Phil Johnson: It's really just about being loose enough to just joke around and be yourself. It's like you said, everybody's got a sense of humor. The bass player in my band was, at one point, fired. He was in a Santana tribute band and they fired him because during the introduction of one song, he said something into the mic and made a joke about the song. And they were like: that's inappropriate. You're fired! And he came into rehearsal with us. And I said: dude, if you don't make the joke in the mic, you're fired! I mean, all of my band members got mics on stage, whether or not they actually sang because the rule was if something stupid occurs to you to say, say it into the mic so the audience hears it.

Michael Walker: It's easy to get lost in today's music industry with constantly changing technology, and where anyone with a computer can release their own music. I'm going to share with you why this is the best time to be an independent musician and it's only getting better. If you have high-quality music, but you just don't know the best way to promote yourself so that you can reach the right people and generate a sustainable income with your music, we're going to show you the best strategies that we're using right now to reach millions of new listeners every month without spending 10 hours a day on social media. We're creating a revolution in today's music industry and this is your invitation to join me. I'm your host, Michael Walker.

What's going on? We're here today with a good friend of mine, Phil Johnson. Phil! Super excited to have you on the podcast today. We just were hanging out yesterday on our first access playground. Phil is a professional comedian and musician, and he's really at this cross-section between his music and comedy. And he's been featured at the Sundance Film Festival, Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Sirius XM, Amazon Prime. It's really been a highlight of my life for the past, gosh, how long? Probably about a year, it feels like, since we've been doing this first access playground and being able to connect with you weekly. For any of my jokes that I make that aren't really bad dad jokes, you guys probably have Phil Johnson to thank for that. [both laughing] I think at least a little bit of your humor has rubbed off on me.

Phil Johnson: Here's one thing you guys should know about Michael: is that he secretly has a very dark sense of humor. [both laughing]

Michael Walker: I do. I absolutely do. But Phil, I'm really excited to have you on the podcast today. Thank you for taking the time to be here.

Phil: Yeah, me too. I'm excited.

Michael: I think that you have a unique cross-section of what you do with comedy and music. I think it's going to be inspiring for people to hear your story. And I haven't really fully heard your entire story as well. So I'm looking forward to connecting more. Maybe to start with Phil, could you introduce yourself quickly and maybe share an introduction in terms of how you got started doing music and comedy together?

Phil: Sure. Yeah. I do mix the two. I mostly bill myself as a comedian these days because that's where my money comes from. I started playing the flute when I was 8 because my mom said girls like musicians. And I was like: sign me up. And she said, what instrument do you want to play? And I was like, I don't know. And she goes: look, if you play the flute, you'll always be the only boy in the section. And I was like, cool. That sounds like a good idea. And I was the only boy in the flute section all the way through college. Never dated another flutist strangely, but did meet my best friend, Dave, in the clarinet section in high school. So that I got that out of it. Then I picked up piano when I was like 12, picked up guitar when I was 16, and wanted nothing more than to just be the guitar player in a rock band. That was all I wanted. I started my first band in college when I was like 20. I remember our first gig. I had to wait in the green room cause I wasn't old enough to be in the bar. That kind of stuff. And then did like regular rock band stuff through the 90’s and the early-ish part of the 2000’s. And then I had split off with the guys that I was playing with. I had these couple of goofy song ideas that they never wanted to do. They were very serious about the whole thing. And so I was just sitting in my studio just throwing stuff down on a recorder just to see what was going to happen next. I wasn't a singer yet. None of that kind of stuff. I had written these couple of goofy songs. One was called Whale Blubber, which is a love song.

Michael: Of course! [both laughing]

Phil: Of course. If you've seen the movie, me, myself, and Irene, the Jim Carrey film, there's a line in that movie where he and his girl are sitting next to the lake and she goes, I can't remember which way the conversation goes, but one of them says what if I moved to Alaska? And then he goes, I would go with you. And he goes, yes, but would you eat whale blubber for me? And my girlfriend and I just shot up and we're like: that's a song title. Right there. So that's the hook line is, would you eat whale blubber for me? And so I had a mentor in the 90’s who was very much like you, Michael. His name was Tim Sweeney. He was not nearly as kind. He was very aggressive. At our conventions, he would walk around with a golf club and slam it on the table. But he was a wonderful person and he was the godfather of indie music at the time; had worked for the major labels and was giving us all the secrets of becoming an independent musician and warning us off major labels. And so all this tour hacking stuff with the handing out CD’s and all that kind of stuff, we were doing that stuff in the 90’s, and that was what Tim was training us to do. And he passed away a bunch of years ago, unfortunately. But he was really great. And so, he and the people that I was in that community with heard these couple of funny songs, and they were like: that's what you should be leaning into. And I was like no, no, no that's B side stuff. I'm a serious songwriter. And they were like, no, seriously do that. And Tim even… suggested seems like too soft of a word… demanded that I go solo and split off from doing everything with my band. And so I said, okay, I'll do half and half. And then six months later, I was doing 90% solo gigs cause there's so much easier. So I started playing these couple of funny songs in with my serious songs at coffee shop gigs and things like that and people really started to latch onto them. And the introductions of my songs, even my serious songs, started to get jokier cause you get that first laugh and you're like: Oh, that's a new drug. Oh yeah. I like that one! And it becomes addictive to get those laughs. And so I had a couple of funny songs and started joke around during the introductions. I had a terrible habit of forgetting my lyrics, so I would make jokes when that would happen. I still forget my lyrics regularly. And so I was doing that, and then I got invited to do a comedy music show in San Francisco at a place called the Hyena Theater that doesn't exist anymore. “Theater” is a strong word for a place in an office building with a few folding chairs in it, but that's what they called it. And so I had, I don't know, three, four songs. So I went up and did my three or four songs. And the MC at that show was a lady named Lynn Ruth Miller who was starting her comedy career at the time at the age of 72. And she was the MC that night. She said: Hey, I need a guitar player for my act. Do you want to come do it with me? And I was like: What are we doing? And she said: you're going to play Anarchy in the UK by the Sex Pistols while I throw lingerie at the audience and I was like: I'm in! Let's do that. That sounds fun.

Michael: Just another Tuesday night. [laughing]

Phil: Just another Tuesday night. And so she started taking me around to all the comedy venues here in the San Francisco bay area. And we’d do her act, and then she'd tell the producer: Hey, he's got some stuff. Why don't you put them up for a few minutes? And so they put me up to do a song or two. And I immediately started to catch Guitar Comic, Flack. “Guitar Comic” is practically a slur in the comedy community.

Michael: Really?

Phil: Yeah, it is. We're very looked down upon.

Michael: Why??!?!

Phil: Well mostly it's often a jealousy thing as well because we're hard to follow on a stage when we've taken the energy up real high.

Michael: And you're getting all the chicks too.

Phil: [sarcastically] Yeah, right. 

Michael: Yeah, you're both funny and you play guitar, which is not fair.

Phil: Oh, yeah. Speaking as somebody who has not been single since I started doing comedy, I've not been able to take advantage of that. But yeah, so they don't like to follow guitar comics. They think it's an unfair advantage. And, to be fair, a lot of guitar comics are terrible too. So there is that issue. So she started introducing me to the local producers around here and I started getting up and doing my 3 little songs that I lived off those three songs for a year. And then I thought: if I'm going to be part of this community, then I should learn how to do this art. And I had never thought of being a stand-up. I love stand-up comedy, but I never thought I'd be doing it. And I've also never thought I'd be a singer. I said, all I wanted to be was a guitar player in a rock band, and so I was forced into being a singer. And then I entered this community and I was like: I better start really learning how to do stand-up as well. And that process is: write some stuff and go up and bomb and write some more and go up and bomb and write some more and go up and bomb. And the more you do that, the better you get at it. And now it's been 19 years of doing that and I've gotten pretty good at it, most people will say. Some people will tell you I'm still terrible at it, but I don't pay attention to those people. [both laughing] But that was really it. So it was Lynn Ruth and Lynn Ruth was the one that took me to the Edinburgh Fringe festival in Scotland to do that with her in 2005. We had a great time doing that. And so it's been a pretty wild ride that I never expected that's taken me places I'd never thought I'd go.

Michael: Super cool. Yeah. Thank you for sharing that.

Phil: Sure.

Michael: And it's so interesting that you got your start in music and you had nothing to do with comedy. You weren't even thinking about it. And then it found you in a way.

Phil: Yeah. It really did. And like I said, I was always a fan. I grew up on Robin Williams and Bobcat Goldthwait and some of the old school 80’s guys, Bob Nelson and things like that. And so I was always a big fan of standup. I love seeing it, but I never thought I'd be doing it. But it's a wild art, man. It's the most dangerous art I've ever partaken in.

Michael: Dangerous. That's aninteresting word for it.

Phil: Yeah. Cause I've played in pit orchestras. I've done opera. I've played in rock bands. I've done theater. I've done a lot of different types of art and that's the scariest one because it's you and a mic on a stage and that's it. And you are in control of that entire room having a good time that night.

Michael: Yeah it's really interesting. Certainly your whole story shines a light on just the idea of doing something unique or having something. If all you do is you play music and you play the same kind of music as everybody else… It's like that purple cow effect, right? Seth Godin has that book about the idea of a purple cow and about how if you're driving down the street and you look in the field and you see a bunch of cows, then normally you won't think twice. You'll just keep driving or whatever. But if you see there's one cow that's purple, then instantly it grabs your eye and you're like: Whoa, like that's interesting. Like it's different. And it just grabs your attention. And the analogy being that for us and our industry and for us particularly as musicians thinking about: what is it that makes us a purple cow or what can we lean into that does set us apart? In your case, having the comedy flair to it is something that is a Purple cow thing, at least in relation to other musicians.

Phil: Yeah. And even in comedy too, because that definitely comes up. I said, there are guitar comics. There are musical comics. There's Lonely Island and there's different types of musical comedy and things like that. But people will come up to me after a show and go: I don't like musical comedy, but I like what you're doing. And so that's always where I find my purple cow, is being more than they expect when they see an acoustic guitar sitting on stage and kind of cringe and go: Oh, no, what's coming up? 

Michael: That's great. Yes. You can just set like the lowest expectations possible.

Phil: Yes.

Michael: Nowhere to go but up. Yeah, there's something too about that purple cow idea of, in some ways, just being a musician for all of us, I think it's like being a purple cow in relation to people who aren't musicians. They see what we do and they see the music and they're just like: that is amazing! Like, how do you do that? Where you turn the ideas into actual music. Sometimes not even great music. There's been times where I've been on zoom and our accountant is like doing something on a spreadsheet and I'll do a little jingle. I'll be like: [singing[ He's Bill! He’s Bill! The man with the plan. And I remember we did that and he just lost his mind. He's like: Oh my gosh, that's amazing! He recorded it and shared it with his whole team. And it was a good reminder of that kind of idea that purple cow: you just being a musician is really unique and interesting. It's not so much of a purple cow in this community because it's like you being a musician… we're all musicians. So what is it that makes you different from other musicians in the context of being surrounded by musicians? If you were driving by a field but they were all purple cows and we’ve always seen purple cows, I wouldn't be interested in those purple cows.

Phil: Sure.

Michael: I just think it's interesting as musicians, all of us, if we look at part of what you've done with adding the comedy to it and doing something unique there, I think all of us have an opportunity to lean into and figure out: what are some other elements about who we are and what we're interested in and our passions and what we're good at that we could maybe mix together so that the music is a part of who you are, but it really is connected to these other unique things that stand out.

Phil: Sure. And a lot of that comes from… even within the comedy community, we have to do that. In fact, it's almost enforced in the comedy community that whatever is your special thing that gets attached to you. And a lot of times… it's always what's the most obvious thing that people are going to notice when you walk on stage? That is the first thing you have to address as a comedian.

Michael: Interesting!

Phil: So when I walk on stage, they're not used to seeing dudes who look like me, and so I have to do a couple of hair jokes right at the top of the show so that the audience isn't left wondering: does he know his hair is weird? [both laughing] And then we can move on to other things. And it was funny cause I was doing shows in Portland recently and in Portland, half the dudes have long hair. So I didn't have to do any of that, which, I thought, was funny. It was sort of freeing. I could just go into the other stuff that I wanted to do. But it's the same thing where you've got to find your thing. Some comics will be like I'm the dad comic or I'm the Mexican Cholo comic, or whatever is that thing that people can immediately grab onto, which I find thoroughly annoying, in most cases, because having done this for so long, as soon as somebody walks on stage, I go: Oh, okay. She's going to do lesbian jokes at the top. And when I don't see them at the top of the show, it's always very refreshing to not see that obviousness. But the industry kind of demands that type of thing. And so for musicians, it is finding your extra niche, or what kind of issues you want to attach your music to, whether that's different types of charitable things, or religious, or non-religious or having another avenue that your music goes down to that you can attach it to.

Michael: Yes, designer babies?

Phil: Yes. Designer babies. The best thing about doing this comedy music stuff is that I'm not restrained by style and I never really liked being restrained by style. We were always a very versatile band and like to pull things from all sorts of different places. So when it's funny, then I don't have to be like: every song is a rock song or every song is this kind of song or every song is that. I don't have to be stuck in a sound because as long as it's funny. I always write from a lyrical concept first where I've got a verse and a chorus and I go, okay, what's the music that goes with this story? And then my brain will put together: Okay what if this artist and this artist got together and those don't go together? I'm working on a song right now that is: what if Rancid did gospel music? So I put those things in my head and then I can play with any style of music I want. My own compositional ticks come through anyway, and it's still recognizable as one of my songs, but I don't have to be quite so tightly focused on a particular style. So it's a lot of fun to be able to do that.

Michael: That does sound fun! One thing that came up for me just right now as we're talking about this, and it's a little bit of a cross section between yesterday. Yesterday, we had Ryan Krysiak on here and he's done some awesome things with his YouTube channel and predominantly focused on cover songs, but they also have original songs too. But one thing that just came up as you were describing that was, Weird Al Yankovic. If yesterday's podcast had a podcast with this baby, it'd be like Weird Al Yancovic.

Phil: It would be Weird Al. Yeah.

Michael: He'd come out fully formed. Just immediately came out of the womb and he was Weird Al, fully grown.

Phil: Curly hair, Hawaiian shirt, ready to go.

Michael: But it's an interesting cross section, because he had the cover songs, people are like familiar with the cover songs, then he also added the comedic twist to it and like parodies of it.

Phil: Yeah.

Michael: It does seem like there can be a stacking effect, you just described it, how you take a few different things, you remix them into something new. It's a powerful strategy. You think about what are a few different aspects of things that I love and how can I make a baby with my music that blend together these different things that are well-known or have a lot of traction or big community around them.

Phil: Yeah. And I almost don't necessarily think about anybody else when I'm writing this stuff. I really just want to play stuff that I want to hear and so sometimes my references… There's not a ton of Rancid fans out in the world, and even I'm not a huge Rancid fan. I like some of their stuff, but I tend to pull a lot of things from music that I don't even necessarily like just because there's something to learn from it. But my holy grail collaboration right now is what: would the Wild Hearts and Lily Allen sound like if they made a song together? And I haven't figured that one out yet, but I keep trying. I find when I do that, the songs sound way more unique. If I just write a song that's a song, then it sounds like a song, and those usually don't get as much traction. The parody stuff is interesting. I don't do it because Weird Al is so good at it and it's really tough.

Michael: Dude, I'd love to hear you do a parody song. I feel like you would knock it out of the park with a parody song.

Phil: I have one. I have one. I wrote a parody of Hallelujah, the Leonard Cohen song that I rarely perform live, but I do it on my live streams.

Michael: What’s the parody?

Phil: Well, I read a book about that song called The Holy or the Broken by Alan Light, and it's a fascinating history of that song. And at the end of the book, the author says: but I've never heard a really good parody of it. He's heard heart to fart kinda parodies of it. But, as he explains parody, and the true definition of parody, is that you are creating jokes about the thing itself that you're parodying. So it's not about just changing the lyrics. So technically, what Weird Al actually does is not even really parody, except in a few cases. He's got one that sort of adores pastiche, that kind of qualifies it for that. I was just on another podcast recently where we had very deep discussions about the definition of parody. But so what I did was I wrote new lyrics to Hallelujah using the lyrics of Hallelujah, making fun of the song, Hallelujah and how it's overused and become this pop culture touchstone and things like that. But I use the actual lyrics of the song, twist them a little bit and reword them to make fun of the song itself and its place in popular culture. And it was quite a bit of work to make it work. And I put it out and it does okay. I did find myself one day telling my girlfriend: Hey, I need you to help me take some pictures for the cover of this thing. And she said: great, what are we going to do? I said I'm going to, I'm going to dress in a white sheet with a big beard. And then you're going to tie me up with an orange extension cord and duct tape my mouth and then I’m going to photoshop in an abandoned warehouse behind me. And she was like: this is your Tuesday, huh? And I was like yeah, this is my Tuesday: [both laughing] dressing up like God and being tied to a chair. Yeah.

Michael: Wow. That is not something that you see everyday.

Phil: Yeah.

Michael: Yeah. Super interesting. One thing that I would love to hear your perspective on: I think all of us as humans, we all have a sense of humor. Humor plays such an important role in our lives. And I personally don't have a lot of experience underneath the hood of comedy and just the art form that is comedy. I have a few friends who are like you, who have taken training and I've been coaching and I've been working on comedy. I've found it really fascinating just in terms of some of the psychology of jokes and how they work. I found some parallels between… I've had learnings from it where I'm like: Oh, that's interesting. I could apply to music as well, or just human interactions. So I'd be curious to hear you just talk a little bit about comedy as an art form and maybe from the lens of us as artists and really communicators and entertainers, what are some lessons we can glean from that to make our performances more entertaining?

Phil: Sure. Yeah. So comedy is really still a mystery to me. I've been a guitar teacher for 30 years. I can teach somebody how to play the guitar pretty easily. I don't feel like I could teach comedy, necessarily. That said, I did have a fan meetup one day with one of my fans that came in through all of our systems here and I was about to go into my normal script of what I do on those. And he was like: hang on. I just want to talk about comedy because I'm starting to become a comedian and I just need your help. And so we literally went through his material for the next half hour, and did kind of stuff like that. Somewhere in the back of my brain I can teach comedy, but I don't have the confidence that I would say I could teach comedy yet. Even after all this time, it's still magic to me. Just like in some ways, music is still magic to me, but I've been doing that even longer so I can see the nuts and bolts behind things. With comedy, I've had some official training, read some books. I never went to comedy college or anything like those types of organizations. In the books that I read, I don't think I ever used any of the jokes that I wrote in those exercises on stage, but they did help me write jokes later on. I've done some training with Jerry Corley out of Los Angeles. He's a good comedy teacher. And then recently, I took a month-long workshop on showcase sets, which is: how do you get the tightest five minutes of stand-up that you can for festivals and things like that? Which was always the hard thing for me. Even from the early days, if you put me on stage for 20 or 30 minutes, I was fine, but put me up for 5 and I was lost. And so to really build that tight five minute set was very difficult. But that training paid off and it's been working really well for me this year. So as far as the intersections in being an entertainer, I think the first thing is that in live performances, just being loose enough on stage to goof around a little bit, even in serious situations or very serious artists. I think Adele is really fantastic at that. If you've ever seen some of her concert film. She is really great at telling stories and joking around and not being serious the whole time. And then going into super serious songs about broken relationships.

Michael: Yeah, that’s super interesting just in contrast with what I would expect, knowing her music. I would expect it to be much more serious or somber.

Phil: Yeah. Yeah. And this really goes back to all the Tim Sweeney stuff that I was learning in the 90’s. He was very much about: don't just go song, song, song in yours shows. You've got to tell stories about these things so that people have something to connect with. Which is the same thing that we do all the way through all this stuff too. Don't just put the song out, tell them the story of what's going on and how it was created and all that kind of stuff. And I think Adele is really fantastic at that. Dolly Parton is fantastic at that too. She's a lot more scripted because she's been doing it for 1,000 years. But she does that where she tells stories in between songs, she makes jokes and that kind of stuff, for an average music audience, the jokes don't have to be that good. An attempt at a joke is usually enough to get a laugh out of a rock show. Even I laugh. I saw the struts play and he'd make a couple of goofy jokes in between songs and I laughed because you're just in that moment. It's different when you're in a stand-up show where people have paid 20 bucks and want to hear high quality jokes, or at least what they think are high quality jokes. And that's a different type of responsibility. I had a few friends that tried musical comedy and then went back to playing regular music venues because the humor part of it was so much easier in front of a music audience than a comedy audience, so the bar is a little bit lower. But it's really just about being loose enough to just joke around and be yourself. It's like you said, everybody's got a sense of humor. The bass player in my band was, at one point, fired. He was in a Santana tribute band and they fired him because during the introduction of one song, he said something into the mic and made a joke about the song. And they were like: that's inappropriate. You're fired! And he came into rehearsal with us. And I said: dude, if you don't make the joke in the mic, you're fired! I mean, all of my band members got mics on stage, whether or not they actually sang, because the rule was: if something stupid occurs to you to say, say it into the mic so the audience hears it. And so it's just that kind of that looseness. And if you're comfortable enough being on stage…. If you're not comfortable yet being on stage, then don't attempt that just yet. Get comfortable being on stage as a performer first, and then start to work in just being loose and saying the thing that occurs to you in the moment. Rarely are you going to get in trouble for it. I mean, I say some fairly controversial things on purpose during my shows. Controversial depending on where I am in the country and who's listening. Not so controversial here on the West Coast, but when I go to the Midwest they have some ideas. [both laughing] But that's a really big part of it. I don't think musicians need to study stand-up comedy necessarily. I think watching it is a really great idea and watching it with a critical eye as to: what's going on? How are they doing it? That's really when I said: okay I need to learn stand-up. That was the first thing I did was I just watched every stand-up special I could get my hands on, and started listening critically. Oh, you got to laugh right there. What was it about that joke that got that laugh? To the point where I was actually transcribing whole specials. So I would take a Jim Gaffigan special and literally type out the entire special so that I can see how long a joke was on the page, what a good joke looks like on the page, and then go: Oh, mine are too long. I got to cut some stuff out of that. And then I do somebody like Stuart Lee, who was a much more verbose, long-form joke writer to see the other side of it. You can do that kind of stuff. And I think it's good for anybody that wants to be an effective public speaker of any sort and we're that's basically what we are at the end of the day: public speakers. You can learn a lot by osmosis of by just paying attention to it. But paying attention to it in a way where you're trying to figure out what they're doing. Because there is a science to it. Where it's a science of surprise. Sometimes recognition on a small percentage. But most of the time, you want to say something that they weren't expecting you to say. So you set up the set up and then the punchline is something that they didn't already think of. I have a few jokes in my act right now where I do say what the audience is thinking of first, and there's a different kind of release and a different kind of laugh because it makes the audience feel smart that they thought of that too. And so there's different dynamics that you can go through, but we have different joke forms like triples and turns, and I don't know, I can't even think of all the terminology and stuff now. One that always occurs to me as a parallel with music is the triple because in music, we might play a phrase, play a riff three times, and then the fourth time is something different. That's a very common compositional technique, right? And so in comedy, we'll do 2 lines that are a straight line, straight line, and the third line is the punchline/the twist. And I started using that in my songs where I would go: Oh, let me do a triple here instead of the group of four. And it acts as a little bit of a surprise. And then I can go back to the riff after or something like that if I just need the four bars to work out. I have deep thoughts about stupid things like groups of three and groups of four as they pertain to, between music and comedy. So I think as a musician, you can learn things from comedy without actually being a comedian. I have a lot of friends that do comedy now that used to be musicians. And they always go: Oh, man, maybe I should try some comedy music. And I'm like: Yeah, why don't you? You have the skills. You were a piano player before, guitarist or whatever. And they just go: I don't know. So they cut off that portion of what they were doing and just focus on the comedy. And then a lot of comedy musicians, frankly, didn't start as musicians. They sstarted as comics and then decided to add a music thing to it. I was being interviewed for a documentary the other day about comedy music and the guy was like, you're like only one of three people I've talked to that started in music and then went to comedy. Usually it's the other way around. I don't know if I answered your question there at all.

Michael: Yeah. You absolutely did. Yeah. I think it's really powerful. You just mentioned, to not necessarily… you have to go to college to study comedy, or you have to go to college to study music either.

Phil: Which I did. [laughs]

Michael: Education is incredibly valuable. For me personally, one thing that comes to mind as it relates to comedy, and using comedy as a tool when you're on stage and performing, what that brings up for me is my “yeeaahh cam” is not necessarily… it's not like a joke, but it kinda is.

Phil: Yeah.

Michael: But for me personally, it's been a really awesome blessing to, whenever I need to, or if I feel uncomfortable for any reason, it's pretty much like a scapegoat where you're like, yeeaaahh.

Phil: It's your “get ‘er done”. [both laughing]

Michael: There's something really nice… and maybe it's like a confidence booster. There's something nice about having something in your back pocket that if you ever need to, you can bust it out. Yeeeaaahhh!

Phil: Yeah

Michael: And I can imagine jokes and having something like a story. If you know that I've got 3 or 4 different stories or I've got X, Y, Z that I can bring up, I can share during my set in between the songs, it could be really helpful.

Phil: Yeah, and that's where when I was first starting to lean this direction, I would start cracking jokes during the introductions of songs and I would go: Oh, okay, that line works. Let me keep that line. And I would reuse that every time I did the show. If you go see any of these touring bands, and you’ve seeen 2 shows or 3 shows in a row, you're gonna be like: Oh, none of this is in the moment. Everything is scripted. They figured out what lines work and they're just going to use those lines. If you see Dolly Parton once, you know that because she's been telling the same stories forever. But it is really effective to just be loose in the moment, say the thing that's spontaneous, but then go: Oh, that worked. I'm going to keep that. And a lot of times that's how we refine the material on stage.

Michael: It’s real world split testing.

Phil: Yeah, exactly. It absolutely is. I write on a laptop in the morning. I tap tap, tap and write my jokes. Then I rehearse them so that I can remember them. My living room sofas heard my jokes more than anybody. And then when I take 'em on stage, I go: oh, that didn't work at all. Okay. Alright. Nice. It may technically be a joke, but for whatever reason it doesn't hit. And then you start refining on stage and literally split testing: Oh, does this line work better or does this line work better? And I'll try them out from night to night until I find the one that works. All that kind of stuff goes right into it, but having the stories or having something that you know works is very comforting. It's also easy to get stuck in that too, where sometimes I go: all right, this is all working too well. I need to push my limits a little bit and write some new material. And then when the new material is always the most fun to do, I'm working on a new story on stage right now that is not at all together yet. It doesn't have an ending; the middle parts are starting to work and things like that. I'm gonna do it in my show tonight and those are the most exciting times really for comics is when we get up there and go: here's some new stuff! It’s like the roller coaster doing this, and you’re like: I don't know if it’s going to work! You either get to the exit safely, or you crash and burn and both things are going to happen. That's the thing: even if you've got stuff that you know is going to work, you've got A material that just kills, there's always going to be times where it doesn't. I was auditioning at a club recently doing a set of material that won me at the world series of comedy in my round; first place, world series of comedy back in September in my round. And I did it at this club audition and bombed horrendously! They were not having me at all. And so even the great stuff is going to not work sometimes and you just have to blow it off and go on to the next thing. One of my favorite things I ever saw was an interview with Patton Oswalt, who's one of my favorites, and they said, when was the last time you bombed? And he was like: Last week! [both laughing] It still happens. So it's fascinating. That's why there's still magic, because we can technically write a joke that scientifically should get a laugh, and it just doesn't for whatever reason. And then you have jokes that do work for a long, long, long time and then the culture kind of changes and they don't work so hot anymore. I've had that happen on a few things too. I had a joke about Pearl Harbor that always would hit every time. It's in one of my specials. And then when the culture around the way people were viewing Asian people shifted a couple of years ago, that joke really started not working and I had to not do it anymore and I wasn't doing it a lot by then anyway. It's intriguing because when people go back and they're like: oh, that joke that guy did back in the eighties. Who canceled that guy? It's like: it was different back. There was a different viewpoint of whatever was going on back then. So it's one thing to talk about comedy in the present, but a lot of times stuff that worked back then doesn't work now for whatever reason. So you have to adapt as you go along. For sure.

Michael: This whole conversation that we're having right now is probably going to be banned in the future.

Phil: Probably! [both laughing]. It's funny because I don't do political comedy by any means, but my politics are very seeable through my material, which is why when I go some places, they're like: Yeah, we don't like you. I've had people who also don't see it for some reason. I have people who are 180 degrees from what I'm looking for my fan community. I had a guy. Didn't laugh at anything through the entire show and came up to me after he was like: you were fantastic. And he tried to join my Facebook group and all this kind of stuff. And I was like, DND delete. I don't want this guy around. [both laughing] There are very overtly political comics and I only don't do that because I don't know how to do that well. And to be overtly political, you have to really keep up and write a lot more than I do, probably. There's all that kind of, finding what your particular voice is going to be and how you're going to attack things. I'm always fascinated seeing comics doing jokes that I couldn't get away with on stage. And then they see me and they go: I could never do that. That bit about eating babies that you do? Yeah. I could never get away with doing that.

Michael: [sarcastically] What's wrong with eating babies? How could anyone object to that?

Phil: It is my favorite bit to do right now. It is literally a bit about eating babies and total satire and hilarious when there's always a few people in the audience who don't understand that it's satire for some reason. It's so fun. It's so fun.

Michael: It's really interesting. As you're describing the idea of split testing and how we're split testing live with this audience, you made me chuckle in my mind a little bit, just thinking of you in a lab coat up on stage and putting up microphones and in the audience like a true split test.

Phil: It feels like it, sometimes.

Michael: It really does seem like that's a part of the art process that sometimes is overlooked, is just how important it is to put out material and get feedback and to iterate on it and “split test” even your music and performances. It used to be the case that basically every band and every artist, how they wrote their songs is they would create new material and they'd perform it. And they'd see how it landed. And even before they had the final recording, they'd split test it on an audience by performing it and seeing the parts that landed, the parts that didn't. It would inform the final product that they ended up creating. I feel like for all of us, that's a pretty big opportunity. If we can work out ways to “split test our new material”, like with our inner circles, for example. If we are able to use that as a testing ground to play around with new material, then I think there's something powerful about having that community feedback and iterating on it that if you just live in a box or you're just doing it completely on your own, it could be challenging to know whether you're on the right direction or not.

Phil: Yeah If you're doing enough shows, it's easy enough to do live. So if I'm at a club and I'm doing 3 or 4 shows that weekend, then I can do a different punchline at each of those 4 shows. There's always the quality of the audience and, if the Friday seven o'clock show is going to be a way different audience than the Saturday eight o'clock show and things like that. So you have to take that into account as well. There's patterns that happen in a comedy club. We always say that the Saturday eight o'clock shows what comedians live for and the Friday late show makes us reconsider our life choices. That pattern holds almost every time at every club. It's funny. It’s that thing where musicians are testing song ideas on TikTok now, which is really great. And I've done some of that as well. A couple of years ago, maybe early 2020, I had just spent 4 solid years writing my last comedy special and I was in the editing process. We'd filmed and everything. And so I was trying to kick myself back into songwriting cause I hadn't done any of it in a while. I gave myself a goal of putting out a short 30 seconds song every day for a year. And I did that. I ended up doing like 368 of these little short basic set-up punchline type of songs and I would put them up on TikTok and Instagram. I don't think YouTube shorts existed yet. And that was a way of test marketing those ideas. I'd see the ones that people reacted to and go: okay, is there more to that story? Because sometimes there wasn't. And if there was more to that story, then I could build out a more full-length song from it. I'm actually still doing that. The song I'm working on now is an extension of one of those songs that I wrote 3-4 years ago at this point. And that was really great for seeing what people would connect with. And even some of the ones that they didn't necessarily connect with. But I thought, oh, there's more to that story that I can play with, was really valuable to just throw all those ideas out there and test market them a little bit that way. Some of them just stayed short songs. I actually put out two albums of just 30 second songs. And it's like there's 30/33 songs on the album. You can listen to the whole thing in 18 minutes. One of them was a concept album, which was super fun. Shortest concept album of all time. Split testing that can be done with songs like that. As soon as I run out of ideas from this batch of songs, I'm gonna start that whole thing again and write another 365 shorties like that and then start from that. 

Michael: Super Smart!

Phil: I've been marketing my next single with in fan meetups this week when I've been meeting with fans on Zoom 'cause my next single is a cover and it's not funny which is outside of the box for me. And so I have been like: Hey, let me play you this thing.

And they're like: Oh, that's amazing. I can't wait to hear it!

Michael: What's the song?

Phil: I did a cover of Barry Manilow's Copacabana. And here's my process at work: it's as if Nick Cave and Type O Negative collaborated on it. So it is super dark and super heavy and super depressing.

Michael: Wow. That sounds really interesting.

Phil: Yeah, it's fun. I'm excited.

Michael: Yeah, even the idea that you just shared there with like meeting with your new fans and connecting with them and sharing this with them is a great example of testing things out by actually putting it out and connect with people. And that's awesome. I didn't know that you had done that for a full year of creating the moments, and putting those out.

Phil: Yeah, essentially!

Michael: We should definitely sync up on, once we have a really quick and fast moment generator machine, it'd be pretty cool just to create additions of all of those, and if people want them, maybe they can join your StreetTeam and they can get a free addition of the moment, if it's their first one.

Phil: That'd be wild.

Michael: If they want more they can purchase 'em. Yeah.

Phil: Yeah. It was a lot of work, but it's something like, kinda like what Ryan was talking about yesterday, where once you have a system, you can get that system flowing pretty smoothly where it doesn't take a ton of time to make those things happen. Listening to his system yesterday, I was blown away. I was like: that would take me forever to do that! Once you've got the system to go through it, it goes pretty fast. And the way I had done that was: I wrote 100 sets of lyrics before I put the first one out. So the first two months with just writing a hundred sets of those short lyrics and then I could continue writing. I would spend each day; I'd write four or whatever it was. The music part of it was the easy part. I could bang out a chord progression and a groove behind it pretty quick. The lyrics were the hard part. So every Monday I would sit down and bang out 7 arrangements of those little things, just do a raw cell phone type of video kind of things, and then that's what I would post. And then when I did the albums, I went back in and re-recorded the ones in a studio situation here to clean them up a little bit. But it just became a process where it really didn't take that long to accomplish it, even though it sounds like a huge project.

Michael: Super smart! Yeah. I feel like a strategy like that mixed with a little bit of boosted traffic… If like for every moment you put $1 behind it or just like a little bit behind it and use that as a testing ground and retargeted people who are already in your community.

Phil: Sure.

Michael: I could imagine that really being a powerful… we use this analogy of starting the fire a lot, starting the fire and like you're adding little pieces of logs to the fire every single day. Really smart.

Phil: Yeah. Certainly the next time I do it, that's all stuff that I'm planning on doing. When I was doing this, I think it was just before I hooked up with you guys, just before I met you. And so I didn't have the systems in place to really take advantage of it like I might have. So from an artistic point of view, it was very successful in that I got done what I needed to get done there. But I think the next time I do something like that, it's going to be a different story. Cause right now I'm putting posts up every day. I'm back to doing that. I just started that 4-5 months ago from some good advice I got from Luke Justin Roberts, actually, who talked me up a little bit on it. So I'm starting to see traction from posting those standup clips on a regular basis. That whole thing will go into that test marketing for new songs too.

Michael: Very cool. Yeah, it's probably something that we'll end up working together on then the first access playground, but one thing that we've been developing is a native integration within StreetTeam to launch virtual tour hacking campaigns. Any kind of campaign really. I imagine it being a moments publisher even if you don't put any paid traffic behind it, if you just had a moment publisher that integrated where you could sync up your TikTalk and YouTube shorts, Facebook, Instagram reels, and you created a moment per day and you created a caption for it, you click “go”, and then there's a linked messenger system response system with it, so if you say, respond with the word blank in the comment and I'll send you X gift for free, and then each post you could choose $1 or $2 to boost it. Man, I can imagine that being a really powerful…

Phil: Quite an engine. Yeah.

Michael: How about we open up the floor for some audience participation?

Phil: Let's do it.

Michael: So I'm looking here in the chat and if you guys have any questions that you'd like to connect with, feel free to put them in the chat or to actually raise your hand if you want to come here on the show live, if you're in our modern musician community right now. Looking at Narayan and Janet: it's true for music too! Some things that used to work don't necessarily work as well anymore. Doing R Kelly, for instance. It's a bummer. It's a bummer, but it's so true. We actually used to do an ignition remix as a cover for our band.

Phil: Really?

Michael: Yeah, we had to be like: yeah, probably shouldn't do that one. You kinda want to separate the music from the person, but it's not always the case.

Phil: I was never an R. Kelly fan. When I read his lyrics, I'm like: these are funnier than anything I could come up with. And they are unintentionally funny.

Michael: I believe I can fly. You didn't like that song?

Phil: I believe I can fly. No, that's legit. But a lot of his dirtier songs and things. I’m like: these are hilarious! And I know he didn't mean them to be hilarious, but they actually are.

Michael: I can't recall. Aside from the ignition remix which was honestly, that was never one of my favorite covers, but it got a great crowd response.

Phil: I’m sure.

Michael: That was nice. But I believe I can fly, man. I love that song. That is a great hit you right in the heart like. And now it’s like: man, you're like peeing on people and stuff?

Phil: [laughs hysterically] It does put a whole different visual on: I believe I can fly.

Michael: What's happening when you're flying above???

Phil: That's a part of the thing. I say that the comedy is a science where you can manipulate the words to make people make a dumb sound out of their mouth, which is really all it comes down to. And there's a science to making music that does that as well. So last year, I put out my song, Kitties and Boobs, and I was like: I want to use every parlor trick in the book. That would just make an audience bounce up and down. And so I dug into the big EDM hits and things like that. And that was, again, I don't even listen to that kind of music, but I was pulling things from this type of thing that I don't usually do. And I just put in the full step key change in the last chorus and the long drawn out snare rolls that drop into the next chorus and things like that. And I just pulled every trick I could. I know all the tricks are in there, and that song still makes me bounce up and down, right? So there's something that's just built in up here that we've gotten so used to over the hundreds of years of music that we have, that even when you know, the tricks are there, it still makes your heart swell; still makes you dance; or still makes you bounce up and down. And that's where I think the real science part of music comes in. So when I hear a song like I believe I can fly I can see all the nuts and bolts behind that and go: Oh, of course. Yeah. That's going to be a tear jerker/heart wrenching kind of song. But at the same time, you're just like: Oh, man, that's a really good song.

Michael: Totally. Yeah. I think probably most of us have seen the…. What is it? The Axis of Awesome video they did on YouTube. Where basically they play the 4 chords that we all love and know by heart.

Phil: The comment section on that video just kills me, because it's just people going: there's no creativity left in the world, man. Come on. Bach used that chord progression, okay? It's been around for 400 years. Just relax.

Michael: Yeah. I know that really interesting court case with Ed Sheeran and that whole thing. Chord progressions in particular are just one of those things where so many of them are reused, and it just seemed like sometimes there are like trends where a certain chord progression just has its time and like every song is using the same chord progression now. What comes to mind is Closer, the Chainsmokers and Halsey song. There's a, [humming] the buildup and then down again. Yeah. And it seemed like for a little while, like that was the new 4 chords where it was just like that chord progression over and over again.

Phil: Yep.

Michael: And like you were just describing, it's even if we know, okay, it's these 4 chords again. Here we go, again.

Phil: Yeah. There's a familiarity to it. It's that same idea as when I do a joke where the punchline is what the audience was thinking, there's that different kind of release where they're like, it's a comfort zone and they go: Oh yeah. Okay. All right. I know what this is. All right, cool. So yeah, it's that kind of thing. But with my guitar students, I go: look, here's five chord progressions. That's 80% of what you're going to play in the world. And they go out and find songs. They're like: you're right. It's those five chord progressions.

Michael: Yeah. It's so helpful. It's a great place to start out just like learning a few chord progressions. You can play pretty much everything.

Phil: Yep.

Michael: So more questions that are coming in here. I see Narayan and Janet asked Phil: do you do your own booking?

Phil: I do. I'd rather not. It's my least favorite part of this business is hustling for gigs. That's what I do on Tuesdays. And I hate doing bookings. It's kinda different in the comedy world than it is in the music world, but not entirely. It's still about who you know, in referrals. The one thing that's different is that in music, it's very easy to find the contact information for the club booker. In comedy, for some reason, it's hidden mysteries of who actually books a place. Cause you can go get the Indie Bible or something like that for music, which is fantastic, and then for comedians, we have to find somebody we know who's playing there and go: hey, who books that place? Alright, it's this guy, but don't share his contact information. So there's a little bit of that ridiculousness in comedy booking. It, most of the time, feels like screaming into a tornado and hoping to hear something back. I'm actually getting ready to hire an assistant to help me with that part of it because it really is my least favorite part of the job. But I don't have a booking agent and I don't have the credits and the juice to interest a booking agent just yet. Plus a lot of clubs don't like to deal with booking agents anyway. In the little bits of booking that I've done from the other side of booking acts for a show, agents are a pain in the ass most of the time, and so most of the clubs would rather deal with the artists themselves. And so that's where we're stuck. As you get to different levels,... Dave Nihill, if you've ever seen Dave Nihill he's a friend of mine and he booked nationwide theater tours by himself. It was a stupid amount of work. And just for this tour that he's going on next year, he finally got himself a booking agent. Yeah, I do it all myself and it's a drag. So I'm going to hire an assistant.

Michael: It sounds like a great idea. Yeah. And in particular, hiring people to do things that you're already doing a bunch that you know inside out, and you know you don't enjoy to take up time, it's a great thing to bring someone in for.

Phil: Yeah.

Michael: And one idea that came up and I think this is relevant for all of us is, when it comes to hiring people in an assistant role or something like someone who's doing something like that, I couldn't recommend more highly to send out an email to your existing audience/to your list and say: I'm looking for someone who is interested in collaborating and becoming a part of the team. In an ideal world, if you're able to find some alignment between… let's say that you have a diamond offer, you have a higher ticket offer for $3,000 or $5,000. If you can actually find someone who wants that enough, and they love what you do and they want to be a part of it and they're a great fit for the community and the culture, then a lot of times you can find some good alignment for a trade of service. That can be a really powerful way to get some of those first initial key team members. It can be challenging sometimes to find someone who has the right alignment and has the right community fit, but if they're in your community already, they love your music, they know who you are and they're one of your biggest fans, then it's an amazing resource to tap into.

Phil: Nice! I like that idea. I like that a lot. Cause I was just going to go to Upwork. [both laughing]

Michael: Yeah. Man let's sync up on our next playground session, or in between. I'm happy to share. That's how we've hired most of our team members. Our top team leaders; A+; 10/10 people has been generally through an email that we send out to our list. There's a lot of alignment. So I'm happy to share that with you. And if anyone else here is interested in that email, it'd be probably a great template to have for all of us to be able to send out to our people.

Phil: Cool. Yeah. We'll talk more about that for sure.

Michael: Hey, Phil there's 1 final request that came in and of course this came in. I would love to hear a joke as well. A couple of people are asking: can you share one of your jokes, Phil?

Phil: It's so funny because when I'm not on stage, I barely even remember what my material is. One of the things I used to do before I'd gone, as I would try and run my material backstage. That was a disaster. So now when I'm not on stage, I don't think about my material at all unless I'm rehearsing. But let me think of like joke.

Michael: Yeah it’s gotta be a good joke for musicians.

Phil: For musicians. I don't know.

Michael: It doesn't have to be. If you have one. 

Phil: I had to lose a few pounds because somebody called me, ma'am, while I was facing them. [Michael laughs] And so my girlfriend and I started biking together. And when she rides a bike, she looks like she's exercising. I look like I don't own a car. Somehow she's losing weight and I'm losing respect. I don't know how that works. People are driving by me: raise the minimum wage! I'm like: not on my way to work, man. Got a better job than that. Doing all right for myself. So that's the bike joke, which you can probably find on YouTube. 

Michael: [plays multiple SoundFx) I feel like I could have played both of those at the same time. Phil, man, thanks so much for coming on your live. This has been a really fun conversation. It's really cool to hear and hearing a little bit more about your story and how you got started. Having a similar mentor right at the beginning who was teaching tour hacking and stuff like that. It is like a cyclical kind of thing, isn't it?

Phil: For sure. That's why as soon as I saw what you were doing, I was like: Oh, I know this! This is what I've been looking for, was somebody to continue this idea. Tim was not technology oriented at all. And it was the 90’s and we didn't have everything that we have now. He was struggling to keep up with the technology part of it towards the end of what he was doing. And so when I saw what you were doing with the added technology part, I was like: yeah, this is what I'm looking for.

Michael: Awesome. Yeah, it's definitely all about those two things, right? So the bottom line is about connecting with your fans, right? It's about finding the right people who want to hear what you have to share and resonate with it and connecting with them. And it's about doing it in a way that creates freedom so that you're able to have more time to focus on being creative. And so it's a pretty cool subset that we're a part of. And I also just want to give a shout out to Phil. You've been a part of our mastermind for a while now. And we've been doing these first access playground sessions for a while now. And so, a lot of the new stuff/the new features and things that we're developing were things that we've really workshopped together and Phil's been a really important part of those meetings. Phil, I appreciate you. I appreciate your humor and what you're doing with your community. It's awesome. And thanks for being part of the podcast today.

Phil: Thank-you. Thanks for having me. 

Michael Walker: Yeeaahhhhh

Hey, it’s Michael here. I hope that you got a ton of value out of this episode. Make sure to check out the show notes to learn more about our guest today, and if you want to support the podcast then there’s a few ways to help us grow.

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