What: Bruce McCulloch’s Young Drunk Punk
Where: University Centre Farquhar Auditorium
When: Friday, 8 p.m.
Tickets: $35, $28 (250-721-8480)
Was Bruce McCulloch a young, drunk punk when he was a teenager? “I was an a--hole,” McCulloch said from Los Angeles, where the former Kids in the Hall comic lives with his family.
“I lifted weights competitively. I drove around in various Toyota Corollas that I smashed up. I got into fights. The most important thing to me was my friends and whatever music I was into that week.”
McCulloch, 52, performs his 70-minute show Young Drunk Punk on Friday at the University of Victoria. He’ll be accompanied by his guitarist pal, Craig Northey of The Odds.
The solo piece combines stand-up comedy, autobiographical musings and music. It loosely chronicles McCulloch’s journey from being a “young drunk punk” in Edmonton to his plaid-flannel days in Toronto to becoming a rumpled dad living in the Hollywood Hills. Expect absurdism and irreverent hilarity from the man whose previous one-man shows include Two-Headed Roommate, Jazz Stenographers and Slightly Bigger Cities.
For years, the Kids in the Hall reigned as Canada’s top sketch comedy troupe. Their TV show ran from 1988 to 1994 on CBC (the show was also broadcast on CBS and HBO). Since then, McCulloch, a writer and actor, has directed films such as Stealing Harvard and Superstar.
Young Drunk Punk, which debuted at Toronto’s Sketchfest last March, is McCulloch’s first solo show in a decade. Lately, he’s written a couple of TV pilots that were not picked up. Meanwhile, the urge to perform resurfaced.
“There’s a frustration to this. I wanted to communicate to people, whether it’s 50 or 500,” he said.
It was partly an interest in punk rock that took McCulloch, as a young man, from the Prairies to Toronto. Part of the city’s appeal, McCulloch said, was that it was home to The Diodes, the Canadian punk band.
But Young Drunk Punk isn’t about punk rock.
“The questioning spirit is the punk spirit. When I say ‘punk,’ that’s what I mean,” he said.
Part of the show is about fatherhood. McCulloch, who became a dad later in life, has children aged seven and nine.
His relationship with the father was mixed — he once wrote a tongue-in-cheek newspaper article about “that beautiful day when you beat up your dad.” His parents split when he was young. McCulloch’s father — a rye-and-ginger devotee — was a travelling salesman (later a furniture salesman) who gave his children free rein to roam.
“I definitely raised myself,” McCulloch said. “I was allowed to do whatever I wanted.”
McCulloch’s parents didn’t talk to their kids about their teenage aspirations and struggles. By contrast, he makes an effort to chat to his own children about “how they are in the world.” (This despite the fact, when McCulloch once asked his son if he ever thought about him when he was at school, the boy replied: “No, why would I do that?”)
The notion of “punk” also refers to an outsider sensibility — something McCulloch said the Kids in the Hall had.
“The Kids in the Hall were a bunch of nerds,” he said. “When we started first going on tour and there was 600 people [in the audience] who felt like us, I couldn’t believe it.”
Last month, the Kids in the Hall had a reunion — titled Rusty and Ready — in Toronto for the first time in five years. The shows featured new material and old favourites.
McCulloch was happy to do it. In the past, he might have had mixed feelings.
“I think I went through a period where I didn’t want to be defined as a Kid in the Hall. Because I’m ‘so much more.’ But now I’m more comfortable with the fact they’ll mention These are the Daves I Know [a classic McCulloch bit] when I die.”
Not long ago, McCulloch had lunch with fellow Canadian comic Dave Thomas. The SCTV star is best known for playing Doug McKenzie, one of the beer-swilling, tuque-wearing McKenzie brothers.
“I said [to Thomas], ‘You know, they’re going to be wearing tuques at your funeral.’ He said, ‘Yeah, I know.’ ”
