Newspaper Page Text
fan Tig No taro
Great Timing, Alwayj Tourincj
and Never Tweetincj
ho doesn't love a good spit-take?
Maybe the longest-running—and
perhaps the broadest—comic tradi
tion, the spit-take's charm lies in its simplic
ity: take a drink, receive shocking information
and promptly expectorate. On “The Sarah
Silverman Program," actor Jay Johnston, upon
learning of some surprise, which is for our
purposes irrelevant, goes all out, projecting
a full gulp of coffee directly to his left. But
it's the recipient of this comedic device that
makes the joke land: Tig Notaro (in uniform
and in character, as, duh, “Officer Tig") sits,
dripping with caffeinated drink, incredulous.
For what feels like eons. "Really?" she finally
asks, slowly gesturing around the room.
“There's so many other places you could've..."
The key element of this scene, as with any
kind of comedy, is not the spray of coffee but
rather the timing. This is Tig Notaro's secret
weapon: after 14 years of stand-up and come
dic acting, the Los Angeles native has sharp
ened her joke-telling patience and precision to
a fine point. In a stand-up comedy landscape
populated by screaming, sweaty over-com
pensators, Notaro stands out as an equally dry
and wry comedienne who allows the space in
between the set-up and the punchline to work
its magic, creating maximum tension before
the air is punctured with the perfectly sharp
verbal jab. This kind of patience is in turn
very useful, particularly when one is being
subjected to multiple spit-takes in an effort to
get just the right shot.
"It was a lot," she laughs, when asked how
many times the aforementioned clip had to
be filmed to get a shot without someone on
set cracking up. "I would say it took... oh,
I would say, five or six times. Which is a lot
when you're getting spit in the face."
Flagpole spoke to Notaro as she was en
route to Toronto on the jaunt that will eventu
ally bring her to her final tour date in Athens;
following which she'll fly to Los Angeles,
shortly thereafter head to Austin, continue
driving up through the Midwest and... it goes
on like that. A quick glance at her website
finds tour dates listed through April of 2012.
“It's just never-ending," she says. "It's been
pretty crazy, but it's a great problem to have.
It's definitely a first-world problem.
"I've worked on TV shows with acting and
then doing local Los Angeles shows, but my
passion is stand-up, so I like to get out and
be able to do it," she continues. "You can't do
more than 10 to 15 minutes at shows in Los
Angeles because it's so over-saturated with
comedians. Your time onstage is so limited, so
in order to really work on my show or jokes, I
have to go out on the road. And plus, that's
where I make the majority of my money."
Notaro's hard-touring work ethic and
unique approach custom fit her for the so-
called "alternative comedy" scene which has
thrived over the last 10 years.
She came across her record label,
Secretly Canadian, after an unlikely
tour with Swedish singer/song
writer Jens Lekman.
"I was doing the comedy stage
at South by Southwest three years
ago, and he came to my show,
introduced himself and told me he
was a fan of my comedy," Notaro
says. "And then he invited me to
his show, and I thought he was just
amazing. And I remember hearing
word that Michael Stipe was there
in the audience. It was funny going
from not knowing who Jens Lekman
was to seeing him in this huge
venue and knowing that Michael
Stipe was there to see him."
Through that tour, Notaro was
able to meet the Secretly Canadian
family, and she recently released
the label's sole comedy release: her
debut album Good One.
On tour and out in the world
is where Notaro thrives, and that
excludes the Internet. She has zero
interest in Twitter, a platform that
many comedians have taken advan
tage of, due to its built-in limita
tions; it has created a wealth of
one-liners from users such as Sarah
Silverman and Patton Oswalt. Unsurprisingly,
Notaro takes issue not only with the glued-to-
the-screen vibe, but also the lack of nuance.
"I have been avoiding it just because it
doesn't interest me as far as constantly being
online and updating and getting stuffed
into the Internet world the way that a lot of
people do," she says. "I also think that there's
a particular delivery: people tweet in kind of
the same rhythm, and it almost strips a lot of
people of their unique voice. A lot of tweets
kind of sound similar. I don't know, maybe
I'll be late to the party and start a Twitter
account in 10 years."
Jeff Tobias
WHO: Tig Notaro, Matt O’Meara,
Shalewa Sharpe, Matt Gilbert,
Andrea Boyd, Luke Fields
WHERE: Caledonia Lounge
WHEN: Thursday, Aug. 25, 9 p.m.
HOW MUCH: $8 (21+). $19 (18+)
V J
Thank You: I'd like to take some time here to
give a huge shout-out and thank you to long
time Athens music journalist Julie Phillips.
She's best known in the music scene as the
features/arts and entertainment editor for
the Athens Banner-Herald, but she amicably
left that position last week to focus on a new
career. Phillips began writing for the ABH in
1996, and her first interview was with Vic
Chesnutt. At that time the paper didn't have
a music editor, so she quickly became, in her
words, "the de-facto entertainment editor."
She adds, "That was such an honor—being
able to meet so many great musicians and,
even beyond the music, just great people."
Phillips was keen to cover every aspect of
Athens music and her enthusiasm for the
task never seemed to wane. She has her own
band, too, with Kyle
Dawkins, called Maps
& Transit. Last year
she established the
Athens Music & Arts
blog (www.athensmu-
sicandarts.tumblr.com),
which she plans to
keep running. She has
been an aerial skills
and dance instructor
as well as a member
of the performing
company at Canopy
Studio for a long time,
and her new career is
kind of an offshoot of
that experience. She
has been in New York
I training in the therapeutic exercise known as
body rolling and says: "I knew that if I left
the paper I didn't want to go straight back to
work behind a desk. I wanted to be able to
use my experience with Canopy and help peo
ple that were in pain." She has started docu
menting her journey over at www.bodyrolling.
tumblr.com. Although she may not be covering
the music scene for the ABH anymore, she's
not leaving Athens. "There's nowhere else
I'd want to live," she says. You can check out
her own music via www.mapsandtransit.com.
So, thank you, Julie, for always being such an
ardent and tireless supporter of Athens arts
culture. Your reporting will be missed, but
we'll see ya 'round town.
Elissa Remembered: Sparkle Song is a cel
ebration of Elissa Hadley's music at 5 p.m.,
Saturday, Aug. 27 at Nuqi's Space. Confirmed
acts include Caroline Aiken, Scott Simpson
(formerly of Lenny), Jane Stebbins, Matthew
Kahler, Kodac Harrison and Neal Fountain.
Melissa sang for a lot of bands here before
concentrating her creative energies in the the
ater, where she continued to be popular and
hard working, onstage and behind the scenes.
The show is free, but a contribution to Nuqi's
Space will be appreciated. [Pete McCommons]
Faster Than a Ray of Light: Manray has put
the finishing touches on its debut album,
Tournament!, and the band is hitting the road
later this month for a solid string of shows
up and down the East Coast. The album is
scheduled for release sometime this fall on
Hello Sir Records. The band, affectionately
crowned as the leaders of new-school compli-
core (as in "complicated") by, urn, me, several
months ago, has embraced the term, so feel
free to refer to them as such. For the uniniti
ated, Manray's sound pulls from math rock,
metal, punk, hardcore and even a smidgen of
non-boring prog rock. More information can
be found over at www.manrayband.tumblr.com
and www.facebook.com/Manray.band.
Has Become Cumbersome: Local, middle-of-
the-road, hard rock Taste Like Good reports
that its guitarist Taylor Bracewell, a member
for less than a year, has left the group to
go to school in Atlanta. The next few shows
will be done as a three-piece with remain
ing members Carey Welsh, Steve Harris and
Brian Carey. Maybe this will give the band the
opportunity to dump its 1990s guitar his
trionics and rethink its "Alternative Nation"
(MTV show cancelled in 1997)-styled songwrit
ing. You can sample what I'm talking about
over at www.facebook.com/tastelikegood.
The band next plays
locally at the Caledonia
Lounge on Sept. 1
with Thieves Market
and Atlanta band The
Acorns.
< Take a Date: Tickets
are on sale now for
Indigo Girls' Oct. 6
performance at The
Classic Center. Opening
the show are fellow
Decatur residents
Roxie Watson, a five-
piece string band. Visit
www.ClassicCenter.com
or call (706) 357-4444
to purchase. Tickets
are $40, $35 and $25. The Indigo Girls' his
tory and the band's relationship to Athens are
much too long to talk about here, but you can
find all you need over at www.indigogirls.com.
The Line Forms Here: Longtime drummer
Jason Scarboro has left Dead Confederate
to concentrate on family life, and the guys in
the band say that he will "always have 100
percent of [their] love and support." Friend
of the band and Los Angeles resident, but
Augusta native, J.J. Bower will handle drums
for the band in most capacities, and Jim
Crook (All The Saints) will help out on very
short tours around the Southeast. As for the
much-in-demand sets where Dead Confederate
covers Neil Young's Tonight's the Night in its
entirety, Jeremy Wheatley will be behind the
drums and Matt Stossel will play pedal steel.
In other news, the band reports that it has
been working on demos and rehearsing new
material with its eye on commencing record
ing some new stuff before the new year. Catch
Dead Confederate live in Athens on Oct. 22 at
the Georgia Theatre.
Hit That Perfect Beat: If you're just back in
town and haven't seen the changes Go Bar
made over the summer, then how about waltz
ing down there and checking out the velvet
curtains and notice how much better it sounds
in there. Actually, how about this: head down
on Friday, Aug. 26 when Orenda Fink (Azure
Ray) and Nina Twin (AKA Nina Barnes) do a
collaborative performance art show. Oh yeah,
how about checking out some of Nina Twin's
artwork over at www.geminitactics.com? And,
while we're at it, how about I just keep
making suggestions until you're sick of the
sight of them?
Gordon Lamb threatsandpromises@flagpole.com
Indigo Girls
14 FLAGPOLE.COM-AUGUST 24, 2011
