Getting the Band Back Together

“When you’re in your 20s, it’s your job to be an asshole,” says Kids in the Hall founding member Kevin McDonald. “But when you’re in your 40s, you’re calmer, you maybe have families, children, wives — in my case, dogs and cats. And that calms you down.” He’s talking about the group dynamic behind Live As We’ll Ever Be, the new Kids in the Hall show touring the country, and its differences from the group’s internal relationships during the height of its self-titled series in the 1990s. “And the other thing is, except for this tour, we don’t see each other every minute of the day, like we did on the TV show for five or six years,” he says. The group, made up of McDonald, Dave Foley, Bruce McCulloch, Mark McKinney and Scott Thompson, has been performing together since 1984. Eschewing pop-culture references and celebrity impersonations, the troupe writes premise-based sketches and character work. “I would say that I’m not so character-driven as the others,” McDonald says. “Dave and I wore our characters like hats — I took that from John Candy — whereas Mark and Scott are totally character actors…. We were never interested in impressions. I don’t think any of us can really do impressions, and even if we did, it’s not something that interested us. We write more about the people we know: our parents, our girlfriends, our friends. And I think as a result, that’s why people still come to see us — it’s still timely, I guess. “McDonald hopes that Live As We’ll Ever Be, which consists almost entirely of new material, will lead to a long-awaited follow-up to the 1996 Kids film, Brain Candy. “That’s the thing we’ll be working on first. But also, because we have so many new sketches, we might be thinking about at least a special on TV.” He suggests the approach for a new film will be different from Brain Candy. “I think we were brave, God bless us. But in Brain Candy, we were married to a plot. We’re going to have a plot in this one, but it will be a little looser plot that’s sort of an excuse for sketches — sort of like Monty Python and the Holy Grail. The Beatles analogy I always make is, we jumped right into Sgt. Pepper without doing Rubber Soul. So we’re going to go back and do our Rubber Soul now.” The Kids in the Hall play tonight at 8 p.m. at the Uptown Theater (3700 Broadway, 816-753-8665). Tickets cost $38.50 to $75. See ticketmaster.com.

Thu., April 24, 8 p.m., 2008