Last Minute Plans: Wham City Comedy Tour At Hideout

By Staff in Arts & Entertainment on Apr 12, 2013 7:10PM

Ben O'Brien with Wham City Comedy

Baltimore's Wham City Comedy Tour has traversed the country several times over the last three years, hosting variety shows featuring music, standup, sketch, and videos from members of their long-running collective to the delight of critics and audiences alike. In advance of tonight's show at The Hideout, Chicagoist caught up with Ben O'Brien, a comedian, filmmaker, and managing director of the Wham City Comedy Tour to find out about the collective's history and get a few stories about life as a touring DIY comedy show.

Wham City Comedy performs Friday, April 12 at the Hideout. Doors open at 9 p.m. Tickets on sale now.

Chicagoist: For those who might not know, what is Wham City?

Ben O'Brien:Wham City is an art collective that started in Baltimore in 2005. It started off as a warehouse space and venue, and from there it became more of a collective, once the venue stopped, it had become more of a group of artists. There are people from every different kind of discipline engaged in all different sorts of events in Baltimore. We've done a lecture series, there was a big music festival called Whartscape for years… It started off from a small space with a few people and slowly blew up into a Baltimore collective.

C: What are the origins of the comedy tour?

O'B: We were always artists of many disciplines, and some of us started getting into comedy, mostly straight standup comedy. Once we started doing that regularly, we realized that while it might not be standup, many of our friends were doing these great, funny things as well. Some might have a hilarious play that they're working on, and these other people have funny songs that they play. We knew a lot of people doing interesting, weird, different stuff, so we thought "why not put it together all into one thing?"

We'd never done anything under the title of comedy as a group, so we took all the funniest stuff we've done over the years and put it together for a tour. That was our first tour, in 2010. This will be our third time going out with a larger cast of six or seven people, so since then we've had to create new material. We've become more of a group, where we actually come up with things specifically for the comedy tour, so there's a tighter aesthetic to the show.

What can someone expect when checking out a Wham City comedy show? Is there a common thread between the acts?

O'B: This year, we have a pretty strong through line. We have a visual aesthetic to all of our clothing, and each person represents a character version of themselves, where they each come out and do a monologue about themselves. Other than that we have skits, standup, videos, and other weird performances.

Everything is Terrible is one of the openers on your Chicago show. I feel like there's a shared aesthetic between the your group and theirs, do you two have a relationship?

O'B: I've known those guys since 2007, around the time they started. I do this video series called Showbeast and they were putting on a video festival and asked me to submit some Showbeast videos. From that, we'd meet up on tours, when we'd tour we'd see them, when they'd go out on tour, they'd see us. They're all awesome people, and now that we have a bond, they've opened up for us every time we've came through Chicago.

There's definitely an overlap in aesthetic, but I think what we share more is the energy of what we're doing. We're taking very seriously something… something that is not very economically viable [laughs]. We look at this as our art, at our core we're a group of artists. For us, it's like a lifestyle, putting all of our extra time and money into doing these performances and getting this kind of stuff out there. When we first met Everything is Terrible, we had crushes on each other’s projects, it was like "they're doing it, too!" They're more successful, so I get to look at them and realize you can do it.

Since your roots are in DIY and alternative venues, I'd imagine you've performed in some pretty unique situations. Have there been any stops on the Comedy Tour that stick out as especially memorable?

O'B: We were actually just reminiscing about this. We played a house show in Cleveland, it was a very small house, so we decided to set up in the backyard. It was in November, but there was a fire pit, and everything was set up beautifully; Christmas lights, red curtains, it was beautiful. Then, of course, right before we're supposed to go on, it starts raining. At the same time, everyone there all decided they could only stay for a few more minutes because it was one of their friends’ birthdays. We were totally beat out by this one girl's birthday that took all of Cleveland away from the show.

We ended up moving everything into the kitchen of the house, performing to people sitting in the living room. There were only five or six people left, and we're doing this sort of limited setup due to a lack of space, and then one of the people that was hosting us starts heckling because he got really drunk. It was a very intense experience. This was back when 4LOKO was still legal, so there was definitely too much of that going on. That's the show that sticks out in my mind. Other than that, we've been very lucky.