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    Comedy Preview: Steve Byrne

    Like any two responsible people from hockey towns should, Steve Byrne and I spent about a third of our interview yesterday talking shop. Unlike me, Byrne has been able to back up his adoration for his Pittsburgh Penguins’ game by actually playing it.

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    “I still skate, actually. I play with Bill Burr and I get a bunch of comedians here together in L.A. every now and then. We rent an ice rink out for, you know, an hour, hour-and-a-half – no more than that because we’re all a little older now so we don’t have the stamina we once did. But, yeah, I love ice hockey – I love that it’s taking off in Columbus and the Blue Jackets are finally kind of turning it around. It’s just kind of turning into a nice little rivalry for the Penguins.”

    Given my nation of origin, I am embarrassingly devoid of any kind of skating ability; the closest I’ve ever come to approaching NHL greatness was when I met former Winnipeg Jets captain Dale Hawerchuk outside a Kmart when I was seven. Byrne’s luck in rubbing elbows with hockey royalty has been little bit better. “It’s funny, Bill Burr and I both did a show for Mario Lemieux – I think two years in a row we did it. We went to his Fantasy Camp and got to skate with him, so, you know, that’s the great thing about this occupation is you’ll never know where it’ll take you. I mean, I’ve been to Iraq and to China, and I’ve been to Japan. And it’s all just from stand-up. I’ve been on television. It’s also opened doors for me to meet my childhood hero and get to play defense and watch him come down one-on-one, which was scary – and then it was fun to go on the other side and have a two-on-one with Mario Lemieux. And it’s like ‘you have the puck. What are you gonna do?’ You’re gonna pass to Mario Lemieux! You’re not gonna keep it and shoot it! That’s one of the great things, you know, among a plethora of other bonuses about this job. Getting to meet Mario Lemieux and getting to skate with him and perform for him – it was just an honor.”

    Although Byrne has firm Steel City roots, he speaks warmly of Ohio given he’s an alumnus of Kent State University.”Well, you know, I grew up in Pittsburgh and my grades were so bad that I had to go out of state to go to school (laughs). That’s not a knock on Kent, but probably a knock on my intelligence. But, yeah, I have lifelong friends that I met at Kent and as much as I would like to think that the education came first – it’s more the friendships and the experiences I had. I had a great time – it was a lot of fun.”

    Byrne is an industrious, prolific stand-up who earned his stripes as a working comic in New York City starting at age 23. In 2006, he would land his first half-hour special on Comedy Central. Before long, Byrne was a regular fixture on an impressive list of cable and network TV shows – and would eventually appear nine times as a featured comedian on The Tonight Show With Jay Leno. He soon ventured into writing with partner Rob Long (previously a screenwriter and executive producer for Cheers), which developed into Sullivan & Son – a sitcom concept they brought to TBS. It was picked up as a pilot by the network in 2011 and then as a 10-episode first run, which premiered in the summer of 2012. Enduring for three seasons, Sullivan & Son featured Byrne as its central character (also named Steve), set in a loose interpretation of his actual Irish-Korean family life in Pittsburgh.

    Byrne’s third and most recent one-hour comedy special, Champion, is currently streaming on Netflix. His set is brisk and unapologetic, and his agile physicality and sharp timing are a strong testament to the two decades Byrne has spent in front of audiences. It’s fun to watch someone truly in their element.

    As preparation for our conversation, I watched Champion the other night. You have a new special in the works as we speak, correct?

    “I have a new one coming out in April…April-May, I believe? I’m going to announce the platform quite soon. And yeah, I finally got back on track with writing new material, so Columbus will be a mix of the special that hasn’t come out yet – which is still new, I guess, to most people – and then a good chunk of new material. And then also, Trump is the gift that keeps giving, so there’s plenty to say on that front. And, you know, I will also preface that by saying I’m not somebody who’s left or right – especially coming out of Hollywood, I’m very independent. I think that’s something that I’ve gotten some nice feedback on from people after the show, you know, that I’ll give it to one side as much as I give it to the other side. I’m not there to alienate anybody.”

    I can appreciate a balanced approach – that nobody’s “off limits” in that respect.

    “I think that’s what a comic should be. It seems like entertainment in general is skewing absolutely one way even harder than ever before. You know, when we as citizens sit here and say ‘why can’t Republicans and Democrats get along in the Senate or in Congress, or in government in general?’ And then you see the inauguration ball and it’s Hollywood and the music industry just boycott it. Well, that’s why. That’s why nobody’s getting along – it’s because we can’t do things for the betterment or the greater good of the country and strive toward understanding that we’re all in this together as opposed to taking it personally. As an entertainer, that kind of bums me out, from the inside looking out.”

    I was reading that you’ve done some recent touring with and you’re filming a documentary about The Amazing Johnathan, who’s had a lengthy career as a stand-up comedian and magician. I don’t know if his story is widely known by everyone, but I’m curious how that project took shape?

    “Yeah, I actually just wrapped up filming of the doc because he has this terminal heart condition, in which essentially half his heart is working and the other is dead. He was told two-and-a-half years ago that he had a year to live. So he retired from comedy. And he seems to be hanging in there – so much so that he decided to perform again. And he’s literally risking life or death to appear in his shows. And, you know, for me the perspective is – after having toured with him this past week on the east coast – he’s got a job where he could go up there and die at any moment. And I think that should be the barometer for all of us in terms of, you know…is this the occupation that you’re really destined for or that you’re actually happy doing knowing it potentially could kill you? I mean, cops, firemen, anybody serving our military – I think there’s a passion serving that occupation because they know that ‘hey, at any moment everything could end.’ And there’s a real respect and honor, I think, in that for me after having watched Johnathan do this – and it kind of made me really think about my own occupation as well. So I don’t know – I really…just seeing him overcome such adversity. And he’s still got it. He’s got the timing. It’s just been an incredible privilege to capture that this past week. We’re going to get right into it and start editing it, and hopefully within the next year people will know about it.”

    I noticed your name is also attached to a film called Cupid’s Proxy that’s being released this year.

    “It’s a Hallmark film my friend directed – not my cup of tea, but he asked me to do it – I said ‘sure’ – and it was a great experience. It was a lot of fun and I got to work with Valerie Azlynn, my co-star from Sullivan & Son. Now I’m getting ready to go out and pitch my own television show – I wrote a feature that I’ve spent the last two years writing and we’re going to go out and pitch that soon. So there are a lot of irons in the fire along with stand-up, getting back – and hopefully within the next year, I’ll be able to film another hour.”

    I’m so glad you’re writing again in that capacity, because I really enjoyed watching Sullivan & Son. And I especially love it when stand-up comedians have their own TV shows because they bring this cavalcade of other stand-ups along with them – so the fact that you had people like Chris D’Elia and Billy Gardell on screen with you in guest spots was a lot of fun to watch.

    “For me it was always like, as a comic that’s getting to drive on the Warner Brothers lot every day, it’s like ‘we get to have a party and invite as many people as we can before the cops come.’ And that’s essentially how I looked at it because you can get cancelled at any moment. Getting Leslie Jones, (Frank) Caliendo, you know, all the guys you just mentioned. You want to try to get as many of your friends and people you respect on. So it was a total blast – there were a lot of comics on there that people don’t even know and that aren’t household names. There was a comic on there that is the valet at The Comedy Store. There’s a ton of younger comics that we got on that had their first experience on television.”

    Is there a big leap between doing live comedy and shooting a sitcom?

    “Sitcoms are live theater – and it’s kind of a disrespected art form right now because the ‘cool kids’ are all doing single-cams, you know? That’s where the awards go and everything else. And multi-cam is just this old-fashioned kind of dinosaur form of entertainment. But there’s a reason people still gravitate towards it – the reason people still have Friends on in the background, or all those classic sitcoms – because there’s a warmth to them where you’re actually hearing people really laugh…the ones that are done in front of a live studio audience. Ours was…and there was a lot of fun to it – often with single-cams, the directors, actors could look at each other and say ‘I think we got it!’ But with multi-cam, it’s like ‘we got it! They laughed!’ And you keep doing it until you get the laugh. So for me, at least in terms of talking about my experience especially in multi-cam, that’s really what I’ve gotten from it that supersedes anything else.”

    Steve Byrne will be in Columbus for a three-night engagement, Thursday, January 19 through Saturday, January 21, at The Columbus Funny Bone, 145 Easton Towne Center. Tickets range from $12-15 (plus taxes and fees) and can be purchased here. NOTE: both shows on Saturday, January 21 are presently SOLD OUT. Follow Steve on Twitter for news and future projects.

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    Grant Walters
    Grant Waltershttps://columbusunderground.com
    Grant is a freelance writer for Columbus Underground who primarily focuses on music and comedy. He's a Canadian transplant, born and raised in Winnipeg, Manitoba, and schooled in Vancouver, British Columbia. Grant is also the co-author of two internationally acclaimed books: "Decades: The Bee Gees in the 1960s" and "Decades: The Bee Gees in the 1970s." He has also penned numerous articles and artist interviews for the nationally recognized site, Albumism.
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