Barry Crimmins tapes his first-ever stand-up special in Lawrence

Despite being a regular on the stand-up circuit since the 1980s, comic Barry Crimmins didn’t get broad national attention until last year. After decades of work as a comedian’s comedian, he was the subject of a documentary, Call Me Lucky, which revealed an astonishing life story.

Stand-up comedy is just one part of the Bobcat Goldthwait–directed film, but even the grainy VHS footage and brief interludes of his current work show Crimmins as a genuine force onstage. Now, at age 62, he’s shooting his first special, produced by Louis C.K. — and taped at the Lawrence Arts Center.

I spoke with Crimmins by phone ahead of his Saturday appearance here.

The Pitch: Based on the buzz online and around town, I’m not the only person excited that you’re shooting your special in Lawrence.

Crimmins: Well, yeah. I’m excited, too. So, there’s two of us.

Lawrence must have really made an impact on you during the Free State Festival last year, huh?

Well, it made an impact before then. I’ve played there a couple times over the years and always had a good time. But last year was amazing. I just like the town, because the people are really progressive, but they’re also really kind — not, you know, too hip to be enthusiastic, too hip to be genuine. And to me, that’s the real hipness: the passion to be kind, to be enthusiastic and generous. The town is just full of those kind of people. I love the town, for sure.

So you’ll be moving here within the next year, right?

Well, I like to say that it’s the fallback position. It’s good to know that you have somewhere you can flee. And this time, if Quantrill’s raiders follow me, we’ll be ready.

It seems that in this age that your comedy — which is of a kin with the likes of Bill Hicks, Will Durst or A. Whitney Brown — would be a common voice, but it seems that people preaching truth to power really isn’t really a thing.

What happened to comedy for a long time — or what happened to comedy culture and the way it was distributed — is how the audiences were developed for “comedy” clubs. They were developed at a time where we have the exact opposite problem that we have now. We didn’t have enough comedians. We had more headlining slots than there were headliners. There were people who could get away with being onstage for 40 minutes or an hour, but they were doing lowest-common-denominator stuff, and they were ostensibly different versions of the same act. It developed an audience that was, for lack of a better comparison, the sort of demographic you’d find at a professional wrestling match.

Comedy didn’t really take a turn for the better until the ’90s when some of the alt stuff started happening — and even there, there’s a lot of “I bomb, therefore I am hip.” No, you still have to be funny. It’s a combination of stuff, but thanks to the internet and stuff, the workers are beginning to see the means of production again. There’s some real promise, but now the problem is that there’s some really bright people who are just lost in this mass of humanity. It’s like a refugee crisis.

I imagine this special has come about in part because of the greater notice you’ve received since the documentary.

Sure, but it’s also really that I never got a chance to do a full-length special before, and so it’s a chance to see and decide what things I’ve had to say over the years I want to be in the document. People always say to me, “You know where you can get material?” And I always just look at them and think, “Yeah. I just wake up and I get material.”

But really, it’s the editing and sequencing that’s the real work, because if you do the wrong joke at the wrong time, it can blow 15 minutes that belongs later, because you reveal the wrong thing at the wrong time. You just have to get out in front of audiences and figure out what those mistakes are, and stop making them.

Is that how you’ve been preparing for shooting this special?

I’ve been on the road since September, doing a lot of off nights and whatever, in small rooms, just working on the act and figuring out what goes where. Trying to not let current events completely run roughshod over it, because people obviously come out to hear what I have to say about that, but it’s trying to figure out everything in the right proportion and still getting the point across.

Then, hopefully, it’s pulling a few threads at the end, and the ship stands up in the bottle.

Barry Crimmins
7 and 9:30 p.m. Saturday, June 4,
at the Lawrence Arts Center
lawrenceartscenter.org