A Month with Brody Stevens

On The Road to Oddball

I found myself thinking about Brody Stevens the other day. Someone posted a picture of that mural of him in The Valley, and I thought: I should really make a pilgrimage. Pay my respects. I’d bring an iced coffee from Dunkin Donuts, with enough sugar in it to collapse a jaw, and I’d just leave it there on the sidewalk, like an offering, before walking away.

I didn’t know Brody well. But I got to spend a month on the road with him, back in 2014. To this day it stands out as one of the most memorable comedy experiences of my career.

Back then the website Funny or Die – remember Funny or Die? How much energy did we all pour into Funny or Die?! – was annually staging these massive comedy festivals called Oddball. They’d take over an arena or outdoor amphitheater and throw a half dozen big name headliners at you – Aziz Ansari, Jim Gaffigan, Sarah Silverman, Dave Chappelle, before he pivoted to punching down and sucking off billionaires.

It was like this grand comedy smorgasbord. An all-you-can-eat stand-up buffet. Then they’d pack it all up and head to the next town.

The budget must have been massive. So massive that they were able to arrange a promotional tour called, “The Road to Oddball,” featuring the oddball combination of myself, Howard Kremer, and Brody Stevens.

We had nothing to do with the giant Oddball throw-downs. Indeed, we weren’t even invited (except for Brody, who would MC the side stage). This was just the three of us, driving all over the country, from club to club to club, advertising the fact that the Oddball Festival would be coming to town in the next few months, even though we had nothing to do with it.

So, mark your calendars or whatever.

I can still hear Brody opening up all our shows on the god-mic, with his signature crisp, over-pronunciation.

WEL-COME TO THE RO-AD. TO. ODD. BALL!

It was clearly some marketing flak’s idea. Send a few comics out there in the off-season to keep the brand name trending. But I was thrilled at the opportunity. I had never toured that extensively, the pay was good, and I was a big fan of both Howard and Brody.

Howard and I had already met a few times, and were friendly, but Brody and I did not know each other at all. Of course, I knew of him. Brody was a comedy legend. Or at least an alt-comedy folk tale. He was bizarre and singular. He would get up on stage and just start flexing his credentials, hulking around imposingly with his formidable, former-athlete frame, as he listed off accolades, one after another, like some gatling gun job interview.

I PLAYED baseball. I can THROW a 80 mph fastball. I am FRIENDS with Zack Galifianakis. I was IN the The Hangover. They CUT my scene down for time.

It was hilarious, and odd; and you couldn’t take your eyes off it. Just when you thought, okay, I get it, he would high-kick, and yell, “Yes!” then start asking the audience where they were from, and accurately telling them their area codes.

Of course I also knew of his highly-publicized manic episode, the one that landed him in the psych ward. He himself documented it on his Comedy Central show, Enjoy It! But it didn’t seem like that big a deal. It was all just part of the Brody mythos. Another layer to the folk tale.

Did you hear Brody went to the psych ward? Man, what a character!

I don’t think any of us understood the extent of his suffering. He made it all a joke so fast I suppose everyone else followed suit.

I found myself on a show with him, and Howard, at Meltdown Comics in Los Angeles, about a month before we set sail on the Road to Oddball.

“Do you know Brody?” Howard asked me, as we watched him from the side of the stage.

“I don’t,” I said.

“Well never you worry,” Howard said with a twinkle in his eye. “I am the world’s foremost Brody Stevens translator.”

I wondered what I was in for.

The first night, in Phoenix, set the tone for how the entire tour would go down. Howard and I would alternate with twenty minute opening sets, then Brody was to headline, with forty-five minutes. But that was not Brody’s vision of things. This was the height of Chappelle dropping into places and doing two, three hour sets. Somewhere Brody must have gotten it into his head that was what got people buzzing. So he just went for it.

I have no idea how long he went that first night, but it was easily 90-plus minutes. Howard and I watched in the wings like, is this really happening? It was a comedy marathon. He was pulling out every trick he had. And he had a lot of them. He would carry drumsticks with him, and his big closer was playing a drum-heavy banger over the sound system, then intensely air-drumming all over the club. On the tables, on the booths. It destroyed. A killer closer. Except he didn’t close. He just, kept going. Until the audience was exhausted. Then he riffed. Forever. Then at some arbitrary point he just ended the show.

The next day, on the long car ride to wherever, I sat in the back and listened to Howard and Brody break down the show. Howard accurately pointed out that Brody DESTROYED for 40-or-so minutes. If he would have just gotten off the stage at an appropriate time, he would have gotten a standing O. He was more than capable of rousing an audience to those heights. But he blew past that.

Howard reminded Brody of the conventional comedy wisdom that shows should run about 90 minutes. Anything past that is pushing the audience’s patience. Brody wasn’t hearing it. He argued that this was The Road to Oddball! Audiences were expecting something big, huge even, and it was up to him, the headliner, to deliver that.

Howard continued to try to explain to Brody that audiences were just looking for a fun time, not a war of attrition, but Brody wouldn’t budge, and Howard, the world’s foremost Brody Stevens translator, knew when to leave his stubborn buddy alone.

And so it went, night after night, Howard and I would do our time, and then Brody would pummel the crowds. At length. They absolutely loved it, until they didn’t. Until the checks dropped and people started looking at their watches, then started leaving. Sometimes it seemed like Brody was trying to weed them out. Like the only real fans were the ones who could stick it out until the end.

I couldn’t explain it then, and I can’t explain it now. Maybe the first half of his set was comedy, the second half was anti-comedy. Maybe he didn’t want to do well the conventional route. Maybe he just wanted to see what he could get away with. There was always an air of provocateur to his act; it felt like he was seeing how far he could take it. Whatever it was, there was no talking him out of it. In Boston he did three hours. Howard and I went back to the hotel while he was still on stage.

As frustrating as it all was, it very quickly became the norm. This was just how the shows were going to be. Once we recalibrated around that truth, things became way more fun. We stopped losing sleep over the length of Brody’s sets, and just settled into the joy of being three comics out on tour.

Brody was nothing if not playful, and the conversation in the rental car was always high-wire, and rapid-fire, nonstop, like having the world’s best shock-jock sitting shotgun.

He would pick up on something in the morning, the way the front desk guy said have a nice day, the way the kid working at his beloved Dunkin Donuts seemed to have an attitude, and he would just hammer that riff for the entire day. It would go from funny, to unfunny, all the way back to funny again, simply through Brody’s tenacity. Eventually, Howard would tell him to drop it. Fifteen minutes would pass in silence, then Brody, with perfect timing, would say, “But Howard, you have to admit, something was clearly going on with that kid at Dunkin!”

Then Howard and I would burst into laughter. There was no choice. Brody would just wear you down. The commitment to the bit was unparalleled.

We played an absolute relic of a club in Long Island on a Monday night. Whatever strip mall club Seinfeld started in. The crowd barely tolerated us, and our decidedly alt sensibilities, and we didn’t particularly care for them. All in all, it was looking like a pretty big bummer of an evening. In an attempt to save it, I reached out to my friend Jeremy who ran, and runs, Whiplash at the UCB Theater in New York City. He invited us all to drop in on the show. Brody wrapped up our Long Island show quickly—a mere sixty minute set—and we zipped into the city, arriving just in time to take the stage at Whiplash.

I remember feeling proud, as we drove towards the lights of NYC. I looked up to both Howard and Brody, I was the young buck in this trio, they were the far more accomplished vets, and I was happy to be able to bring something undeniably cool to the table. I was drinking my own Kool-Aid, self-satisfied that I could get us all spots on arguably the best alternative comedy show in the country with a mere text.

Then we showed up to the UCB and half the Los Angeles Dodgers were there. They were in town playing the Mets, and Brody had texted his buddy Clayton Kershaw and invited him to the show. Brody introduced me to Kershaw who, I will never forget, was drinking a PBR tallboy out of a brown paper bag. I was absolutely starstruck. I remember Brody winking at me. Like, you’re not the only one who can get some pretty cool shit accomplished with a text.

Indeed.

We did a show in the city the following night, and when it was time to head out of town, to Philadelphia for the next tour stop, Brody insisted on driving, claiming neither Howard, nor I, would be able handle New York City traffic. He made a big show of it. Like we didn’t have what it takes. We offered no resistance. Fine, Brody. You drive.

We made it out of the city, and Howard and I both dozed off. When we woke up we were in Delaware. Brody had blown right past Philadelphia. It was late afternoon, the show that night was imminent. Howard was pissed. For the most part, the two of them got along great, playfully bickering like an old married couple, busting each other’s balls like only dear friends can. But this was different. Howard had dealt with the very particular personality that was Brody Stevens day after day after day. And today he was frustrated.

We course corrected and started speeding back towards Philly. I called the club and let them know what happened, told them that we would do our best to be there on time, but they might have to hold the show. Maybe even cancel. We’d play it by ear with rush-hour traffic.

We drove in absolute silence. I don’t know how much time passed. Twenty minutes. A half hour. Not a word was spoken. It was rainy and gray outside the rental car, and it felt like we’d reached the tour’s absolute nadir.

Brody dared to puncture the silence.

“You know what we need?” he said suddenly, abruptly.

Neither Howard or I answered.

“Do you KNOW what we NEED?”

We said nothing.

“We need an EMERGENCY POSITIVE PUSH! Yes!”

Neither one of us wanted to laugh, but how could you not?

“Come on, guys, an EMER-GENCY. POSITIVE. PUSH. Yes!”

He kept it up the entire way, imploring the virtues of positive thinking, of not throwing in the towel. We couldn’t just tuck our tales and run! This wasn’t the time to quit! This was the exact time to see what we were made of!

Never mind that the fuck-up had been Brody’s, and Brody’s alone, in that moment, Brody made this a team effort. He was the coach of our three-man squad huddled inside that Hertz rental, and though we were up against impossible odds, we would prevail. In Brody’s eyes, ours was a heroes journey, and these heroes would not surrender.

Not now. Not ever.

By the time we pulled up to the Punchline, we were ready to tear the heads off that audience. We made it with five minutes to spare, and sprinted into the greenroom full of adrenaline. I have no idea how long Brody went that night, all I remember was how hard we crushed. All of three of us. We leveled the place. It was the best show of the tour by far.

We stayed at the bar long after the show, celebrating with the door staff.

I’d love to relive that moment with Brody. I wish I could run into him in a green room somewhere and share a laugh about it, now that I’m older, now that I’m not so green.

Maybe I’ll bring it up whenever I make it out to that mural of him, the one they put up on the side of the firehouse, in his beloved Reseda, after he killed himself in 2021.

Maybe I’ll apologize for not asking him how he was doing more often during that month that we spent together. For not opening up about losing my little sister to suicide. For not letting him know that I too have hit some real depths in my life, and that it’s all part of the difficult process of being human, of being alive. I’d tell him how therapy really helped me.

I wish I had shared that with him.

Who knows. It probably wouldn’t have mattered. If I’ve learned anything about mental illness it’s that the disease is going to do what the disease is going to do. Regardless of what you say or don’t say.

Still.

I wish I had told him how much that post-set fist bump meant to me. Every time. How’d he hold eye contact and fist bump me with more sincerity than anyone ever had before or since. Like, way to go, kid. It meant the world.

Mostly I just wish I could see him perform again. I wish I hadn’t taken for granted all those opportunities to enjoy a truly one-in-a-million comic, wish I hadn’t stewed night after night over how long the show was going. I wish I had just loosened up and embraced the chaos.

I do remember one joke, though. It was my absolute favorite. He wouldn’t always tell it because doing the same set night after night simply did not interest him. But when he broke it out, I would always lose my shit. I’ll paraphrase the best I can, but I’m sure I’m not doing it justice. Try to imagine it in that signature Brody cadence. That’ll help.

When I was growing up, my parents did not pay proper attention to me. And one day, I wandered. And I was touched. And not by an angel. But they caught the guy! You never hear that happy ending! They caught him, and they threw the book at him. Ten years. The usual is five. But it turns out I was molested in a construction zone.

I’d love to see Brody tell that joke again. And whatever else he felt like doing that night.

For as long as he felt like doing it.

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March Shows!

Hey, are you a fan of the Thin Man? The best bar in Denver? Well, I do an occasional show in the basement there. It rules. It’s called Birds of a Feather. I got one March 15 and there’s nineteen tickets left. So hop on it!

March 15 - Denver, CO - The Thin Man - Tix

Big show in New York this month, gang. BIG SHOW. At Union Hall, one of my favorite venues in all the land. Killer lineup with Salma Zaky, Katrina Davis and Josh Gondelman. Please, please, please tell any and all friends you may have in New York! A big part of why I’m writing these Substacks is to reach more people who will dig my comedy. Any help spreading the word is so helpful.

March 19 - Brooklyn, NY - Union Hall - Tix

Then there’s our monthly Grawlix show. This month featuring headliner Tom Thakkar.

March 29 - Denver, CO - The Grawlix - Tix

Also, did you know I have a podcast with them Grawlix boys? It’s called Advice Fight, the world’s only competitive advice shows. Give it a listen here!

And then of course the biggest March news is that my new special comes out on March 28! It’s called “20 Years In Comedy and All I Got Was This Lousy Special.”

I recorded it at the dive bar where I started and I’m enormously proud of it. It’s gritty and silly and different than a lot of specials. So subscribe to my YouTube and join us for the premiere! Or pre-download the album. You can do all that here. Oh, and I’ll be selling vinyl that I made of the special as well. Message me if that interests you!

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The Monthly Clip

Here’s my favorite recent ACH Bird of the Week

God damn, great video, Adam. Way to go.

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Before you go, follow on the socials!

Before you go, follow on the socials. And most definitely subscribe to my YouTube so you can get that new special as soon as it comes out!

Thanks for helping me by sharing the Substack, everyone. And sincerely appreciate you reading.