Callaroga Shark Media. Hello, I'm Johnny Mack with your daily comedy news.
My guest today is Emily Catalano. Her debut album is out That is called
Hey, and we'll find out why it's called that. That outum out on
Blonde Medicine. You can also get it in limited edition vinyl with a gorgeous
mets finish. Here's my conversation with Emily. Is it weird to put everything
down as a recording by letting that material behind it? Is it's a strange
feeling because you're saying goodbye to it, but it also feels really good to
get rid of it at the same time, interesting phrasing and getting rid of
it or you just you've been doing it for a long time, so it's
like sometimes it's nice to go back to it, but like at the same
time, like you don't like the part of what's fun about comedy is like
the brand new stuff and like growing out of the comedian, So going back
to the old stuff like a little bit of a crutch. So it does
feel good to be like, okay, and now I'm onto the new chapter.
Did you approach it from the standpoint of okay? That hour is done,
I'm putting it to bed. Or have you been trying out five ten
minute chunks along the way so you have a new set. Yeah, I'm
figuring it out along the way. I'm not really sure because a lot of
this stuff from the album I've already posted as clips on Instagram or TikTok or
whatever, So a lot of it was like I stopped doing anyways. But
then there was like a new chunk that like I saved for the album that
then I recorded as like a video after that, and now I'm feel like
I'm done with that and now I'm like starting fresh. I've been talking to
a lot of comics who the topic of crowd work keeps coming up, and
because of the need to feed the beast, do you find yourself doing I
don't mean this is a dig, but CrowdWork for crowdwork's sake, just so
you have something to feed TikTok or whatnot a little bit. I've always really
enjoyed crowd work before even that was a thing I found TikTok just I think
it makes a live experience a little bit better for the people there. But
I try not to rely on it, like I'll do my material, and
then I'll do a little chunk of crowd work just to make the people who
like came to the show feel special, And sometimes that turns into something really
funny. But I'm like, yeah, why wouldn't I post this? This
is really funny? Yeah, good, crowd work is great. It's I
think I struggle with the set up crowd work. I'm gonna just be like,
your hat is stupid, just so you can slam me, because you
know how you have. There's so many fake clips now and maybe I'm too
close to it that I can just tell yeah, no, I get it.
Like it's really tough when it when people post something that's it doesn't go
anywhere. But I'm like really particular about what I post, Like I have
to be really happy with it if I'm posting it. So I hope that
people who follow me understand this is gonna be worth your time, This is
gonna be worth your thirty seconds. It's gonna go somewhere. Are you post
everything yourself? Is there a secret media team of eighty five people? No,
just I have a background in editing, so I'm like, yeah,
I don't really trust that many people that do it for me. No,
I hear you on that talk to me about editing. Oh, it's just
I was just always interested in like filmmaking, and so, like I think
in high school, I just started like making little like sketches or whatever.
And I actually taught myself how to edit before I had a computer or anything.
So I just had like my dad's camcorder and a VCR player, and
I would like edit that way like I would record onto VHS tape, So
just bringing it down a generation basically, that's the hard way. I'm antioned.
I learned how a razor blade back me. Wow, yeah, I
would have loved that, but I didn't have It was fun. You have
razor blade a grease pencil, and then you got quick enough that you didn't
need the grease pencil anymore. You kind of had muscle memory with your thumb
on where you grab the tape. You make a slice, let's go for
it. But you had to keep track of all the little pieces of tape.
You'd take out a chunk and put the tape around your neck so in
case the edit was poor and you could put the tape back in and if
you lost the piece you had taken out. Once these computers came in.
These kids today, You guys have no idea what it was like back in
the day. I know it was fun, though I would have loved to
try the film stuff, but yeah, I had was a VHS on the
crowd work. Are you finding people coming trying to be annoying participants in your
show, like I'm gonna go and I'll say something funny, so Emily could
be even more funny. I haven't gotten a lot of that. I've gotten
more like people are scared, like they don't want to be the butt of
the joke, so they if I'm just trying to be nice or just trying
to have a conversation, people will be like, I'm not talking to you,
and that's really annoying. That's more annoying than someone like trying to get
a good clip. I've heard audiences are increasingly filling up from the back and
not taking the thrush. Oh yeah, yeah, it's tough. Are you
in LA today? I am? How's the scene out there? I'm a
little rough. I don't think I've I know, I haven't done a comedy
show in LA since the pandemic. How's the scene? What are the good
rooms? The good rooms? It took a while to come back from the
pandemic. Everything just came back really slowly. So independent shows got wiped out
and they're like slowly starting to come back, but all the clubs seem to
be back. Like anytime you do a club show, that's good. I've
been lucky enough to be able to do shows at Largo, which I don't
know if you've ever been there, but yeah, definitely, every show I've
done there has been great, So it's yeah, it's good. I don't
know. Did you find for yourself doing some research, you had a conan
appearance and then the pesky pandemic came along. Did you feel like kind of
put things on pause or we're all in this together, so everybody was on
pause. What's the difference or did you feel like that hit your momentum a
little bit? Oh yeah, I think it definitely took a hit. But
I think it came at a time where maybe I was like a little burnt
out where I needed a break anyways, so it was like a good reminder
that, oh I should rest, I shouldn't be out every night. I
don't know, just I should take some time just to be by myself and
write. So I think that's what it did for me, and now I
just I love being home and I love writing. It like really got me
into that groove. I think the entire world liked, you know, in
a weird way. The six months off of we just all got sick a
stake from watched Netflix. Right, it was just as much as it was
horrible, it was cool. Everyone admits four years later it was great.
I was really excited about it, actually, like it was scary, but
I was also like, oh, I'm so glad that everybody is just stopping.
I don't have to keep up with anybody. Did you resort to zoom
shows? I did. Yeah. I lived with a couple of other comics,
so we did a monthly or weekly zoom show together, which was fun
because we were all in the same room, or the three of us were.
And then we got pretty good following every week, and it was just
something to keep our minds occupied and still writing jokes and interacting with people.
Some weeks were like really rough and really, why are we doing this?
That was terrible, But then some weeks it was really fun, and we'd
do this thing where people could bend mels and we'd take a shot if we
were like during our set, someone ben mode and then they said this is
for Emily or whatever. Then someone would hand me a shot and we just
started doing water by the end because they were like, we can't do this
anymore. This was a give makes, but we need some great money doing
that. As a civilian, I enjoyed the zoomshells. They were product their
time, and I understand why people don't want to do them, but they
were pretty cool. Out here. There was a guy he had a restaurant
and he started doing cooking classes. So I remember every Thursday at four o'clock,
you would throw him a hundred bucks, go to shop where I'd pick
up a box, come home, and he would do a live cooking class.
But the food was credible. And then it all of a sudden stopped
when the world came back and I was like, oh I liked the cooking
class. Yeah, stuff was fun. I know. Yeah, there's definitely
some good moments, and I think people really appreciated it, which that helped
a lot. When people were like, this is I look forward to this
every week, I'm like, Okay, at least somebody is enjoying it and
we're not doing it for nobody. But yeah, it was tough. When
you do comedy in front of a live audience, there's no other feeling in
the world, and so to go from that to you don't hear anybody laughing,
and you sometimes can't even see their faces, like if they're smiling,
so you have no feedback whatsoever. So it's really tough to do Zoom shows
and so I'm glad I don't have to do them anymore. I hadn't really
thought of that, right, because you can't keep the crowd mics on because
then you'll have vidiots talking in your ears. Oh wow, we would keep
it on. But the way I guess Zoom works is like, if you're
talking, it's gonna mute. Everybody else have to like pause and hope that
someone laughs so there's not an awkward pause. But yeah, live comedy is
just a million times better. More with Emily after the break. I love
your style, I love your writing, A lot of misdirection in it.
Who are your influences? I started doing some research and I came across an
article that I'm convinced was written by AI. It just had a lot of
that AI phrasing. Are your influences? Amy? Schumer and Louis C.
K Oh Interesting, I've never seen that before. Yeah, never, Probably
when I started comedy, they were probably the most famous comedians at the time,
So definitely I definitely am influenced by other comedians. But yeah, I
would say more Sarah Silverman and like Nay Bargatzi is tak Nataro, like people
like that. I could see that in the style and the approach to writing
all great comics there. Your album is called Hey, which I love.
Is there a secret meaning behind Hey? Or is just Hey? That's how
I start every set. I just go up and say Hey. Then,
so it became like just a fun way to start my set, and for
some reason people laugh when I say Hey. I know, if people laugh
when I say Hey, it's going to be a good show. But if
nobody laughs, and I know, I got to put in a little bit
more work. Do you have a chunk that you know works when you pull
something up from later in the set, or go back to some greatest hits
type material just to win the room. Yeah, I have a catalog of
greatest hits, and sometimes those don't even work. So you're just kind of
like, all right, I just got to power through this. But yeah,
I definitely I'll just go back to stuff that I know works more than
other stuff. As somebody who programs comedy radio stations. I appreciate that you
named your tracks. Nate drives me nuts. He doesn't name his tracks.
They're all eight is twelve tracks tell a story like the guy went to the
bathroom. I wonder if he is mad, And it drives me nuts because
I'll be like, oh, I'm looking for a bit about I don't know
airports, and I have no idea what his material is unless I play it.
So thank you for labeling your cuts. How much did you work at
that or are they just things that were in your mind? Like this segment
is called this or did you sit there and go I'm going to name track
for this. No, I'll always bring like a list up with me because
I have a really bad memory, so i'll forget the order of my jokes.
So I kind of name sections of my material anyways. So it was
just oh yeah, divorced, married, baseball, like just the one word
things that just drogged my memory to let me know where I'm at. So
it's pretty easy to just be like, oh, this section is that,
But I do. I wanted every joke to be its own track, but
you can't really do that with I think for like radio or whatever, they
have to be like at least two minutes or something. I had to like
group a bunch of jokes together sometimes and then I just called it like whatever
the first joke was or something. Yeah, I'll tell you the secret behind
that. As a programmer, you had like a five minute clip, you
can play twelve of them in an hour. So if you start handing in
forty nine second clips, because they mess up my scheduling, So that four
or five minute thing from the radio person's perspective is the sweet spot, and
then you, as the artist wants the radio station to play it so you
get some of those sweet royalties. So it's my advice to all comedians if
your goal is to get streaming royalties, don't have a twenty five second play
yeah clip, go for five five minutes, just perfect. Yeah, that's
that's what the label told me. I was like, yeah, this is
the only plant I'm donas was to get the radio spins. When we started
back in two thousand and four, the artists or the comedians were like,
you're stealing our material, I hate you, and then the Royalty checks showed
up and I'll name names. I ran into Ron White and Nashville and boy
did he shake my funny how it flipped it. And then all of a
sudden every comedian was like, why are you not playing my album? Was
like, all right, six months ago you hated us. Yeah, but
yeah, Sirius has been like a game changer. I actually have hope that
we can make money as comedians. Yeah. Sure, it's great for awareness.
I know a lot of people who bought into it and would come up
and do guest spots and it definitely moved tickets for them. It's anything else,
it's awareness. Yeah. So your album is also out on vinyl.
Talk to me about that. I didn't know that was a thing, And
I don't mean that as a Weisenheimer. I know Chappelle would sometimes put things
out on vinyl that I cynically think was to make sure it qualified as an
album for the Grammys, that it was an actual album, not a Netflix
special. But you put this one out on vinyl, which is neat.
Yeah. I just like the idea of vinyl. I have a record player,
and it really like whenever I put an album on the player. I
really just sit there and listen to it. Where if I'm like just listening
on my phone or something, I'm like doing other things and not really paying
attention. But I like the idea of someone just sitting down and listening to
comedy because that's it feels maybe more like you're at the show in that way.
Also, I just love the vinyl artwork, and it's having a physical
piece of art in your home and like being able to display that or just
look at it sometimes and it just feels it feels more cool than just like
a digital thing. Yeah, everything old is new again. Vinyl is super
cool. It's like you said, Hey, here's my digital release. It's
we talk about this with the kids at the holidays. There's nothing to give
anyone anymore. Hey, in the day, even if it was just a
gift for gifts sake, I could give you a video game or a DVD
or an album. Now it's here's ten dollars, go on in Apple and
buy something. It's there's no there there anymore exactly. Yeah, just to
hold something is unique these days. So yeah, and then I can just
bring them and give them to people or sell them at shows. Just something
to have or sign even it's always good. Oh I didn't think that.
Yeah that's neat. Yeah i'd like posters I was doing, but I don't
know. Posters are cool, but not everybody wants a poster. But everybody
can stash away YL even if they don't have a fit record player. They're
cool to free. Yeah, they are cool. Are you touring right now?
Is on your website? I saw one date from memory. I think
it's in Seattle, and I just thought it was quirky that there's one date
on there and it's only in Seattle and why Seattle? And I just had
a million questions. Well, yeah, I'm planning a new tour starting in
September, but Seattle is the only one who's put up their tickets yet,
so that's why I just love it there. But yeah, I'll be going
out, but I'm just waiting for everybody to post the tickets before I start
promoting it. But this will be more like I'm gonna just try a bunch
new material tour and try to work on a new hour and I'll probably yeah,
do crowd work too, just just to have some fun. But I
won't be it won't be forced I think new material tours are cool. Kevin
Hart just did a little one a similar thing. A few years ago.
Weird Awl went out and it was like Deep Cuts, only if you want
to hear eat it, do not come. You're just going to be disappointed
the diehards. I love that kind of show that just is all right,
we're just having fun here tonight. Yeah. I like it too. It
makes me feel like I'm actually, like, yeah, working on my craft.
But I understand if a tourists is like coming to a comedy club or
a show and they don't really know who I am, they probably wouldn't care
about it, or maybe they wouldn't have a good time. But I think
for people who know me and know me from my clips and stuff, I
think that would be really cool for them to see the process, see behind
the scenes of like how I come up with my stuff. And different shows,
different venues, different days of the week, different timeslots, different expectations.
Tuesday night, you show up at ten forty five unannounced, a lot
different than your name being on the marque at a theater, right, yeah,
yeah, But I don't know. I think that if people are coming
to see me, it's my headlining show. They probably have listened to my
album or seen my reels and stuff. I don't know if they want to
see those again. So to me, I'm like to just like try new
things and work it out with them. But I don't know if other people
like that, or if I just liked how timely or topical do you like
to get You like to dive into particular current events, which I'm not going
to get into. You stay away from all that. I like to stay
away from it. I think we get enough of that and people, Yeah,
that's all the late night talk shows are, so it's going to be
done, all the topical stuff, so I focus on other things. I
do like to al write jokes. If I'm in a a new city,
I'll write jokes about that city or observations or whatever. But that's the only
really topical thing I'll do. So is that just walking around and taking it
in by osmosis or is that asking a local for a topical joke or yeah,
just walking around or even reading about the city before I go, because
I'm going into cities that I've never been in and I don't know anything about,
so it is I think interesting just to see my observations from one who's
never been there before, in the vibe of the city or the vibe of
the people that I've met. And that's why I do crowd work too,
because everybody is different in every city, so I got to get to know
what they're all about. What do you do when you're not doing comedy?
What do your other things? I love movies, like I'll just go watch
movies below. Just being outside, like I love camping and rock climbing and
just hanging out with family. I don't know, I'm pretty boring, just
boring, that's awesome. I tried doing indoor and I discovered I have this
terrible fear of heights. I was like, I did it exactly once.
I'm hitting the rope and I'm like, did you, And all of a
sudden, I had that innate response, Oh my god, I'm forty feet
up, bah get me out of here. I never knew I had this
fear. It is. It's scary, even like when you're used to it,
the heights are still scary because it's a if something goes wrong, it's
over. But I think that's why it's exciting too. It's like that adrenaline
rush I guess it's similar to comedy that makes your heart beat a little bit
faster. So how does one do it? Do you need an organized crew?
I assume you need at least a buddy, right, you're not going
out there yourself and climbing or Yeah, you have buddies. Climbing buddies,
they're pretty easy to find. It got like really popular, so now the
gyms are like way too crowded in LA especially. Do you have any other
projects coming up that we should know about other than the album? After the
album, I filmed a special which has some of the chunks from the album,
but a lot of new stuff too. I'm editing that now with the
director and I'm not sure when it'll be out, but that's something that's coming
up. And I'm filming another I don't tell taping next week, so that'll
be coming out too at some point. So I have, yeah, a
lot of content coming out which hopefully people like. I'm scrolling through my notes
here and one thing that cracked me up when I was doing the prep.
I don't know how often you google yourself or not. Are you familiar with
this other Emily in Pittsburgh that reviews food? Yeah, actually, I'm working
on a joke about that. See, I was going to commentate with you
could wreck her life if you wanted to, just by posting videos. But
oh that's hilarious, right, I won't. I don't want to ruin your
joke. I feel like she probably has heard of me, but I don't
know because I get a lot of messages from There are a lot of Emily
Catalanos out there, so I'll get message of the dms like hey, nice
name or something like that. But yeah, she's the one who I'm the
most familiar with it because I set up like a Google alert for my name.
Sure, and it's only her. I don't get any press. It's
always her. So that's what I'm start doing a killer ten minutes about it's
her. I'm sure even ben to pitt alert. But I would like to
get a great city and then I'll invite her. She can fantastic me two
her favorite food spots. Thank you for your time today, best of luck
with the album, and looking forward to the upcoming special. Oh yeah,
thanks. If you would like this program commercial free. In the show notes,
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