“The Godfather Of Punk Rock Stand-Up Comedy” and Author of Doing Time: Comedians Talk Stand-Up
Jawbone Press, www.jawbonepress.com
Q- J.T. “ Doing Time” is a rather strange title for a book about stand-up comics. It sounds like they’re in prison. What do you have to say about that?
A- There’s definitely a connotation there but there’s a vernacular among comedians where they say,’ Are you doing any time tonight?’ meaning are you going to get up onstage. Typically well-known headliners will drop in to a show just to either watch and say, ‘Oh, is he going to do any time?’ Famously when comics wrap up a set they’ll also say, ‘ That’s my time. Thanks for coming out’. I like the double entendre’ of doing time in terms of when you have comedic blood . In some ways it’s a life sentence. (laughs). And so I just kind of came upon the title. It was one of those rare instances where it hit me and I said that’s it! There wasn’t like let’s workshop other ideas. That just fits. So, that’s how it came about.
Q- Why are you known as “ The Godfather of Punk Rock Stand-Up Comedy”? What do you joke about in your routine?
A- ( Laughs). So, I actually when people ask me about that there’s always a degree of worry on their part that I’m going to tell jokes that they’re not necessarily going to get if they’re not well-versed in Punk Rock music or something like that where I’m going to tell Ramones jokes. It’s very much not that. I grew up as a teenager going to CBGB’s in New York and was really immersed in the DIY Punk scene and so it really informs how I started my career which was not playing non-traditional venues. I didn’t do comedy clubs for the first I’d say half a decade doing stand-up. So, it more harkens to that DIY spirit and having a degree of un-filtered like it or don’t attitude I guess. And so when I was doing stand-up early on I played a lot of music venues. I did a lot of Rock festivals. I toured with a lot of Rock bands like The Sword. I did shows with the Dwarves and the Riverboat Gamblers. People like that. I guess my resume’ so to speak was more immersed in the Comedian Rock’n’Roll world rather than a comedian of the standard work in comedy clubs and work your way up in that kind of ladder. To me the Punk Rock thing really just informs how I like the venues I like to play and how I’m going to forge my own kind of mortality. It’s a tag. I understand it can be a little head scratching for people initially. I’m pretty proud to have that for better or worse for being the Punk Rock comedy guy.
Q- It has to be hard for a guy like you to open for a Rock group isn’t it?
A- Yes, it can be very hard and I learned a long time ago through having those hard gigs that there are certain things that need to be in place for it to work. It needs to be advertised on the posters that I’m the comedy component so people arriving , most of ‘em having an idea that something might be happening even if they don’t know me personally. Typically I’ll have the lead singer or whoever the band is or the guitarist or somebody prominent from the band come out and introduce me because that gives a little bit of ‘Hey, this is someone we kind of vouch for and there’s an endorsement there where fans of the band will say, ‘Oh, if he’s there with his blessing it must be something at least worth listening to. ‘ And also makes people think it’s not some guy just talking. It erases the degree of confusion. Once that’s in place people are willing to put their beer down for a second and listen and give it a chance. If they don’t like it I understand. Some people are just there for music. But, I find they don’t get combative. If they’re not into it for any reason they just walk to the bar and get another beer. But, most of the time when people know what’s happening which is the biggest hurdle than I just have to do my job which is be funny and be relatable to that crowd. And the other thing is don’t overstay your welcome. When I’m on tour with a band usually the maximum amount of time is 20 minutes. So, those are just the things I learned from trial and error and doing it.
Q- How long did you spend with each of the comics in your book?
A- There was a big wide variety honestly because I interviewed over 60 comedians. I started the project at the end of 2021 and so there was still a degree of Covid happening. On some level that helped because people were off the road and at home and more available just due to scheduling. I would say on average for a headliner like Patton Oswalt or an Eddie Pepitone or Brian Posehn or Maria Bamford I actually would talk to them anywhere from 45 minutes to 2 hours. A lot of those when possible and safe at that time I tried to do in person when I could. Sometimes it wasn’t always possible. Marie Bamford I did on the phone, but folks like Eddie Pepitone and Todd Glass I was able to sit down and really have a heart to heart conversation with. I would say the shortest amount of time was maybe 30 minutes. Then you have people like Gregg Turkington whose character is Neil Hamburger. He’s a brilliant comic and now a good friend. At the time we didn’t know each other. We ended up talking for almost 3 hours on the phone.
Q- That’s a long time.
A- Yeah. I tried to just let the conversations lead themselves. It wasn’t like you had a publicist saying you have 12 quick minutes to fire off questions. It was really important for me to have a conversation and not just bullet points.
Q- I would say that in the early 1980’s there was an explosion of comedy clubs across America and that lasted for how long?
A- Everyone says comedy kind of died in the 90’s. (laughs). It hit a kind of natural progression. I always associate it with , maybe it’s because I’m a music guy with the rise and fall of Hair Metal where suddenly Nirvana came around and overnight bands like Slaughter and Great White were kind of obsolete. I think with the comedy rooms of the 80’s what happened was by like ’88, ’89 you had every sports bar doubling as a comedy club because there was so much popularity of it. People like Robin Williams, Richard Pryor and all the icons had made it such a popular thing. And also it was common place that late night tv was a star maker back then. Now, you can be on late night and no one will even know you because there are so many different outlets – Tik-Toc , the Internet and all those sorts of things. It was a bubble that burst. It was unsustainable for that level. The people that were in it back then, the die-hards are still around. You still see people like Jay Leno and Jerry Seinfeld that were very well-known that are still doing it. Neither of those guys need to do stand-up anymore financially but they are both very active in it because they have comedian blood. They need to do it. But, I think in some ways the cleansing of the 90’s, kind of making comedy not a cool thing anymore ‘cause it had jumped the shark really , separated the lifers from the hobbyists. It also spurned the form into a new way. I interviewed a lot of people from Kids In The Hall in the book. Folks like that. Just kind of left of center, weird, avant-garde kind of stuff that started to pop up. You had people like Patton Oswalt and Brian Posehn with the Comedians OF Comedy doing Rock clubs. You had people like Doug Stanhope who I’ve worked with quite a bit doing Rock’n’Roll clubs and by passing the club system, the comedy clubs. Kind of trailblazers. Once that came in I think it was really a poly-cleaner. I was alive in the 80’s but I wasn’t going to too many comedy shows. I was like 13, but I would argue that comedy today is more popular than maybe it was in the 80’s overall with podcasts and things like that. So, yeah, it was definitely something that rose and burst and then had to re-start from scratch. I think that re-start was ultimately a good thing. It kind of felt when lightning strikes a fire on a crowded forest and gets rid of all the brush and debris and everything is fresh.
Q- So, if you’re a kid who wants to be a stand-up comic today where would you get your start?
A- Boy, it’s such a different world man. When you say a kid, I mean the first time I saw George Carlin on t.v. I was like eleven and that was a life-changing moment. I still remember that vividly. I grew up in Upstate New York and we didn’t have cable tv.
Q- Where in Upstate New York?
A- I’m from New Paltz. Poughkeepsie area. Upstate New York is where I was born and bred. I’ve been in Austin, Texas for 20 years. But yeah I’m a native New Yorker. Having that growing up in the woods I would go on my Summer vacation and the hotel would have HBO and I remember seeing George Carlin ‘live’ specials at age eleven and it just completely altered my life. (laughs). It really blew me away. And so, to your question, in some ways it hasn’t changed. If you want to try stand-up you go to an open mic night, go to a comedy club and say ‘How do I start?’ A good thing that I think has happened now is that comedy because it is so widespread, there’s a lot of venues other than the traditional club circuit that you can start in. There’s a lot of coffee houses and cabarets. Alternative rooms I guess you could say that do cool shows that you can try and find your people. I’m not a Tik-Tok comedian. I’m kind of a traditionalist when it comes to stand-up in that I don’t do viral videos. I like the concept of one person with a microphone in front of an audience for better or worse. That’s what I enjoy and that’s what I pursue. But, I’ve certainly seen 20 year olds that are very adept at doing sketches , short form sketches on things like Instagram and Tik-Tok and they are suddenly finding an audience that way and having people show up en masse to their shows. It’s a totally different world in how you approach it and in a lot of ways it’s more accessible as opposed to when I started when you had to go to a club and show up and say, ‘How do I start?’ You had to really put yourself out there to some degree.
Q- There’s one comic in your book I happen to know just a little bit about. That comic is Bobcat Goldthwait.
A- Oh, yeah. Sure.
Q- Bobcat’s mother was my boss when I worked at the Sears Credit Central in Fayettville, New York.
A- Really.
Q- So, I got the lowdown on his career as it was starting to take shape.
A- Wow!
Q- Let’s see if I can dazzle you with some inside information.
A- Oh, I’d love to hear.
Q- Everyday his mother would give me updates on Bob’s career. One day she told me that Bob had called her the night before from Boston and was crying. He didn’t understand why he was getting the “breaks” when other stand-up comics around him had been playing the same clubs for 20 years and were getting nowhere.
A- Yeah.
Q- So, who looked at Bobcat and said “ This guy is funny!” Do you know the answer to that?
A-Well, I think Barry Crimmins was really influential with Bobcat early on. He got his name through a want ad placed in a paper from a comedy club in Boston looking for comedians which is a hilarious idea if you think about it now. How many lunatics would you get showing up? But, back then Bob and his buddy from high school ( Tom Kenny) showed up and the ad said ‘ Ask for Bearcat which I guess was a nickname Barry Crimmins had.. So, when they showed up his buddy Tom said ‘ Oh, it’s funny your name is Bearcat. I’m Tomcat and this is my friend Bobcat. ‘ And the Bobcat name stuck. That’s how that nickname came about. I know Barry Crimmins was influential early on with encouragement with Bobcat. But also his persona. He talks about ( in my book) how he did a show when he was doing what he called ‘the voice’. When you think of Bobcat Goldthwait in the 80’s in ‘Police Academy’ the kind of yelling, lunatic voice, he said he became friends doing clubs with Whoopi Goldberg. He did a show at the Comedy Store with Whoopi and it was kind of a Whoopi Presents new talent type thing. Bobcat did that show with her and he said that changed everything. A lot of people there within a week were getting movie roles. I think a lot of stuff back then was right time, right place, but Bobcat is also undeniably funny and unique. There was nobody doing anything like him at that time. I think the closest person like what Bobcat was doing was someone like Emo Philips. Just like really avant-garde, strange in a great and magical way. And Bobcat doesn’t even do the voice anymore and he doesn’t need it he’s so funny and he’s a talented director. But, that’s a great story. It’s wonderful to hear because he’s such a great guy.
Q- I recall reading and I believe it was in People Magazine that Bobcat when he was a teenager broke Into the Onondaga County War Memorial to make popcorn.
A- (laughs)
Q- You’re laughing but I’m trying to find the humor in that.
A- That’s a strange thing to do. Was there a popcorn maker there or he just needed someway to make popcorn?
Q- The War Memorial was closed and he broke in to make popcorn.
A- I don’t know. Bobcat and I are associates in comedy and I’ve worked with him before. I saw him about 2 months ago ( April 2025). We’re kind of like work peers. I’m not close friends. I’d be curious to know the age when that was ‘cause as a teenager I think he was angsty. I surprised him the last time we worked together where I brought him up and said’ Your next comic is best known for being the lead singer of The Dead Ducks when he was 15. (laughs) And he got onstage and said ‘ How the hell did you know that?’ I remembered that from one of our conversations early on. The popcorn thing is a head scratcher for me. You’d have to ask him that one. I don’t know.
Q- Funny you should mention The Dead Ducks because I did mention them in a local paper I was writing for at the time. I was friends with their bass player Paul Stevenson. As far as I know I’m the only one who ever wrote anything about The Dead Ducks.
A- There you go !
Q- Bobcat would always make jokes about Sylvester Stallone being employed at an all girls school during the Vietnam War.
A- ( laughs)
Q- He was insinuating that Stallone shouldn’t have played that Rambo character when he hadn’t been in the military. I talked with Sam Kinison’s brother Bill . Sam was friends with Stallone.
A- Oh, wow!
Q- If you follow Bobcat’s thinking John Wayne could never have played a cowboy because he wasn’t really a cowboy. As a matter of fact his name wasn’t really John Wayne. Both Sam Kinison and Stallone dis-liked Bobcat and that’s putting it mildly.
A- That’s interesting.
Q- I asked Bill in my interview “What did Bobcat have that your brother didn’t have? “He said “ I think the question should be “What did Sam have that Bobcat didn’t have? And that would be talent”.
A- Well, I certainly think Bobcat is very talented. I would never discount his talent. I think he has talent in a lot of different ways. For me personally I find his material now when he’s not doing the persona better, But, maybe that’s a taste thing. It feels more representative of who he is. But, I certainly think Bobcat is talented. To the point of the Stallone stuff there’s a point in the book where Bobcat says’ Even when I was doing the character , I was talking about the Iran Contra Affair through the lens of this Tasmanian Devil guy.’ So, I think Bobcat’s heart has always been in the right place as far as saying things that are true to him. I remember seeing Bobcat in ’89. He was one of the first stand-up comics I saw ‘live’ actually. Him and George Carlin and Louie Anderson were the first three stand-up shows I ever went to at the age of 13 or 14 at the time. I’m sure a lot of that stuff I was just unaware of. I’m pretty well-versed in comedy and I never heard that Sylvester Stallone story until you just told me. It’s eye-opening. You’d have to ask Bobcat himself about that. Have you ever talked to him directly?
Q- I have not. He once came into the Sears Credit office and was going around talking to people but by that time his mother was a little upset with me because I said film critic Rex Reed didn’t care for Bobcat ‘s role in “ Police Academy”.
A- Gotcha.
Q- I was just stating what Rex Reed said. He did not like Bobcat’s shtick.
A- I don’t know if shtick is the right term. It was a character. And an over the top character. I think he’s wonderful but I know people who can’t stand Pee Wee Herman. I think it’s important to separate the character from the person. But, I don’t know I’ve always had nothing but admiration and good experiences with Bobcat.
Q- Stallone called Bobcat and said” If I ever run into you I’m gonna whip your ass!”
A- (laughs)
Q- And Sam Kinison told Bobcat the same thing.
A- So, what did he do about Kinison? Did he have material about him that wasn’t complimentary?
Q- He referred to Kinison as his 300 pound twin running around.
A- Oh, yeah. I know that Bobcat does not get along with Jerry Seinfeld. That I know for sure. Again, I can only speak to my personal experience which has been nothing but positive and great with Bobcat. I think there’s something to him where he likes to go after sacred cows in popular culture. But again I’d think you’d have to ask him. I don’t want to speak for him in anyway. But, he was wonderful to deal with in terms of the book. Every time I’ve worked with him it’s been great.
Q- On May 9th 1994 Bobcat was on The Tonight Show hosted by Joan Rivers and he set the guest chair On fire.
A- Yes, he did. ( laughs).
Q – I don’t see what’s funny about that.
A – I don’t think he was trying to be funny there. He talks about it in the book.
Q – It was reported that he received a lifetime ban on The Tonight Show for that, but a week later he was making the rounds on all the late night t.v. talk shows.
A – Yes. I don’t think he did that for weird attention. He talks about it in the book. He addresses that because I was curious about that as well. It kind of goes back to that sacred cow thing. He was at that point admittedly in a weird head space of dealing with fame and had just kind of hit a point where The Tonight Show was the ultimate, the pinnacle of what you could do and part of him just wanted to do just literally and figuratively burn it down. So, I think that was just a statement of a lot of things.
Q – He was actually the Director of Jimmy Kimmel Live! for a couple of years.
A – That’s true.
Q- How did that happen? He only has a high school education. There are people graduating from universities all over the U.S. with degrees in directing and producing who will most likely never get an opportunity like that. I don’t understand how Bobcat got an opportunity like that.
A- Well, that I can explain. In Los Angeles there’s a large degree of who you know, of being a known person. Bobcat was a fully known quantity and a proven personality and talent in L.A. I don’t know if he had a relationship with Jimmy Kimmel or not. Most of the work I’ve found from starting at Ground Zero and working my way up has been through proving it, doing the job and having people either appreciate what I’m trying to do and also just referral. That’s how I end up working with people a lot. So, I agree with you there’s a lot of people maybe on paper, qualified folks who would love that job . Who wouldn’t? But, I think in terms of Hollywood and especially New York City when you’re in the entertainment industry a lot of times it’s referral based and kind of who knows who. I don’t think they gave Bobcat the job just because he’s Bobcat and that it would be fun. He had the talent for directing and had to prove it. I think if he got in there and it didn’t work out in terms of delivering it would have been short-lived. But, he was there for several years so I’m sure he was doing a good job. I think it’s just the reality of working in the Hollywood system that is a lot of times referral and who you end up meeting and that’s how you get in those positions of having employment.
Q- Early on in Bob’s career at his mother’s urging I went to see him at a downtown Syracuse bar called The Firebarn Tavern. It used to be a firehouse. Bob’s biggest joke of the night is when he talked about working in a grocery store. He said a woman asked him, “ Do you have any nuts?” And then he looked down at his crotch.
A- (laughs). Wow! It’s hard for me to speak to stuff like that. The best way I can describe is sometimes if a comedian is in a mood to make themselves laugh which isn’t necessarily the job; the job is to make the paying public laugh but there’s definitely moments when you do stuff just for yourself in a way you know like I’m gonna do something that I think is funny for whatever reason and it may not gel with what the audience is expecting. I’ve certainly seen that happen. But humor is also very subjective.
Q- If you had told me that night that this guy was going to go on to appear in the movies, be on “ Married With Children”, and direct Robin Williams I would have found that hard to believe.
A- Yeah. I understand completely what you’re saying. There’s people today that I look at and I don’t want to say specific names but there are certainly comedians playing Madison Square Garden level places that I just don’t understand the appeal. I don’t understand the mass appeal for people to be like this is something I’m going to pay a $70.00 ticket for. I don’t get it but that’s O.K. It’s just not for me.
©Gary James
To order J.’T.’s book go to: http://jawbonepress.com
J.T.’S personal website: Jtcomedy.com
Note: This is the first time in more than 30 years that Jawbone Press , a London based publisher has published a non-music book.
