Thanks to a lot of awesome help from Creaghead and Co., that’s about to change.

Starting February 7th, we’ll be cock-rocking the NPR crowd with the And I Am Not Lying live show at Union Hall on the first Tuesday of every month. Doors are at 8, show’s at 8:30 and tickets ain’t but ten tiny dollars for the finest comedy, storytelling, burlesque sideshow you’re going to get anywhere.

Be honest with yourself: stuff like this is part of the reason you moved here. It’s worth a headache at work on Wednesday.

You can buy tickets here if you’re into that already.

We pulled together this cool trailer about it, too. It may be NSFW, depending on your job:

I wanted to start this show for a very, very good reason. I’m doing this thing so that I don’t go completely numb, and I’m trying to bring as many people back to life as I can right along with us.

I spend a lot of time hunched over a glowing rectangle starting and mediating petty squabbles about nothing, breathing shallowly through my mouth and reading tweets about television. I’ve been doing it for years. When I’m not getting paid to do it I sit around my apartment in my underpants and do it for free, apparently.

Everyone does.

Sometimes I think we’re all using computers to row this numbing boat towards a black wall of depressing distraction. I want to do my part to get as many people into one room and feeling something great together for a little while. And maybe if we get together often enough and pool our collective energies into something funny and weird, we can live a little outside of our bottomless pockets filled with lotus petals.

The entire purpose of life is to get as excited as possible. I’m so, so excited to have a reason to hose the town down with excitement once a month. So it’s like a Mobius strip of recursive excitement for me.

Sometimes storytelling shows can get a little sweater-vesty, comedy shows can be too bitter and detached, and burlesque too much, all in a go. This way we can cross-pollinate the best of the best and no matter what, if you’re not into what you’re seeing you can see something else really soon.

I want this thing to be a rock show without instruments, to just cram an entire aircraft carrier’s worth of fun into the basement of Union Hall. So far, we’ve been doing pretty okay on that front, I think.

D.Billy and I collaborated on this cool poster (I think it’s cool, anyway) to announce the residency:

You’ll note that the show on February 7th features:

Comedy from Ophira Eisenberg
Burlesque by The World Famous *BOB*
Nerdcore Rap by Schaffer the Darklord

in addition to burlesque from Cyndi Freeman
and storytelling by Brad Lawrence, Cyndi Freeman and Jeff Simmermon (me.)
**UPDATE**
We have just added bullwhip and lasso artist Chris McDaniel to the show!

Brad and I will co-host as always, and tickets are ten bucks — again, you can get them here.

I hand-inked the type with brayers rather than inking the press rollers, so I could print two colors simultaneously and easily change colors later. After some trial and error with ink amounts and pressure, I pulled the first decent test print:

And a while later, I had a small edition of posters in four different color schemes:

It was a really fun exercise. For those of you unfamiliar with the process of letterpress printing, check out the sweet little video below. And if you’re near Brooklyn, be sure to check out The Arm for letterpress classes, or to book press time if you already have letterpress experience and just want to make some things.

Now, aside from being a spectacularly talented musician, Joe is also one of my favorite human beings on the planet. In 1998, before we actually knew any-damn-thing about one another, Joe dragged me up onstage with him at the Old Main Inn in Fredonia NY, and asked — nay, told — me to play drums on a song of his that I had heard maybe once before. It somehow worked out not-too-terribly, and I’ve the honor of playing with him off and on for the past thirteen years. Nine times out of ten, one of us has just gotten into the town where the other one lives, and we have ZERO rehearsal time. And just like at the Old Main, it kinda works anyway. If nothing else, I have more fun playing with Joe than doing just about anything else. I would be super stoked to see Problematical Animals on many of your playlists in a couple of months, and trust me, you’ll be glad it’s there too.


As promised at the top of this post, here are some tracks and performance videos of Joe in action, to give you a kind of cross-section of his ouevre. Enjoy, and please help support this guy!

Link: HELP FUND & PREORDER PROBLEMATICAL ANIMALS ON KICKSTARTER.

But we’re roaring back with a rescheduled show next week on wednesday, October 5th. Here’s an updated poster, show info after the jump …

The show’s at Union Hall on Wednesday, October 5th. Doors are at 7:30 PM, show starts at 8, tickets are $10. You can get advance tickets here.

Performers are:

Storytelling by Jeff Simmermon, Cyndi Freeman, Brad Lawrence
Standup comedy by Jeffrey Joseph
Sword-swallowing and sideshow stunts by Adam, the First Real Man
Burlesque by Cyndi Freeman and Runaround Sue

Hoope you guys can make it this time …

Share it far and wide if you like …

Just to re-cap, the show is:

And I Am Not Lying
Sunday, August 28th
at Union Hall (702 Union St, Brooklyn)
doors at 7:30, show at 8
$10 at the door

Featuring

Brad Lawrence
Cyndi Freeman
Adam, The First Real Man
Mat Fraser and Julie Atlas Muz
Jeff Simmermon
Jeffrey Joseph

I would have mentioned this earlier, but I’ve been crippled with a bog monster infestation – a whole bunch of them set up shop in my sinus cavities and have been using my lungs as a fricking waterslide. I coughed so hard the other night that I think I gave myself a small hernia.

That’s got nothing to do with what I’m talking about here, though.

What I’m here to talk about is that we had us a show a few weeks back, and it went really well! I had a ton of fun, despite some really frustrating technical difficulties in the beginning.

The Kraine Theater is this dank, crumbling space in the East Village, the sort of place that feels like it’s haunted by a bunch of old men in long raincoats. It made a certain kind of sonic sense to hear someone kick over a beer bottle during the show, and when an old lady showed up in a sun hat with a Mike-Tyson face tattoo drawn on with eye liner, I wasn’t even surprised. OF COURSE we had one of those. It was that kind of show.

Don’t get me wrong, though. I still wanted to kick the wrinkles out of that old bat when she started heckling the comedian. I like weirdos in the audience and all, but I really prefer when they stay quiet.

Still, I had a ton of fun, and I’m pretty sure the crowd did, too.

I talked to the theater director about the show today, and I think we are going to start doing this quarterly.

One thing I know, though: we’re bringing this show up to Albany, NY in mid-August. We’ll be performing in Saint Joe’s Church, what appears to be this amazing crumbling cathedral in downtown Albany. I’d love to make a little tour out of it, maybe play in Boston, Providence, BUffalo, what have you. If any of you book shows in bars, clubs or theaters in that area and want some storytellers and burlesque people to come up, do please let me know.

And if you happened to be in the audience on Sunday, thank you so, so much for coming. It was a jam, for real.

Our good friend and fellow storyteller Tracy Rowland just made us a magnificent trailer for Sunday’s show, and I’d be remiss in my mission to promote awesomeness on the Internet if I didn’t share it here. There is some mild language, almost- nudity. Which is maybe a selling point:

The music is by Richmond, VA sweatrock legends RPG, permission given by Matt Conner. Show info after the jump:

We’re putting on another variety show on Sunday, April 17th at the Kraine Theater – for a measly $8 you get:

Storytelling by

Brad Lawrence
Cyndi Freeman
Jeff Simmermon

Burlesque by Apathy Angel and Cyndi Freeman

Comedy by Matt McCarthy

Puppetry by Z.Briggs

Belly Dancing by Madame X

Here’s a poster/flyer – hope we see you there.