you can just learn how to play guitar on YouTube.

01:30:17Marc:Do you guys know that?

01:30:20.

01:32:52Marc:Boomer lives.

01:32:56Marc:Monkey and the fond of cat angels.

01:32:59Marc:Everywhere.