Stephen Lynch

The Kalamazoo State Theatre is as close to home-field advantage as it gets for comedian/musician Stephen Lynch. He sold out the 1,500-seat venue in 2002, and with every return tour stop he's thrilled his fans with new material as racy and cutting edge as the songs that made him a star on Comedy Central. Plus he's from Kalamazoo and can count on a healthy group of his close friends in the audience.

But on Oct. 26, one hour before he takes the familiar stage with his Alvarez guitar and waves to a crowd that answers back with a roar, Lynch will be downstairs in the green room with a wild nervousness in his eyes. He'll pace, and fidget and the look on his face will turn from mischievous to frightened. Lynch admitted to Recoil that this happens every time he picks up a guitar to perform.

"I get nervous if I'm at my house and we have friends over and somebody says, 'Play one of your songs,'" Lynch said. "I get nervous before that."

There is a reason for the panic that consumes him before each show – a perfectly good reason. It's a fear Lynch hopes will subside a bit when he begins delivering a more scripted show on Broadway next year.

Beginning in April, Lynch will play Robbie Hart in the Broadway version of The Wedding Singer. The play, based on the role Adam Sandler made famous in the movie of the same name in 1998, will feature plenty of music and countless performances, but it will allow Lynch to hide a little. Lynch said he's looking forward to singing someone else's songs.

"The burden is on you every time you go out on stage to sell your material," he said of touring with his own music. "And if you don't, then you feel doubly bad because not only do you not sell it, but you think, 'Well, maybe it's not a very good piece of material anyway.'"

Lynch is a theater veteran who's performed in various productions including a few at the Barn Theatre in Augusta, Mich. So it's not as if the role was just handed to him because of his celebrity status. The producers feel confident he'll sell their material each night, and he's hopeful the success will encourage a new audience to see his comedy shows or buy an album. He joked that if everything bombs, it's only half his fault.

"Maybe that's not the best way to look at things, maybe I'm taking it with too cynical an edge."

But before rehearsals begin this winter, Lynch will head back on the road with new material to be nervous about. On Oct. 4, he'll release his third album, The Craig Machine, on What Are Records. In many ways it's more of the same, but thankfully the same means more songs that start off soft and sentimental before whamming you over the head with a story of a gay Satan or song of accidental anal sex, or a college professor trying to get with a college freshman.

Lynch said there are two different ways he'll approach a new song: either he'll just start off with the joke, or he'll draw the audience in with 90 seconds of harmonious melodies before "hitting them over the head." More often than not he chooses the latter. But before he begins to create the melodies and rhymes, he'll bounce the idea off his wife Erin.

"I'll say something, like an idea for a song or whatever, and if she laughs then I'll start writing it, and if she doesn't, I don't even bother," Lynch said. One can only imagine the conversations the two must of shared: "Hey honey, I've got this great idea about getting cock blocked by an obese girl," or "How about this? What would it sound like if Billy Corgan lost his car keys?"

"Luckily she has a good sense of humor," he added.

Lynch considers himself more a musician than a comedian. The speed at which he's risen to fame backs that assertion. Normally a comic has to suffer through 15 years of smoke-filled clubs before being recognized nationally, while a good band can be noticed in less than five. It's been five years since Lynch released his Comedy Central Presents special and 10 since he moved to New York and began performing with a comedy variety show. It's also been 10 years since Lynch last went on stage not feeling nervous.

"I had kind of gotten over my nerves, and was like, 'Ah, this is a piece of cake man. It's so easy, I just get up there and sing songs, and everybody loves them and I'm done.' So I wasn't nervous and I got up there and I fucked up every lyric and I forgot every chord on the guitar and nobody laughed and it was the most horrific experience. Ever since then I've been nervous before every single show because it's just a reminder that things can go horribly wrong if you don't have a little focus and energy."

October 2005