2776: How 3 Great Comedy Writers Made Music and Comedy With 82 Brilliant Artists, Stars, Legends and Other Celebrities

Published by Interrobang Staff at February 16, 2015

2776

It’s Presidents Day and we can’t think of a better way to celebrate it then to shine a spotlight on the comedy and musical greatness of 2776. The album has been out for a year now, but it’s still great, and it still is for a great cause.

The 28 track double album is a journey through America’s past, present and future. Released last year, the album’s narrative follows a quest to convince an alien not to destroy planet Earth by sharing some of the history of the United States. Created by three incredibly talented comedy writers, and starring an almost unbelievable list of talented artists, the album was created for a great cause. Every album sold benefits OneKid OneWorld which provides a foundation for education in impoverished communities.

The album is a masterpiece, and the brainchild of Joel Levinson, Stephen Levinson, and Rob Kutner, who are brothers (well two of them), friends, comedy writers and producers. Stephen writes for Midterm Mayhem on the Fusion Network, Joel became infamous for becoming the first person to earn a living by winning online video contests, while Kutner has four Emmy awards for writing for the Daily Show and continues to write for Conan. Patton Oswalt, Reggie Watts, Paul F Tompkins, Dick Cavett, Bobcat Goldthwait, Robert Smigel, Jonathan Katz, Dick Gregory, Aimee Mann and Andrew WK are just a few of the 82 incredible talents who lent their voices to 2776. We got to talk with Joel, Stephen and Rob and hear some of the great stories behind the making of the album.

With such a dream line up, of course we had to know who did the casting. Joel said that it was Rob’s idea to have everyone write down who they would dream of working with as a starting point. Joel said the coolest person they cast had to be guitar god Eric Johnson. “Seriously,” Joel told us, “he’s one of the great all time guitar players and he comes in on that solo in Not What the Founders Expected, and I swear to God its my favorite solo in rock history. He just destroys it and then he’s gone and you don’t have any idea…if you don’t know it was him you have no idea how that thing showed up on the track.”

Listen to Eric Johnson’s solo in Not What the Founders Expected:

Some of the celebrities– like Mayim Bialik and music group Right Said Fred were asked to do some satire work of their past selves. Joel said Right Said Fred were really great guys. “We were a little bit nervous,” Rob admitted. “Are they gonna think this idea is really funny, we think that they’re perfect for it, but are they gonna be down with talking about taking the time machine back to when they were only wearing mesh shirts? And the answer is yes they’re totally down for that.” Mayim Bialik also had a great sense of humor about singing about 1991. According to Joel “she told them ‘take your shots it’s cool, you’re not going to hurt me” and then later thanked them for taking her out of her comfort zone. Right Said Fred and Mayim Bialik collaborated along with Reggie Watts on Journey to Anywhen, a trek back to 1991.

Friends, and friends of friends helped out with some of the casting– like Mayim Bialik who was recruited through a mutual friend who attended the same synogogue. But the majority of the casting came through a very simple source– Twitter. “For some reason people let their guard down on twitter a little more,” Rob told us, “so I just found someone who Aimee Mann was also following, along with me and just wrote them a message, just this thing- would you send Aimee Mann a message? And she was like, sure. It’s the backstage of Hollywood.”

Aimee Mann Dresses Up as a Virus

We asked the guys what was the most fun or unusual moment for them when they were recording the album. For Stephen, it was easy to pick his favorite experience. The entire album was recorded on a tight budget, which meant some of the songs were recorded in his brother Joel’s garage.

“Going to my brother’s garage one day and Aimee Mann shows up and records this song, and I’ve been a lifelong fan so that was really mindblowing!”

Aimee performed I’m Cured, a super sentimental song about what happens to a virus when a cure for the common cold is found. Stephen was blown away that Aimee Mann was willing to show up to record songs in Joel’s garage. She even agreed to dress up in a virus costume for the music video. She only had one condition before agreeing to the video, Stephen recalled. “She was joking, but she said…as long as it’s a sexy virus.” The guys didn’t want to disappoint Aimee Mann, so they went to the only costume designer on the planet who could pull off a sexy virus costume, the same costumer who designed Isabella Rosallini’s sexy weird costumes in her series on animals. The result is smashingly sexy. David Wain and Dave Foley join Aimee in the video for the song.

Andrew W.K. Records Party on Your Grave in Joel’s Garage

Joel picked his coolest moment as the day that Andrew W.K. showed up to perform in his garage.

“I’ve been a fan of Andrew WK forever, and this was when we were still doing most of the things out of my garage, and Rob had gotten a hold of him and he said he was willing to come. He had a couple of days in LA so he showed up looking exactly like Andrew WK does, in all white and with his hair, and he looks fantastic– like a rock star — at 10am with a bottle of whiskey.

“And he sits down and he just starts banging stuff out with me, and I was like, ‘well should we close the garage’ and he was like, no no I kind of like how it sounds open. So there were these moments when I’m a little bit drunk with Andrew WK at 11:00 in the morning, and he is screaming at the top of his lungs, we’re gonna have a party on your mother fucking grave while there’s neighbors walking up and down. I remember this look– there were two kids in their 20s and they were walking by and didn’t have time to stop, but the double take was the greatest double take I’ve ever seen in my life.”

In Party on Your Grave, Andrew plays the leader of a heavy metal death gang, who is celebrating his enemy’s demise.

Hear Andrew W.K. Perform Party on Your Grave:

NPR’s Nina Totenberg Sings a Guitar Riff

Rob Kutner picked two experiences that were his most memorable. One of them was the day he had to try to wrangle comedy icons Dick Gregory, Dick Cavett, Al Jaffe and Joe Franklin by running around New York in a Limo filled with platters of deli meats.

His other favorite experience came about when recording NPR’s Nina Totenberg for the album, and her track is also one of our favorites. Nina is a well-known award-winning legal affairs correspondent for NPR and she has extensively covered the affairs of the Supreme Court for shows like All Things Considered, Morning Edition, and Weekend Edition, but on 2776 she lets it all out in a musical tribute to the Supreme Court. Nina not only sings, she vocalizes instrumentations in a most unexpected way.

Rob said that initially they were only looking to find someone in the news who could sing the chorus on a track called Start the Presses and they had put out the word through friends if anyone knew someone who would fit the bill. “Everyone started saying you gotta talk to Nina Totenberg cause she’s a great singer,” Rob told us. So he got in touch with Peter Sagal, the host of Wait Don’t Tell Me who managed to get an email to Nina. Rob explained what happened next.

“We got a call from her and she’s like, ‘This is Nina Totenberg’ and I’m like ‘what!?’ And then she says, ‘what is this?’ So I have to explain the whole thing and she says ‘well you know what I just had knee surgery I’m laid up for six weeks and I’ve got nothing else to do.’ So she agreed to do it and we sent her the part. And I think she’s gonna hate this because it’s a crazy song with rappers, and some off-color language; and she says ‘is this the biggest part I get? The chorus?’ So we had a huddle and Joel and Stephen came up with this crazy idea about the futuristic rock opera that’s a Supreme Court case, and bring it out to her and I expect to hear her say absolutely not this is a degradation of my dignity, but then she’s like, here’s some notes how to make it sound more like the actual supreme court would say.”

Nina shared some notes with the guys about how the Supreme Court would actually work in the year 2776. She told Rob, “okay I can sing opera, I know what rock is but I don’t understand what this rock opera thing is.” So Joel taught Nina how to sing Rock Opera over the phone. “What I did was I scored the whole song so that she would have some sort of idea of what to go with, and then I was with her on the phone and I would sing a line, and she would sing it back and I would sing a line and she would sing it back, and it kind of started off slowly,” Joel said. “She got it a little bit and she kind of did the first guitar solo, and she didn’t really get it. And then we did it a second time and she was like, ‘oh wait a second, oh this is fun. I want to do more of these.’ And we ended up getting probably 12 minutes of just different guitar solos out of her mouth and choosing which ones were her favorite. And she loved it. She was like giddy the whole time. It was amazing.”

Watch a clip of Nina working her vocals.

The Ones That Got Away

All three guys were blown away by how much time and work the performers put into the album. Stephen couldn’t help but be inspired by the talent, and the effort. “I think we saw that over and over again. We thought ‘oh we’re imposing on these people with our stupid jokes’ but once people were in, almost every single person wanted them to go right. Even if they were in for a short amount of time, they would stay there until they were happy with their performance which was just really inspiring to see,” Levinson said. “It makes you realize, oh that’s why these people are successful.”

Not every celebrity they wanted made it to the final album. While most of the people asked to participate agreed to be on the album, scheduling didn’t always work out. Fred Armisen was one of the performers who they were never able to record. Patrick Stewart was another. Rob said that Stewart was very much into the idea, but they just couldn’t nail down a date. They even had a sketch written for Stewart. Stewart was set to give a graduation speech in the post-apocalyptic future where his character tries to give hope to the world even though everything has gone to shit. Later you learn that Stewart was the cause of everything going down the drain.

Even though the project never got recorded, anything’s possible when you’re working with time travel. Kutner hasn’t ruled it out: “Well, when we do the 10th anniversary, for sure. The Retrospective. There’s always hope!”

To own all 29 great tracks, and support an important cause, Order 2776 today.

Order 2776 and help support OneKid OneWorld Today.