Hosts: Jackie Kashian, Laurie Kilmartin
Official Description: “The Jackie and Laurie Show stars two women in comedy, Jackie Kashian and Laurie Kilmartin, talking about women and comedy. No guests, just two headliners who started in the 80s and never stopped.”
Established: Janurary 4th, 2016
Frequency: Every Monday
Number of Episodes (to date): 13.
Average Episode Length: 62 minutes.
Network: Nerdist Industries
Available on Nerdist.com, iTunes, Stitcher, Art19, Podbay, PlayerFM.
?” ”Jackie Kashian, Laurie Kilmartin. Jackie Kashian, Laurie Kilmartin. It’s The Jackie and Laurie Show, The Jackie and Laurie Show. It’s the Jackie and Laurie Show, The Jackie and Laurie Show.“ ?
Two heroic champions with almost 60 years of stage time between them.
Laurie Kilmartin is a writer on Conan, a national headliner, and one of the country’s most impactful joke crafters. She reps the San Francisco Bay Area HARD, has shouted out Conor Kellicutt and the late Warren Thomas, witnessed a impromptu drug deal on BART, and created 45 minutes of material about her father’s passing while bedside at the hospital. She’s known to be endlessly committed, slumming it at the lowest of shows, like the defunct Kimball’s Carnival, graciously braving the cold and overpriced drinks to get a set in during the holidays.
Jackie Kashian has a Comedy Central half hour special under her belt, is a national headliner, regularly opens for Maria Bamford, and is the leader of the Dork Forest. She reps the Midwest HARD, has had badass run-ins with pool hall bikers, swore in front of high schoolers while performing for her alma mater, and learned marketing from her father, selling obscene t-shirts emblazoned with the phrase “Whiz-consin”. Go see her work any time you can because she works; it’s a master class of how to be specific, niche, referential but also polished, efficient and hilarious.
https://t.co/JNzjrFUDHo pic.twitter.com/YdWuVX7BkW
— Courting Comedy (@CourtingComedy)
And they’re still on the grind, still on street level. If the depressingly short list of mainstream comedians like Fey, Poehler, Cho, Sykes, Schumer, DeGeneres, and McCartey are the Avengers, Laurie Kilmartin and Jackie Kashian are apart of the Defenders, patrolling the open mics, kicking hecklers in the balls. They witnessed the boom, the crash, the alt, the resurgence and whatever the fuck we’re in now. Individually they’re quintessential comics with albums, specials, merch, success, respect and a check. Together tho, we’re talking Run the Jewels, we’re talking Madvillian, we’re talking Black Star. Basically, The Jackie and Laurie Show is on some next level, pure-as-shit freshness.
There’s a good mix, similar yet distinct, secure enough to be themselves for themselves and against each other in lighthearted dissent. Sometimes Jackie will be effacing or enthusiastic and Laurie has matched sarcastically. Sometimes Laurie will float an anecdote about an unscrupulous booker or comic and Jackie slammed down that she fucking hates that person. Laurie will be dumbfounded by Jackie’s geekiness but drop a Dreamweaver reference. Some of Jackie’s love life lore sounds rapturous and punk, other times she expresses immense gratitude for her husband’s romantic gestures. They don’t always get each other. A lot of inquiries and elaboration. They aren’t always knowledgeable of the same colleagues, same places. Jokelife isn’t a monolith. Assumedly friends for years, it sounds like they’d only been comedy-friends, the deepest yet unfamiliar familiarity known the world over. The Jackie and Laurie Show gives an ear to two dynamite stand-ups, committed to commiserating a tighter bond by gabbing for an hour a week.
It’s great to hear the shop talk, the ball busting, the riffing-not-riffing, never-sweaty rapport. It’s great to hear about sleep deprived road travel, doing radio, comedy condos, comedian crushes on someone’s comedy as opposed to a crush on the comedian, London bombing, revisiting the vault and names named. It’s great to hear assurance, confidence, an unencumbered integrity. It’s great to hear the “get off our lawn” annoyance about the next generation, the conflict and dread of becoming the crotchety predecessors they loathed growing up in comedy, the reflection on how transgressive thresholds in their formative era shaped the “get off our lawn”. They still get pumped about doing 17 sets in New York, are still running bits by one another, are still open to new comedy, even if it’s so old and revered that there’s prescribed shame in delayed exposure. They still get bitter about television shows that never reached out to them, the clubs that never asked them back, when show business is shallow. And, since women are having a moment, especially in comedy, when Beth Stelling speaks up on her domestic abuse, or Amy Schumer is accused of inter-generational joke thievery or Jen Kirkman is battling mouth-frothing Bernie Bros, Jackie and Laurie provide nuanced and earnest commentary in realtime, invaluable as comedy (and the world) continues to evolve, regress and become more complicated. The hosts embrace it all, not giving a shit about subscribed rules and timelines, coming to and expressing comedy from the comfort of living it through and through. For the fan of funny, performer or not, onstage and off, this podcast is a boon.
There’s also forward payment. Each week the show promotes a woman comedian of the week (or two, or six). So far they’ve shouted out the likes of:
Marcella Arguello
Deborah D. Giovanni
Cathy Ladman
Brandie Posey
Martha Kelly, Marina Franklin
Linda Smith, Sue Murphy, Henriette Mantell
Kate Willett
Erin Jackson
Tracey Ashley
Amy Miller
Leah Kayajanian
Maysoon Zayid, Danielle Perez, Nour Hadidi, Courtney Gilmour, Eman El-Huddeini
Jenny Zigrino
Mary Mack
These endorsements aren’t gatekeeping declaration, listicle fodder, an echo of who has buzz. Just funny women that have crossed either comic’s path (or mental ether), a shorthand pointing to great comedy, a high five.
https://t.co/JNzjrFUDHo pic.twitter.com/YdWuVX7BkW
— Courting Comedy (@CourtingComedy)
And at times, thankfully, Jackie and Laurie are deep, real, candid. Alcoholism, eating disorders, therapy, The Artist’s Way, imposter syndrome, injustice, insecurities, regret, and the general gravity of life come up with levity, malaise or somewhere between. Each respond with a curiosity and empathy that gives the other space and reassurance. There’s often a big laugh out of the tension. It’s enlightening, endearing, instant and intimate in a way the great podcasts are and only podcasts can; impossible to elaborate on stage and improbable to confide in-person.
The brilliance of the podcast is in its simplicity: two funny women talking funny. Any chance you get to experience that is refreshing, exciting, and necessary. Even if their experiences share similarities with yours or others, if their chats echo what you’ve seen published across the media spectrum and even if they have repeated themselves from their albums, interviews or other podcasts, it’s still funny. Even if you listen to a lot of podcasts by women comedians, and you’re backed up and overflowing, convinced that subscribing to another show will push you into an existential breakdown, it’s still funny. Even as the conversation evolves and platforms expand inclusiveness and the business figures it out and we complete the slow catch-up to representative parity, Jackie and Laurie’s perspectives, experiences and personhood are valid and novel as fuck—because there’s no one like either—and, most importantly, The Jackie and Laurie Show is still funny.
Notes
– Jackie Kashian has two recurring bits that always tickles: saying she loves or hates something with “the power of the sun”, and blowing out her career’s carbon dating to astronomical proportions.
– Looking forward to Laurie’s updates on the saga of her mother moving in and the grandma-grandson sea creature battle over the remote control.
– On one hand I’d appreciate seeing the comedian recommendations in the show description. On the other I appreciate that its omission forces me to listen to the entire episode intently.
Great piece on a great podcast. I was looking for an article that summed up my feelings on this podcast and was happy to find this.