Are you tired of Bay Bridge traffic? Need a few laughs along the Chesapeake?
Comedian Tom Papa cracks up Maryland Hall in Annapolis, Maryland, on Friday!
“My act is kind of this special place where I spend a lot of time making sure that you’re gonna laugh every 10 seconds for an hour and a half,” Papa told WTOP. “It’s evergreen, you want stuff that will last and that people can go on and tell this joke to their friends for the next five or 10 years. Something that happens [in the news], that’s for Colbert or Kimmel and those places, those are daily shows, that’s where that stuff belongs.”
Since he mostly stays away from politics, his standup act mostly delves into everyday life.
“I talk a lot about family, I talk a lot about mental health, I talk a lot about the pets that are ruining my life, I talk about how my family is always changing and evolving, how my parents came and had an insurrection in my house for two weeks,” Papa said.
Born in New Jersey in 1968, Papa will never forget first discovering the possibility of a career in standup comedy.
“When I was a kid, the first comedy albums that I ever heard were George Carlin and Steve Martin,” Papa said. “I was in like seventh grade and I heard ‘Class Clown’ and ‘Let’s Get Small’ in one week. My friends’ older brothers had these albums and it seemed mysterious and we went in and heard these albums. I was always funny as a kid, but it dawned on me that week, ‘Oh my God, there’s a job out there for grown-ups to continue being funny?'”
He launched his stand-up career in New York City in 1993, where he met Jerry Seinfeld at the Comedy Cellar.
“That was after his (television) show when he came back to the clubs and he saw me on stage and thought I was funny,” Papa said. “I just grabbed onto his coattails and didn’t let go.”
In 2005, Papa released his debut comedy album “Calm, Cool, & Collected,” followed by a pair of TV specials “Live in New York City” and “Freaked Out” directed by Rob Zombie, best known for rock concerts and horror movies.
“People don’t realize he’s a lot nerdier than you think and I’m a lot cooler than you think,” Papa said.
Papa followed up with another TV special “Human Mule” (2016), followed by the Netflix pandemic release “You’re Doing Great” (2020) and his most recent Netflix special “What a Day!” (2022).
“I like them all for different reasons, but ‘You’re Doing Great’ had a resonance because it came out right before the pandemic,” Papa said. “It had a very hopeful message and people really connected with it. I hear to this day that it got a lot of people through COVID, so that one had a little special meaning to it that helped people in a hard time.”
On screen, he’s acted alongside Julia Louis-Dreyfus (“The New Adventures of Old Christine”), Clive Owen (“The Knick”), Matt Damon (“The Informant”), Robert DeNiro (“Analyze That”) and Michael Douglas (“Behind the Candelabra”). You’ll also recognize him from VH1’s “I Love the ‘70s,” “I Love the ’80s” and “I Love the ‘90s,” not to mention hosting the Food Network’s “Baked” and NBC’s “The Marriage Ref.”
“Any place that you can go and be funny, you wanna try and take a shot at it,” Papa said. “They’re all cool, but standup, just purely on a guttural level, standup is the most fun. It’s cool to tell people you have (movies and TV shows) coming out, but it’s not as much fun doing it. There’s no audience. It’s cool and amazing that you get to be with all those people, but just on a physical, emotional level, nothing beats standup.”
In his spared time, he’s penned three books: “Your Dad Stole My Rake: And Other Family Dilemmas,” “You’re Doing Great! And Other Reasons to Stay Alive,” and “We’re All In This Together … So Make Some Room.” He also hosts a weekly podcast “Breaking Bread with Tom Papa,” following his satellite radio shows “What a Joke with Papa and Fortune,” “Come to Papa Live” and “Live From Here with Chris Thile” (formerly titled “A Prairie Home Companion”).
“This week we have Joel McHale coming up, then we’ve got Jimmy Kimmel,” Papa said.
Don’t miss your chance to see him live on stage this weekend. To paraphrase Papa’s catchphrase, Annapolis audiences will finally be able to say, “Have you ever see Tom Papa live? I have!”
Listen to our full conversation on the podcast below:
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