Moontower 2014

Moontower Comedy and Oddity Festival is just around the corner and this year's line up looks to be the best yet. I'll post my festival schedule in the next few days. For now, here's an interview I did last year:

A CONVERSATION WITH LUCAS MOLANDES

photo: Mindy Tucker

Austin-born, NYC-based comedian Lucas Molandes has the veritable King Midas touch except with tarnish, a wonderfully pitch-dark after-afterglowing palette of gallows humor, languor, and self-deprecation. Whether discussing drinking, drugs, stage moms, or slave wages, there’s no escaping the pull of Molandes’ worldview. Even the inspirational children’s story character The Little Engine That Could is imagined well after its moment of glory has faded into lurid squalor. However, Molandes is also an ardent proponent of carpe diem even if his motivation is seemingly the horror of the golden years. Where some see middle-aged men behaving badly as a mid-life crisis, he hails a “mid-life revival.”

Lucas Molandes, who won the 2010 Funniest Person in Austin contest, is an exceptional talent who has reassessed his approach to stand-up comedy and who traffics in a personal and conversational earnestness teeming with insight and sharp observations. Sourcing his life as an open book makes for a thrilling live experience and is evocative of Marc Maron, who has twice championed Molandes as a guest on his WTF podcast. Lucas Molandes is unquestionably funny but as you’ll learn, he isn’t satisfied with simply making laughs. Comedy Moontower recently sat down with Lucas at the Cap City Comedy Club in advance of his much-anticipated and highly recommended Moontower Comedy and Oddity Festival appearance.

Steve Birmingham: Can you tell me about your Catholic upbringing?

Lucas Molandes: At the time I don’t think it really registered that it was different. Because since then my parents haven’t gone to church in a long time and they were the ones who made us do the whole sit down and kneel and praying for an hour long and trying not to fall asleep and then going into church class, which I ended up getting kicked out of after eighth grade. I made a voodoo doll out of felt and I thought it was funny. And our teacher just had had enough of us. Yeah, so we got kicked out of church class and then my parents just stopped making me go to church. Just sort of gave up. I think they were like, “We tried.”

READ MORE: HERE>>>

Just an update

Rule number one as a traveling comic: try to avoid flying in on the day of your first show, especially if you have a layover. Sure you paid good money to get from A to B to C, but in the world of air-travel, good money sometimes buys you the worst possible luck. Waiting to start the second leg of my journey, I looked up and saw this. Cause for alarm?

JOKE$PLOITATION - 04/13 - 9:30/11:30 - THE VELVEETA ROOM

Add this event on Facebook: Joke$ploitation.

It's that time again., Austin Texas. I'm recording at The Velveeta Room this Saturday- 04/13/2013, two shows at 9:30 and 11:30. Admission is 10 dollars. If you can't make it out this weekend, no worries, I will be posting the recording for free here on the website after the Moontower Festival.

The recording will represent most of the material I've developed at the open mics around Austin over the last few months. That may not sound like the best advertisement for a show, warmed-over, open-mic comedy, but for those of you that have ever been to an open mic, you know that's where the craziest shit happens. Those are the shows I have the most fun at. No pressure. No obligation to do well. And because of that, I tend to do better than at any other show. I'm hoping that by giving this recording away, I can escape the pressure of making it good, which should - as a consequence - make it that much better. Or it could be a flaming pile of pinworm shit. Whatever it is, you won't have to pay to hear it.

If you can't make it out, help me spread the word for the show. I'll be there regardless. Add me on Facebook or Twitter for future updates.