NEWER UPDATE: Listen to Marc Maron interview Mary Mack on today’s episode of WTF!

Here’s the teaser video:

Listen to the whole episode here: WTFpod.com

UPDATE: Tuesday 3/20 show has been cancelled. Buy tickets for the 3/19 show here.

Come spend an early, sensible, yet hilarious March evening with Mary Mack, the musical Minnesotan comedian and former clarinetist in one of Nashville’s worst polka bands!

Nashville alt comedy providers, Corporate Juggernaut will present nationally touring comedian and former Sumner County & W.O. Smith music teacher, Mary Mack, for an early evening of comedy at Bongo Java After Hours Theater, March 19 & 20th. Mack, who started comedy about 10 years ago in Nashville with her roommate Jennie Donaldson and their polka band, says the show is more of an abridged hour version of her life than it is a regular comedy show. She is touring this month putting the final touches on what she calls her “Anti One-Woman Show,” subtitled “Sh*t Makes Flowers Grow.”

Mack and her mandolin sing alongs have been featured on the Bob and Tom Radio Show, NBC’s Last Comic Standing, and Comedy Central. She is a cast member on Wisconsin Public Radio’s “Big River Radio Wave,” and can be heard on the XM/Sirius Network. As iconic comedian Louie Anderson describes her: “She’s an original character from the Midwest that rings true. She’ll be telling you a joke about one thing, and then she’ll break off into a song about minnows.”

Expect a quirky evening of pleasant surprises situated in an intimate space with a famed performance history: Bongo After Hours Theater (upstairs at the Belmont Bongo Java, 2007 Belmont Blvd, Nashville). Tickets are available online at bongoafterhours.com for $10 or $15 at the door. See Corporatejuggernaut.com or marymackcomedy.com for more info.

Mon & Tues, March 19 & 20, 2012—7pm

Bongo Java After Hours Theater, 2007 Belmont Blvd, Nashville
(You may have seen Steve Earle perform there among other really great shows.)

Cost: $10 in advance @ www.bongoafterhours.com or $15 @ door
Industry and Clergymen get in free, because Mary needs help in both areas.

Every year Montreal’s “Just For Laughs” festival selects some “New Faces” for a series of special showcase shows. In their words, “Today’s hottest up-and-comers try to catch the eye of talent scouts and network executives in the most important sets of their lives. Come see tomorrow’s stars today!” Of course, these “new faces” are generally well established, proven talents with many accolades and recognition and credits to their name long before the festival took notice.

For example, this year one of the New Faces is our own Mary Mack. You might remember this nationally touring headliner from her appearances on Comedy Central’s “Live at Gotham”, or on NBC’s “Last Comic Standing” or on the “Bob and Tom Radio Show”.

Congratulations to Mary! She and the rest of the New Faces perform “the most important sets of their lives” Tuesday thru Thursday this week at the Cabaret Juste Pour Rire.

Anna Matsen attended Mary Mack‘s May 18th album-release show at Zanies and sends in this review:

My title isn’t fair. Mary Mack‘s humor isn’t purely absurd, but I’m at a loss how precisely to describe it. The most remarkable description I can give of her performance is that it’s both rambling and compact. Her thoughts flow like a meandering steam — one which, magically, loops back to earlier points with ease — yet the jokes are quick, craftily worded, expertly timed, and (ironically, given my stream analogy) bone dry. To put it another way, many excellent one-liners could be plucked from her material (“I don’t have a wide range of emotion. I get panic attacks, but I’m just not that excited about ‘em.”), but strung together these jokes become each other’s seamless context.

Perhaps listing the subjects of her comedy would help. She talks about the eccentricities of her life and family, yet isn’t an “observational” comic (at least, not of the “Say, have you ever noticed …?!” variety). Many of her stories relate to small town northern Wisconsin, yet Nashville laughed as hard at these as it did the rest of her jokes. Once or twice she flirted with political humor, but the affair was fleeting, sweet, and refreshingly undramatic. She opened with a recorder-accordion duet, featured a charming Father’s Day song on mandolin (which will be stuck in your head for a week after hearing it), and finale’d with a special tune on her imaginary musical saw.

The show I saw, her album release show at Zanies (Pinch Finger Girl is well-worth the ten bucks — I’ve already listened to it twice through and will be loaning it out to friends), was my first time experiencing her humor. It took a little time for the crowd to fully warm up, but overall the atmosphere was awe and giggles in honor of the captivatingly eccentric lady with the breathy, pinched voice. Even the waiters seemed more relaxed than usual, reacting to the comic with joyful snickers as they ran between tables. She had one especially clever audience interaction: Miss Mack sang a quick ditty about her hope that the enthusiastically drunk lady near the stage wasn’t a speech therapist. The woman was too busy laughing, along with the rest of the crowd, to speak up for the next ten minutes. (I very much wish I could remember the exact line.)

I do have a conspiracy theory about Mary Mack, and I hope those who’ve seen her act will back me up on this: she’s the long-lost lovechild of Maria Bamford and Steven Wright, secretly raised by down home erratics in the middle of nowhere (i.e. northern Wisconsin) in order to trigger the coping mechanism that generates professional-grade comedic skills.. It’s the only logical explanation.

Mary Mack’s website is MaryMackComedy.com.

Anna Matsen — a word nerd, political junkie, amateur philosopher, sushi-lover, and Nashvillian — attends as many comedy gigs as she can afford. As a grad student of English at Belmont Unversity and an English tutor at The Learning Lab, she works daily to improve her writing skills, hoping to one day write something worth a book jacket. Visit Anna on Facebook.

Sunday, May 17
7:30pm Walt Willey (Zanies)
8pm OPEN MIC (Music Row Bar & Grill)

Monday, May 18
7:30pm Mary Mack, Chad Riden (Zanies)
8pm OPEN MIC (Lonnie’s on West End)

Tuesday, May 19
8am – 9am Get Up, Stand Up (91.1 WRVU-FM)
8pm OPEN MIC Contest (Spanky’s Sportsbar & Grill)

Wednesday, May 20
7:30pm Jamie Kennedy, Chad Riden (Zanies)

Thursday, May 21
7:30pm James Gregory (Zanies)
9pm Church Street Comedy (Jesse Zane’s Nashville Nights)

Friday, May 22
7:30pm, 9:45pm James Gregory (Zanies)
9:30pm Chris Loyd & Friends Comedy Show – Andie Lynne, Christy Eidson, Chris Loyd, Holly Amber Swiat Anderson, Brian Bates, Leslie Nash (Music City Bar & Grill)

Saturday, May 23
7pm, 9pm James Gregory (Zanies)

More details can be found in the NashvilleStandUp show calendar in the sidebar.

NashvilleStandUp alumnus Mary Mack will be a guest on The Bob and Tom Radio Show Monday, November 17th. Other scheduled guests include Scott Dunn and Moody McCarthy.

BobAndTom.com/ says, “Folk ‘n Comedy: It’s true that folk humorist Mary Mack often recounts stories of her life, but unlike your boring uncle, she does it with a guitar up on stage and makes a living doing it.” (wait. Does she use a guitar? Last time we saw her she was playing her mandolin and clarinet.) “And seeing as she’s a former polka band leader, music teacher, and all-around confused individual, we’re guessing she’s got some pretty good stories. Mack recently won Bill Word’s California Funniest Female competition and is gaining a following across the country. You can normally pick out a Mary Mack show because her audience is usually the one partaking in grown-up sing-alongs.”
Mary Mack is one of the most creative female comics working today. She’s very character-driven and very, very funny. She lived in Nashville a few years ago and performed all over the area before hitting the road.. so if you live near Nashville and you’ve never seen her live.. listen in to the Bob and Tom Show and kick yourself in the face for not supporting her and the rest of the Nashville comedy scene when you had the chance.

In Nashville, tune in to WRQQ 97.1 FM.

www.MaryMackComedy.com
www.bobandtom.com/