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This article was a long time in the making. I began just a couple of days after we talked, and it's taken almost two months for me to write it. Why? It's difficult to do Fraser justice in text. I can (and will) tell you about all the interesting things he's up to, and quote some of the witty things he's said, but you can't really get it until you see him tell a story with his wild hand gestures, and the smirk, the smirk my friends, often makes the joke. So read this, and pick up the CD, and then go see him.
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Let's start with some background, shall we? Fraser Young is a Toronto kid. He won the Tim Sims award in 1999*, and was on the jury for the same award the following year. Long story short, it's actually a big deal to win this, and since then Fraser has made many appearances on TV and radio, the two I pay attention to being Video on Trial on Much Music and Definitely Not the Opera on CBC Radio One. He's also been on Much More Music's Listed, Comedy Now and Just for Laughs, and in my little opinion, he's the funniest one of the lot. He is also a cast member of The Sketchersons, who do Sunday Night Live at the Brunswick House, you guessed it, every Sunday night and he's just released a CD of his hilarity titled, Everyone Loves a Smug Bastard.
After a wonderful Sunday Night Live show at The Brunswick House, Fraser sat down with me for a pint and a chat. The first thing that strikes me, though I had met him briefly earlier that evening and had some correspondence with him before this, he is really a very approachable guy. Not someone who feels the need to be 'on' all the time, just a generally funny person. We talked about his early days doing stand up and what he's up to now, about horrible shows and the fun of Sunday Night Live and TV spots, and of course, the Hong Kong flu, but not at all in the order.
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I was eager to find out about when exactly Fraser felt it was the right time to quit his day job. But once we got to talking about it I discovered that it was actually the plan for a day job that was sacked. That's right people, Fraser Young was already so awesome, there was no real need for a day job. We'll start from the beginning, 'I had a plan for a day job, I did,' he says with a laugh. He went to university for three years and did standup when he came back to Toronto every summer. So after three years of part time comedy, he decided to go for it and he took a year off school. The next 16 months consisted of working all day for his father, and then doing stand up at night. 'So I was living in Newmarket, driving down to Markham and back for work and then drive down to Toronto and back to do shows. So that was just - the positive thing about that was since I took a year off from university, all my friends were in university, so there wasn't really a lot of opportunity for a social life,
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everyone was away, and so it was just working and stand up the whole time,' explains Fraser. 'So then I went back and finished my fourth year because I figured, I was already three years in to it, might as well just polish off this thing, get a degree, get a sense of accomplishment. And so when I went back for the fourth year, everything started falling in place, I got my first TV spot, I won the Tim Sims award that year, I got my Comedy Now that year and I got into the Just for Laughs festival that year.' And this is where you learn that even though it can be joked off that Fraser jumped in to a career as a stand up comedian with not much work involved, the three summers spent working on it, and the year he threw himself into it can't be ignored.
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'So it was all kind of bing bing bing bing, and all of a sudden when I graduated university, I kinda had some money already and I had planned on getting a job, because I had this business degree. I was going to work in an office or something like that and then I thought, you know what, I'm going to make a go of this. And I got my first college showcase, so I got booked for a ton of college gigs and I was like 'I've got money right now and I've got money incoming, let's try and roll with it.' It was really, like BOOM, let's get in to showbusiness.'
So what kind of preparation goes in to this anyway? Does he even
know what he's going to say before he gets on stage? His reply was a cheerful,
'mmmmm some of the time.' Depends on the kind of show, explains Fraser, 'for
a showcase or something like that I'll know exactly bing bing bing bing what
exactly I'm going to say almost everywhere, maybe a little adlib here and
there. When I'm doing a headline set it'll usually be that I know what I'm
going to start off with, like the first 5 minutes and then have a rough idea
of what I'm doing but I will kind of let the crowd dictate. Like okay, they
like this kind of stuff, I will give them this kind of stuff, if they don't
like this kind of stuff, I'll slant them more this way. If it's like a dark
crowd, that's fun for me so I can do dark stuff early. So I'll usually do
a couple of testers, early out there, slightly dark, not really offensive
or anything like that, and if they really eat that up then you can get further
and further into it as the night goes on. You know? But if they're not into
it, well alright, then you've got to do it squeaky clean, and it's just got
to be, you know just stuff I wrote when I was younger.'
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Fraser on Stage Fright
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'I didn't it find it all that tough to get on to stages because I'm a great guy and everyone likes me.'
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Between the squeaky clean stuff and the dark stuff, the fun level varies for him with both. 'I'm a big fan of the turn of the phrase. I like to try to put things cleverly,' he says. 'But I mean, I will spend some time trying to really put together some word or a nice certain phrase I find can really can hold the whole night together.'
I was curious about the shows that can't be held together, the total
bombs. I asked him to describe an evening that went horribly, horribly
wrong and after thinking about it for a bit, he went on to tell me about an
afternoon
show at Lambton College in Sarnia. To set the stage, the college
shows aren't really advertised around campus, there's no posters or anything,
Fraser describes
it as a comedy attack! There you are in your university caf, trying
to have some mac and cheese or something, and there's Fraser telling jokes
all of
a sudden. A better explanation, 'you're basically just showing up
in their cafeteria and then the guy's got a microphone and says 'please welcome
your
comic', and if he gets your name right you're lucky.' So there are
times when people will only be there for a few minutes and then leave, or
they're there
the whole time, but they're playing Euchre or their attention is
focused on pretty much anything else. So many of them go like that, 'but this
one in
Sarnia,' starts Fraser, 'was brutal.'
'There was maybe about 15 people, all as far away from the stage as they could possibly be. And so, I mean there were people getting up and there was a point where literally there was 5 solid minutes where there was not a single person listening to me. I was even like testing them, you know, and no one was paying any attention at all. And so basically, I have to be up here for the hour to collect my money. But even those ones, you take fun in that because, you know whatever. I can't even remember the last time where I had a gig that I really hated doing,' he adds. 'I'm not really a guy that gets into it with the audience so much, I'm not out there to start fights or anything like that. So overall, I rarely get angry at people you know, it's just 'hey, if you're not here for the show I understand that'.'
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One of the ongoing things Fraser is involved with is Sunday Night Live, he is a cast member of The Sketchersons. You really should go, it's on every Sunday night, at the Brunswick House in Toronto [Bloor/Bathurst-ish], 9ish I believe. As for how Fraser came to hook up with them, he was familiar with the show itself, when it was done at the Poor Alex Theatre, and was asked to host. 'I hosted here maybe about a year ago, well not here, at the Poor Alex. And then after that, I mean they're a really fun bunch of guys, just fun to hang out with, so I'd just come by and do a news segment every now and then, or just fill in for a couple of sketches. So, around November I had been working with them for a year and a bit and for the last 5 weeks in a row I had shown up to just do other stuff,' with several cast members out of town, The Sketchersons welcomed Fraser into the fold. 'They were short 3 or 4 people so they asked if I wanted to join and I was kinda like, you know what I'd love to,' Fraser explains.
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'But for me, and also for Nikki Payne and Gilson Lubin,
who are also cast members, we already had stand up stuff
going before we started here, so it's the same kind of thing. I just spent
the last
two weeks in Ottawa so I couldn't be at of the last
two shows and I missed all the rehearsals this week, so it is kind of
tough to fit it in. But
for me, it really works out great because it is, you
know, you've got to have brand new stuff written every week so you really
have to bust your ass.
So it really keeps you on task you know?'
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Another of the projects Fraser is involved in is Raising the Roof,
a charity many Canadians are familiar with, but calls for a little
bit of background for those who aren't. The basic idea of Raising
the Roof is to
build awareness of the homeless situation in this country (with
a slant on educating the public about the 'hidden homeless' (couch
surfers, folks who
are forced to live in their cars, that sort of thing). They also
work with organizations and individuals to cook up ways to help
address and, to a certain
extent, prevent homelessness in communities across the country.
Now that the introduction is out of the way, one of their fundraising
campaigns is
a comedy show at the Rivoli. 'I did the gala last year and they
can't have the same gala people every year because it's usually
a lot of the same audience
there but I'm going to be hosting some of the shows at the Rivoli,
first Sean Cullen hosted both shows on the Friday for Raising the
Roof,' says Fraser.
'I'm excited about that because Sean, Sean's great to work with
in the first place, it's just fun to watch. You get in there for
two shows that's just
full on Sean and it is awesome.'
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Fraser Describing his Favourite Trip - [a military christmas show mini-tour]
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'We started off with a couple of shows in Goose Bay, Labrador, which is fairly far north, and awfully cold in December. From there we went to Alert, which is at the top of the goddamned world. It is the most northern permanent settlement in the world. It is north of everything! It is north of magnetic north, which is a little unsettling. Your compasses will be of no use. So we were up there for 4 days of pitch black, so it always seems like it is either 10 at night or 5 in the morning, tough to get used to. There was some weather problems on the way back, though. We had a stopover in Greenland (which is not a good sign. Anytime you have to go south to get to Greenland, you are way too far north.) There was a snowstorm (surprise!) and we almost got stuck at the US air force base for the weekend. The big kick in the ass was that no one had any US money and there was no bank machine at the base, so there was about 16 people on the tour (musicians, dancers, crew, etc.) who would have had to beg their way around for a weekend. In the end we were able to take off in time, and I made it back with most of my fingers.'
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As I mentioned earlier, Fraser has had a few TV spots, some years
ago when he was fresh out of university and some more recent. Even though
most Canadians over the age of 17 have a hard time admitting that they ever
stop on Much Music while channel surfing, we all know many, many, many do.
And I'm going to admit right now that I sometimes do, and if I never did,
I would not know about Video on Trial, which is where I first laid eyes on
Fraser, who had me laughing so hard I was dangerously close to peeing my
pants. Nikki and I have an insane number of inside jokes that need no reference
at all, and several of them have come from Mr. Young himself. You know, like
shouting 'Un-necessary!' or maybe asking if coming out of a bout of writer's
block was helped along by Massari. We can thank Bill Welychka for the chain
of events that eventually lead to Fraser's spots on Video on Trial. 'Bill
Welychka used to work at Much More Music, he got me involved with this show
Listed they do on Much More Music, Listed Top 20. So I did a couple of them
- because he comes down to the Laugh Resort every now and then, well he's
in Edmonton now, but he used to come down to the Laugh Resort all the time,
and he really enjoyed my stuff. So he asked me to come do one of these shows,
so I did, and when they were putting together the Video on Trial stuff, the
producers talked to each other, so when they came down to the Rivoli they
already knew I had done some stuff before, so when they saw me there were
interested in having me on the show.' And that's that.
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Of course, being on Much has made something of a celebrity out of Fraser. Much Music is notorious for repeating shows endlessly, but last December was the worst in recent history, playing Video on Trial and Stars on Trial over and over and over. So when I asked if he gets strange 'I recognize you' stuff from strangers, he laughs and says, 'oooooooh yeah. Especially right now, like when they went crazy with the Much Music stuff over the Christmas break. It was just Video on Trial, Stars on Trial, 24 hours a day. The end of December/beginning of January was like the weirdest period of my life I mean literally, I couldn't even walk down the street...well, not literally, but almost to that level.' Though, it's not the screaming 14 year olds, I asked! 'No, no, no. I find the screaming 14 year olds aren't as big a fan of mine as of other people on the show. I don't really think my humor is as suited,' he says, 'as much as it would be for someone else.' |
I'm curious to the insanity of that. How very odd to be having a drink and a bunch of people at the bar gather round. 'It is, it is really bizarre. Like, I've never had that happen to me before. Where it's just that someone comes up to me because they recognize -,' and he cuts himself off. 'I can somewhat understand how someone who is actually legitimately famous, how that would get old after a while. But for me, it is not even close, it's just for me I haven't got the negative end of it.'
'I mean there's obviously people out there who don't really find my stuff that funny, but I'm not getting those people coming up to me and saying, 'hey you know what, you suck.''
Check out his website and MySpace page for more show updates, for now, try to make it out to The Rivoli on May 29, the Concord Cafe on the 31st and/or The Rivoli June 6th. There is so much more I wanted to fit in this article and it just wasn't happening. Read the transcript for hilarity not included in the article, most notably, the Hong Kong flu. You can pick up the CD, Everyone Loves a Smug Bastard, from him at one of his shows, through his website ot at Sonic Boom.
*Who is Tim Sims and why does this matter? Well, aside from being the guy who cooked up the idea for the circle researcher for those Reese cups commercials, he was also a very talented Toronto-based Comedian (the Tim Sims Playhouse anyone?), and the Tim Sims Encouragement Fund was born in his honor, founded by Lindsay Leese.
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The Playlist
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Fraser's Playlist
1. Supergrass - Jesus Came from Outta Space
2. Roar and the Wolf - Angel
3. Beck - Lazy Flies
4. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah - The Skin of My Yellow Country Teeth
5. Henri Faberge and The Adorables - Ventriloquist Love
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