In his latest musical comedy special, Now More Than Ever, John Early jokes about his lack of knowledge about history and other high school subjects. Near the beginning of our conversation, it becomes clear that he can add geography to that list of subjects he's fuzzy about.
"Be real: is Ontario Toronto?" he says from his home in Los Angeles, posing a very confusing question, which again, seems to track with the clueless guy he makes himself out to be on his very smart new special.
"I'm not lying, I'm not being cute — I really know nothing," Early says, laughing. "I've never looked at a map."
He continues, "I have been to Toronto and people would say, 'Ontario,' after saying Toronto and then, instead of thinking, 'Yeah, city first and then [province].' I, for some reason have always been panicked that it's the same thing and they just have two different names."
This is certainly a new one in the annals of Canadians interviewing Americans confused about our country, and it speaks to the uniqueness of John Early.
An actor, comedian, writer, and singer who is originally from Nashville (which is part of but not the same thing as Tennessee), Early is renowned for his performances on TV shows like Search Party, 30 Rock, Bob's Burgers, Archer, and I Think You Should Leave, and roles in many films, including Other People, The Disaster Artist and Stress Positions, among others. He often collaborates on comedy projects with his hilarious friend Kate Berlant, including the Vimeo series 555, and the sketch comedy special, Would It Kill You to Laugh.
In 2023, HBO released Early's brilliant comedy special Now More Than Ever; this week (September 13), an adapted version of the special will be released as an album just after Early and his band, the Lemon Squares, launch their extensive North American tour (with a Toronto stop on October 3).
The standup portion of both versions of Now More Than Ever is ostensibly the same, but the album contains many more live musical performances, while the HBO version includes interconnected sketches in between the live show (which is a mix of Early doing bits) and his band playing cover songs by everyone from Britney Spears to Donna Summer. By and large, the comedy and music are separated, with each rendered sincerely.
Well, almost. There's a very impressive display of musical skill and gamesmanship that takes place when Early and the Lemon Squares perform Summer's "I Feel Love."
"I've always loved that song," Early says. "It's maybe the greatest song of all time. It's so special. And it has a very clear game, the song. In every verse, they add a backup singer, and the song ascends a step in the verses. Now, normally Donna Summer always takes the melody in every verse, so she's singing the same thing every time. But because I specialize comedically in one-upmanship, on a humour level, me taking the top note on the top line, so it goes higher and higher each time — it's just a fun athletic trick to do for the audience. It feels very old school. Like, 'And now I will spin plates.'"
It's a hazardous endeavour: "It's always been our big fun closer, and I do not know if I can hit [that note]. So [taping the special], there was an actual risk, and I only had two chances to get it, and that was so terrifying but also, kind of the whole point of the whole thing was to really just give it to God and try to put this thing on the record."
As a comedic force, Early possesses a strangely wholesome anarchic spirit. A gay man who is very close to his Presbyterian parents (who are illuminated in the special) and credits singing hymns in church for his remarkable vocal range, Early is also a slyly critical and outside-the-box progressive thinker.
Within his multi-layered takedowns of our cellphone lives and strangely distant social interaction, there is a lot to laugh at, but also plenty to thoughtfully ponder, as we constantly seem to be running towards a future we're not setting up to be sustainable.
The surprising centrepiece of Now More Than Ever finds Early leading his band through a totally reverent version of Neil Young's "After the Gold Rush," a song that includes the line, "Look at Mother Nature on the run," and, in an update from "in the 1970s," Early sings, "in the 21st century."
"I think that material in that part of the special is a result of my age," Early says, "Kind of being at the end-of-my-youth phase, when you're like, 'Oh, I'm no longer at the centre of the cultural conversation.' I think so many people my age — like, older millennials — we're realizing how we just basically took the past 15 years of our lives and put them through a paper shredder, because of the phone. It's material; it has actually taken real time from us, and I think I'm waking up to this. Like, what could I have done had I not been on my phone for the past 15 years? What could I have made? What relationships would I have? What kind of sex would I be having? It's really quite scary.
He adds, "There's a kind of language and affect that's been created via social media that like really, really kneecaps sincerity. It's not just about what kind of cultural offerings, we as a generation have actually put forward. There's an inability to be sincere, because of these received internet-y attitudes and slang. I'm really, in a very messy way, both right now and in the special, trying to talk about that.
He concludes, "And so, the point of the Neil Young song is, at the end of all that [irreverence], I kind of just plopped down a little sincere offering."
Listen to this entire conversation with John Early on the Kreative Kontrol podcast.