Interview with Pony Death Ride

Joe and Jaye from Pony Death Ride provide an insight into their comedy…

CB: How long have you been gigging?

PDR: About two and a half years.

CB: How would you describe your comedy?

PDR: As a musical comedy duo, our songs tend to be influenced alternately by old time vaudeville and burlesque style comedy, and by contemporary rock bands like Art Brut or other musical comedy duos like Flight of the Conchords. We’re a little aburdist, slightly blue but not too dirty, and sometimes sarcastic or just plain creeepy. Since we’re married, we also like to play with the subject of romantic relationships.

CB: Which comedians influence your comedy?

PDR: A wide variety from all different eras: Kids in the Hall, Mae West, Burns and Allen, SCTV, Jon Lajoie, Demitri Martin, Mitchell and Webb, to name a handful …

CB: Did you always want to go into comedy?

PDR: Joe has been writing jokes and comedy since high school. It wasn’t Jaye’s first ambition to go into comedy, but since both of us were getting too old to keep playing in rock bands, comedy seemed like a good thing to transfer into to be able to appeal to a wider range of people — not just young rock and roll hipsters, and a way for us to grow old creatively in a graceful manner. It’s hard to sing about the party life when you’re usually in your pajamas by 9pm.

CB: How do you go about writing your material?

PDR: A song can come out of something funny you hear or an idea just pops into your head and you think, “boy, that should probably never be a song!” but then against your better judgement it just seems to turn into one. It can take a couple of hours or a couple of years to complete a song, but then even after it has been fully formed we still like to do some improvising when it comes to the live show. As the kids say, we try to keep it fresh.

CB: Do you gig as a musical comedy duo full time or is it more of a part-time hobby? If so, do you find that your main jobs influences your material?

PDR: We both work but the band is one of our main priorities and we try to get out-of-town gigs whenever our schedules allow. Joe works at a private special ed school; while that may not be a direct influence on his comedy writing, he is around a lot of absurd situations and interesting people all the time, which probably has some impact on the way he thinks about things and what he finds funny.

CB: What do you find the most enjoyable and frustrating parts of the comedy circuit?

PDR: We aren’t part of the comedy circuit, at least not yet. We mainly try to play at burlesque variety shows since the crowds are naturally expecting something funny and tend to be very attentive. In California alone, there are a ton of regular burlesque shows being produced in various cities, so there are a lot of opportunities for us to play within close range of our home town of San Diego. Its pretty enjoyable to get such good feedback when we perform, and we really haven’t run into much to be frusterated about! If we played only in bars I’m sure it would be a different story. The bars tend to smell like Lysol disenfectant and sadness.

CB: What’s your favourite type of audience to perform to?

PDR: “Captive audiences” in a cabaret type setting like burlesque variety show or comedy shows are always the best to perform to. They seem to hang on to every word and get really wrapped up in the lyrics. It’s always rewarding when people laugh in the correct parts or spontaneously sing and clap along to the choruses… Also, in addition to playing as a two-piece at these types of venues, sometimes we play with a drummer and rock out some of our harder more punk oriented songs in a rock bar setting, but it is harder to captivate the audiences when you’re competing with pool tables and loud drunk people.

CB: Have you been heckled a lot since you’ve started gigging? Do you enjoy being heckled? What’s the best heckle you’ve had?

PDR: We really don’t get heckled that much, although at least on one occassion an audience member kept trying to strike up a conversation with us in the middle of our set. He had read about our show in the Ventura Star and came out to see us which was really flattering, but then he stood right beside the stage and kept asking questions like “Have you ever been to South Africa?” between each song.

CB: What advice would you give to new acts thinking about starting out in comedy?

PDR (Joe): Do your homework. Check out a lot of other acts and see how people react to their material, and stay away from any obvious subjects or punchlines, and if you start losing the audience while you’re performing, don’t get pissed off and start yelling at everyone. On a side note, you can make a few extra bucks selling your drink tickets.

PDR (Jaye): Lay off the dick jokes and the pot jokes. We get it: you have a dick and you like pot. Enough said.

www.ponydeathride.com