I first became aware of Drew Michael when I was a cocktail server at a comedy club in Chicago. Very quickly I realized when Michael took the stage, a couple of things were going to happen. One, he was going to talk about some dark and possibly uncomfortable things like incest. And two, people were definitely going to laugh at it. During my tenure at the club, he revealed himself as a quiet, thoughtful guy. This past week his sophomore album, Funny to Death, dropped, and his Comedy Central special, The Half Hour, aired. I spoke with Michael over the phone to reflect on his journey in comedy thus far.
How’s New York?
It’s fine. It’s a dirty, crowded shit hole that provides opportunity, somehow.
I feel like comedians always have a comedy moment where they’re like, “I can do this.” For me, I was visiting New York hanging out with stand-ups that I didn’t think were very funny. I was like, “I can be funnier than these guys.” Do you have something similar like that?
Oh, so you were the classic case of inspired by mediocrity?
Yes.
Yes. There’s obviously some of that.
I had a moment, it wasn’t a moment of, “Oh, I could do it,” but it was a moment of, “I want to do it.” I saw Bill Burr do a set at The Laugh Factory in LA in 2007, and he did a bit. It’s a classic bit of his about you’re driving on the street and you see people on the sidewalk and you think to yourself, move the steering wheel and you just knock over the people on the sidewalk. It was just this really dark, personal, crazy thought that he had that he took and turned into this four minute bit. The fact that I was like, “Okay, I have those same thoughts. I didn’t know that that could be comedy,” so I just expanded that and my nose for jokes and humor. I had this moment of, “I want to do that. That’s what I want to do.”
The other one is in eighth grade. I was in a non-musical rendition of The Wizard of Oz, and for whatever reason, I learned the script in and out. I memorized everyone’s lines. I knew everything about the script, and when you know something that well, you go into rehearsal, you’re able to improvise and add stuff. I remember I added six or seven different jokes in the script that I thought this would be funny. It wasn’t like, “Oh, I want to punch it up.” It was just like, “I think this would be kind of a fun thing to do,” and I didn’t tell the director. I talked to the other actors and we changed some of the stuff, and we did it that way. I remember getting laughs, and when I look back on that, that was the moment of, “Oh, I can perform and write and get laughs.”
That’s really funny that in eighth grade, you’re like, “We’re going to just redo this play.”
Yes. There was different random blocking switches and line changes that I just would add or modify or whatever else, and it ended up working. I remember thinking, “Oh, that’s kind of cool. I just thought of that, and it turned out people laughed at it.”
Why did you decide to leave for New York over, say, LA?
Well, after about five or six years in Chicago, I was like, “Okay, I’m done here.” I knew it was time to leave. I had done everything I wanted to do in Chicago, and it was one of three places. It was going to be New York, Los Angeles, or the woods. Quite literally, it was either take the next step with this stand-up career, or abandon it. You have no skills and nothing you can add to society and nothing that you even really want to add to society, so the woods was a very viable option. I don’t say that in jest.
I went to both New York and LA the summer before I moved, and when I was in each place, it was like, “Oh, I’m going to move here,” because when you go visit somewhere, everyone pays attention to you, you do all the shows, you hang out with all the people. Ultimately, I picked New York I think strictly because my interest three years ago and still is for the most part was stand-up. New York really is the only place you can get up consistently in the city every day multiple times a day, that kind of thing.
I just know how I am. I know I don’t handle not doing shows well. I knew it would be an adjustment either way when I first got there, but New York took about a year, and then I was doing some spots. I was doing more spots, and that’s just gone up slowly over time. I was able to get on TV in New York, so I felt like I was going to be able to do everything I wanted to do out here. Now, three years later, four years later, five years later, maybe I’ll reassess. Things change and stuff like that, but that was the thinking back then.
You have the Comedy Central special. You just dropped an album. You’re getting a lot of recognition. How does it feel to see the work, the grind that you’re putting in, come through?
It’s interesting, because it’s an ongoing process. I don’t ever look at one moment as validating the entire thing. It’s like when you’re swimming, you come up for air, but then as soon as you get enough air, you put your head right back down and you keep going. That’s kind of how I feel with this.
My friends and family have all been immensely supportive to where I don’t look at it really as something I did. It was something I was able to do with these other people and with the people who have supported and come to shows and little things, messaged me on Facebook or e-mailed me and Tweeted me, just stuff like that, just say, “Hey, keep going. Good job.” That stuff matters. Obviously, you can’t tune it in completely, but all that stuff, you reflect on all of that, and you just take it all in. Once you do, it’s like, “All right, well, on to the next thing.”
What’s your long-term goal? Do you want to eventually do something like TV, or do you want to stay on the road?
I have a couple things that I’m working on right now that are not straight stand-up, that are either stand-up fusions or things that are more television-geared, but then there’s obviously the core, which is the stand-up.
In terms of going forward, I’ve already started writing the next hour. I’m about halfway through that. I have about a half an hour of material that still needs to be worked on, and I’m going to write the other half, and I want to go on tour with that. I’m planning on hitting the road with that material soon. That material will comprise a show that I will put on, a solo show, and that’s the idea. Once that’s done, that will become the next album special creation and whatnot.
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Drew Michael’s new album Funny to Death is grim. He tests the audience palpability pointing out that unlike his opener, his mother is still alive. How gloomy can a comic be if you can hear his mother laughing in the background, he begs. He nails down what depression is: seeing the world as it is. He argues that, “Happy people should be medicated.” Much of the album is Michael throwing out possible hypotheticals from Copernicus trying convince everyone about Earth’s revolutions around the sun to an appropriate use of a roofie which does not involve sex in anyway. It all very convincingly funny. He is able to sell it because of the vulnerability he creates for himself. He is open about his lack of relating to others, which in turn, makes him relatable.
You can pick up your copy of Drew Michael Funny to Death from Comedy Central Records right here.
