We resisted the urge to use the most common headline for a story like this, but Joe Pera talked with us.
The standup comic and namesake star of Adult Swim’s delightfully low-key series Joe Pera Talks With You is scheduled to bring his Peras Tour to Tower Theatre, 425 NW 23rd St., 7 p.m. Sunday, July 27.
Leaning into Pera’s mild-mannered energy and pleasant monotone voice, the cult-favorite series featured Pera as a middle-school choir teacher in a small Michigan town exploring seemingly dry topics with a singularly off-kilter sensibility and unexpected heart. “Joe Pera Helps You Find a Perfect Christmas Tree,” for example, ends a wholesome holiday special with a reminder that the Guantanamo Bay detention facility is still open, and “Joe Pera Reads You the Church Announcements” is actually an entire episode about how excited Pera’s character is about hearing The Who’s “Baba O’Riley” for the first time. “Joe Pera Talks You to Sleep” features the comic trying to do exactly what the title indicates.
His ongoing podcast Drifting Off With Joe Pera does the same, with an eight-hour version for Patreon subscribers featuring extended ambient music interludes. Slow & Steady, his 2023 comedy special, concludes with a live episode of the podcast that might’ve put the audience to sleep if they weren’t laughing so loudly.
We talked with Joe Pera about his comedy style and Oklahoma experiences, and we stayed awake the whole time.
Did you start out trying to make people laugh, or did people just think you were funny first?
Everybody’s funny. When I was 18, I decided I wanted to give stand-up a try, and so I did it.
I guess I kind of had an idea of what I wanted to do comedy-wise pretty early on.
I had been thinking about it for a long time before I did it in writing, and I knew what I liked comedy-wise and just did what I thought was funniest.
Me and my buddy Dan [Licata, writer for Joe Pera Talks With You] would write jokes in this basement in high school. And we didn’t perform them, but we just would write and try to make each other laugh.
He put out a special called For the Boys where he performed for an audience of all teenage boys in our high school auditorium on YouTube. It was very fun and very different than other stand-up specials. It seems gimmicky, but it’s not because it kind of works into his material pretty well.
Is having a reputation for making people go to sleep something you ever pushed back against as a comic? It seems like something most people wouldn’t embrace.
Yeah, it’s fine. I learned it early on. I guess my dad would fall asleep at high school, the orchestra or chorus concerts sometimes. I was a little embarrassed of it, but my music teacher said that sleep is a reaction, and it’s a pretty good reaction. So I don’t know. When I first started doing the sleep stuff, at the recommendation of a friend, it worked and kind of led to what I do well in comedy. I just kind of kept on doing it because, I don’t know, I like stuff that’s on the milder side and a lot of the stuff, music that I’m drawn to, is a little bit mellower. So it was natural, and there’s a lot to explore with sleep.
I’m not the only artist to do it, but it’s neat to do it with comedy. But the live show is a little bit more … I don’t know. It’s a fun night. It’ll be a good time and laughs and not trying to put the audience to sleep. There’s a little bit more jokes. Just regular, not regular jokes but jokes with punch lines. I’m trying to make sure everybody has a good time and is laughing out loud. … There’s some stuff that’s a little bit wilder or different in tone than the TV show.
What do you think of Oklahoma?
I did a show in Tulsa at the Blue Whale Festival a couple years ago, and I really enjoyed it. I went to the Woody Guthrie Museum and walked around in the heat. It was during the summer as well. I rode a Lime Scooter around safely. I went to the [Philbrook Museum of Art]. I forget the name, but it was the big art gallery in the old mansion.
I really had a lovely time. All the comedians were fun. Carmen Christopher is going to open for me. He really suggested that we come to Oklahoma City because he had a good time performing here before. Every July or August for the past three years, we’ve gone on a little summer tour together, and he’s so funny. He’s got a special out called Live From the Windy City, and it’s always a treat to go on tour with him. He makes me laugh a lot, and sometimes he’ll come on-stage and we’ll riff at the end and make fun of each other for whatever’s been going on on tour. So I look forward to that. It’s become a tradition that’s very special. We just end up going to the hottest places in the summer. Oklahoma in July. But why not? I don’t care.
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This article appears in City crowned.