Brian Posehn
When appearing on The Big Bang Theory or New Girl, comedian Brian Posehn makes awkward moments more hilarious with his dry baritone delivery. But those familiar with his stand-up know Posehn is capable of being much more animated, especially when passionately ranting and raving about his favorite things — Star Wars and metal, for instance. The latter is an obsession he’s talked about since his first stand-up album, Live In: Nerd Rage, which was released via Relapse Records, home to bands including Pig Destroyer and Dying Fetus. Ahead of the comic’s three-night stand at Zanies, we sat him down to chat about DragonForce, his long-awaited upcoming metal album and other nerdly pursuits.
It looks like your Nashville dates aren’t part of a tour — just some one-off shows at Zanies? Yeah. I don't really tour like bands. [Comedians are] kind of out perpetually. I just recorded a couple days ago in Portland for my next special, but now I'm just out touring and writing new jokes and performing this recent set.
What is the special for? I did it through Seeso, I made a deal with them. They got my last two specials, the one that just started airing a couple of months ago called Criminally Posehn, and then the next one will air in January or February, it's called 25x2. You know, Adele had an album called 25 because she's 25 years old, and I'm not.
I expect there will be some Adele lip-syncing or karaoke? Well, I just don't do jokes anymore. I just play piano and tell really personal song stories about being a 25-year-old lady.
How is your eyeliner game? My eyeliner game is strong. [laughs]
At one point you were working on a metal album with Gary Holt of Slayer and Kim Thayil. Is that something that's still happening? Yeah! It's something I've been working on for a long time. It's the Chinese Democracy of comedy metal records. It's already taken three years to record, but it's mainly out of the fact that the guys that I'm collaborating with, we're all busy. I wrote it with Scott Ian [of Anthrax] and Brendon Small from Metalocalypse, and it's almost done now, so hopefully in the early part of 2017 it'll be out.
You say it's a comedy metal album, but obviously you have some badass musicians. Is it also like a legit metal album? How far does it go either way on the comedy or metal spectrums? On my stand-up records, I’ve had songs that I wrote with Scott Ian before. I did a song called "Metal by Numbers," and I did a song called "More Metal Than You." It's more of that same theme. It's real metal songs written by great musicians and then me writing silly lyrics and sort of half-assedly singing them.
I really love how the metal community seems to have a healthy sense of self-awareness. They're in on the joke as to what it looks like from the outside. Growing up, it wasn't a thing. I was a metal fan when Spinal Tap came out, and that tells you how old I am. I remember being mad at Spinal Tap. I hadn't seen it, but I was aware of what it was, and it felt like outsiders making fun of metal. I remember being like, "Hey, man, if you haven't earned this, you can't make fun of it." Now I look very differently at that movie, and I totally get it, but I was like 17 or 18 and mad at the world when it came out — "Hey, they're making fun of Iron Maiden! They're making fun of Zappa, they're making fun of all this stuff. No fair, man.” I think metal does kind of get it. It's hard when you have bands like Manowar representing metal to not have a sense of humor about ourselves, you know?
I saw DragonForce once and they had fans blowing their hair. Did they have mini-tramps?
Yes! They had the trampolines, and … That's not serious. When you bring a trampoline in there, it's already silly.
That's what I thought, but then I felt like everybody around me was just so earnest with their love of it. But I'm like, "You guys, they're jumping on a trampoline. This is goofy!" Do you ever get any backlash from metal fans who are maybe feeling how you felt about Spinal Tap? I think there are, but not to my face. I don't really read too much online about myself, because a couple of times I have seen metal fans going, "That dude's not metal!" Or, "That dude's not funny!" It's like, somebody has a bug up his butt. I already have enough negativity in my head, I don't need somebody else telling me I'm not funny.
Are there any other genres or even just bands or songs that people would be surprised to hear you also love? Oh, probably. Yeah. My wife and I like a lot of — I grew up with it — but there's a lot of ’80s music that you might be surprised by. We saw The Cure together this year, and we're going to Morrissey soon. I think a lot of metalheads might be surprised with the amount of Smiths and Depeche Mode and Cure on my iPod. I love the Pixies. Pixies are probably one of my all-time favorite bands. I could listen to them right next to Slayer, Witchcraft or whatever I’m listening to.
I feel like the Pixies, and this is true for The Cure, too, there's still some darkness there. Like Frank Black is not totally OK. Oh, absolutely. That was what drew me to it as a kid, too. There wasn't really like sad metal, you know what I mean? So The Cure helped me out when I had my heart broken. And the Beastie Boys! I'm a huge, huge Beastie Boys fan. And Rush, which isn't really metal. Rush is probably my all-time favorite band. Not probably — absolutely.
Rush is your favorite band? See, I would've guessed Slayer! No. I've listened to more Rush than anything. I love metal, but Rush has always been — this is the more personal band. That's the band that I just listen to all the time. My favorite song by anybody is "Subdivisions," which says a lot just about feeling that way, you know?
I was kind of hoping you were going to say you liked The Lumineers or something … Oh, I don't know any. I know that name, but I haven't listened to anything new in a long time.
Cardigans and pork-pie hats is what you need to imagine. Oh my God. That's not my scene at all.
And lots of hand clapping. Some foot stomping. Earnest to the max. You’re just losing me more and more.
Basically, I'm just trying to get you to hang up on me at this point. [Laughs]
Do you have any tattoos? Do you have a giant Slayer back tat or anything? You look so clean-cut for a metal dude. I have one — I have a 666 on my middle finger. A bunch of us got them, and I gave into peer pressure. It's underneath my skull ring, and thankfully my mom doesn't live in Nashville, so she won't read this. I've kept it from her. My mom hates tattoos and has no idea that I have one. When she's not with us, I'm going to get my dogs as the dead Jedis. You know how Luke is always visited by Obi-Wan and Yoda? So, I'm going to have my dogs wearing Jedi cloaks and then being like a blue, ghost-like presence on my arm.
What kind of dogs are they? Well, I lost a basset a couple years ago, so she'll be on there. Sally, she was my sweetheart. She made it to 11. And then I've got a 13-year-old male that I've talked about in my stand-up, Ernie, and when he's gone, he's going to be Obi-Wan, and she'll be Yoda.
Are you finding inspiration in the current political shitstorm? I feel like comics are going both ways — they're either tearing it apart, hilariously, or they just don't think it's funny anymore and it hurts too much to make jokes. Do you fall on either side? It's good that you're asking me, because I don't want to scare anybody off. This is a time where people don't want to hear about it. It's going to be four days before the election, so I will touch on it briefly, but I'm not going to make people listen to my political agenda for 45 minutes. It's me. I'm still silly. Yes, I'm concerned about our world, but I'm still going to just talk about whatever I want to talk about.
There are still fart and wiener jokes. Absolutely. Still potty humor — it's pretty self-deprecating and silly.
Donald Trump has not made farts un-funny; farts will just still be funny. Forever.
I know “nerd” is a term you’ve always used — your album Nerd Rage came out 10 years ago. I feel like even in those days it was a pejorative, and now it's a big part of pop culture and nerds are cool. How do you feel about the evolution of that term? Honestly, I love it. I love that it's not a put-down anymore. I think it's cool that people can be themselves. You know, when I was called it, it was negative, but now so many kids get to just be themselves. I think it's kind of funny when you hear people that aren't nerdy go, "Yeah, I'm super nerdy about Sex and the City,” or something. Like, "I'm a yogurt nerd!" Just something random.
I don't know, yogurt has gotten pretty fancy. There's a lot there to appreciate. I don't know where I was going with that. [Laughs] When I hear people go, "Oh, I'm so nerdy about this!" I'll go, "Are you really? Are you really that nerdy about that?" To me nerdy is just obsessiveness. You have to like something passionately, like aggressively, and it becomes your life. That's why I've always kind of embraced that, because that's how I like things.
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