Kathleen Madigan is Back on the Road And Loving It, and The Road is Loving Her Right Back
Kathleen Madigan is in the middle of her first post-lockdown national tour. She’s been zigging and zagging around the country since late summer, hitting the road hard with dates now through August 2022 all over the country. Audiences have been starved to come out of hiding and laugh with Madigan everywhere she goes, and with good reason– she’s one of the funniest headliners touring today.
If you’ve been living in a cave, Kathleen Madigan has been touring 250 nights on the road every year, for the last 30 years, and squeezing specials and late night sets along the way (over 40 appearances on late night)! She continues selling out theaters across the country and she’s got a killer podcast- Madigan’s Pubcast- that feels like you’ve just sat down at a bar one seat away from Kathleen and her friends. Her last special, “Bothering Jesus” is amazing, and its on Netflix now. But go see her live on tour when she pulls into your town.
Kathleen is one of my absolute favorite funny people so when I spoke to Kathleen earlier this month about being back on the road again, I laughed through the entire call which went on for at least an hour while she was watching the wind and the rain outside her hotel window in Green Bay Wisconsin. Enjoy these excerpts from our conversation, but more importantly, go to kathleenmadigan.com/tour to find out when she is coming to a theater near you.
The Interrobang: You’ve booked amazing cities, amazing venues. You’ve definitely booked the “I want to travel a lot and I don’t care if we do this in order of geography” plan.
Kathleen Madigan: Yeah, no, there’s no…. the whole Florida then out of Phoenix and then back to Florida, I’m like whatever, some of it has just been moved because of COVID. So like normally where I might say something and go “Hey guys, can we rethink this one? I’m just saying, I’m saying nothing. They all need to be made up. They all, let’s just, it’ll take literally a year and a half to get the ship right from a year and a half being, not working. So it’s a day for a day. Yeah.
The Interrobang: How’s the traveling been? Is it harder than it used to be?
Kathleen Madigan: It’s worse. The shows are still great. But the logistics part, like I was in Milwaukee and I rented an SUV because I had the opening act and all of his stuff, and all my stuff, and the girl gave me the…she’s like “Okay, so you’re going to be in whatever car.” And I go “Oh, well I had rented an SUV” and she goes “I have a Volkswagen Jetta” and I go “Okay, but that’s a car. Yeah.” She goes “Yeah.” I don’t even know what to do with that. I go “Well, do you have it?” There’s hardly any rental cars. You just have to be happy with what you get. There’s like hardly any employees anywhere. It’s almost like camping on the road. You have to come prepared. Yeah. Like bring your own shit.
Me and Louis Black, we have a theory that it’s not, we don’t think it’s the unemployment check… and even those aren’t even coming anymore. We think people just woke up and, you know what? I don’t want to work here anymore. Now where they went, I don’t know, but they are not coming back. Yeah. Everybody needs to get comfortable with the fact that there’s…I was in a Starbucks somewhere and some guy was just berating the only girl working there. I’m like, sir, she’s our last hope. If she quits we’re fucked. We can’t jump over this counter and start making…. Do not start yelling at this lady.
But it is weird out here. Like Milwaukee, no mask do what you want. Hour and a half down the road, Chicago, all masked.
The Interrobang: That’s so funny. I mean, how do you even know like how to act because you just go from one place to another and suddenly you went from looking like everyone to being the weirdo that everyone hates.
Kathleen Madigan: Yeah. And then, or you find yourself forgetting and now I’m the asshole people are staring at. And I’m like, no, no, no. I’m not an asshole. This is not a statement. This is just, I am 55 and forgot. Sorry, I’m going to go right back in my purse and find one of my 7,000 masks. It varies, the realities are extremely different. I said to Lewis, you know how in a dream, you hardly ever have any coherent segues? You know, you’re like, well I was at the Green Bay game and the next thing I know I was in a mall and it just that’s what the day seems like.
Nobody alive’s been through pandemic. Okay. So let’s start with that unless they’re a hundred and literally 20. But on the other hand, we could be a little better with consistency. It’s just random, just random. And I think the mask on plane thing goes to January, which is fine. I don’t care. Cause I always get sick on planes anyway. I just, I turn that thing—- I call it the SARS shooter, the air vent above you. I’m like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Turn it off. I don’t care how hot I get. I am not blowing SARS in my face.
The Interrobang: So how have the shows been? I mean, do the people feel different? Does it feel different for you to be on stage after taking some time?
Kathleen Madigan: Well, it feels the same for me, but boy, are they excited! I mean, there was the Reno people. I was standing backstage with the opening act and they said the show was going to be starting in whatever, five minutes or whatever. And they got, they were, like rabid. I said to Michael “I’m afraid of these people.” This is like, I don’t know what they’re expecting, but it’s still just me. I don’t have dancers. It they’re so excited. I said to Lewis “I feel like it’s a USO show.”
Like when we go to Iraq and Afghanistan they were so excited. You couldn’t ask for a better crowd. Everybody should have filmed their specials there. I don’t know why none of us did. We all should have done that because the crowds were so insanely great. And that’s what it kind of feels like now. And I think people are just excited to be out. They’re excited to be doing something, some sort of concert, whatever. And then it depends on where you’re at too. Like the south didn’t really close close– they weren’t really following the rules, put it that way. So those people aren’t quite as jacked up because they have already been out. But other everywhere else. Yeah. They’re excited.
The Interrobang: Do you have some cities and theaters that are special for you? You know, when you get there, you pull in, you’re like, these are my people. This is where I love to be.
Kathleen Madigan: Yeah. Well, Milwaukee for sure. Milwaukee and Chicago. I should just live in Wisconsin. I love the cheese. I love bratwurst. I mean, I’d be dead in 10 years, but whatever. The beer, all that stuff. They love sports. It’s all right up my alley and Chicago too. I would say like the Midwest it and some of the East. The west is where I feel like an alien. Like I am booked in Turlock, California. And I don’t know where that is. I have no relationship with any knowledge. I finally looked it up and it’s kind of by Modesto. And I only know that because of Scott Peterson who murdered his wife. That big case that went on. Like I don’t, I look at the trees and I’m like, if there is reincarnation, I never ever lived there because nothing seems familiar. Like, Hey, I’m in Santa Rosa. Okay. Really don’t know where I’m at. But here’s the show. The people are nice. I have a bunch of those. I was just in Monterey, Napa. Even that area. I’m like, what do we, how am I supposed to drive to a winery and drink their wine? And then I’m supposed to drive back.
So I mean, I really, I just like the whole middle, all the way down to the south of the middle. Meaning like Nashville, because I have a place there. So I’m there a lot. And that feels…. like Missouri, there’s something that’s familiar to me. Yeah. I know these streets. So those are probably where my favorite just where I look at the calendar going, I actually can’t wait to go there.
The Interrobang: When you travel, do you just go to work? Or do you go out into the cities, spend some time, hit the bars?
Kathleen Madigan: Oh, I do everything, usually if I can, that’s why, I don’t know if you’ve seen it lately, but Mick Jagger keeps popping up on their tour. Like he was at a bar in Charlotte drinking a beer by himself and nobody, but I said to my sister, I go “Yeah, but he is almost 80.” So probably nobody at that bar even if they looked at him, I don’t think they’d be like,…there’s some old guy over there drinking our beer. And then in Nashville, he just last weekend in Nashville, he busted into a bachelorette party, went down Printer’s Alley and sang karaoke. He probably never, ever could do any of that before.
Every city, I already kind of know if there’s stuff I want to do or I don’t want to do. I really love the road. That’s why like when they ask, “do you want to be in a sitcom?” No. No, no. And I mean, no. They’ll come back and go, “well, you don’t have to audition with everybody else. You can go straight to producers.” No, I didn’t say that as a bargaining chip. I don’t want to be in a sitcom. And I think people just can’t believe that. Like agency people and stuff, they’re like, well, why? Because I’m not an actor. I don’t know how I don’t have the patience to stand there. I’ve been with Lewis when he did the Big Bang Theory, it was fucking torture, torture. We were there for seven hours. Ugh. I’m like, no, no, no, no freedom. I want to be on the road. I want to go see stuff, weird stuff.
That’s why I like driving. Like rather than a tour bus, like I’ve ridden on those tour buses, but to stop, it’s a pain in the ass. And then the driver gets crabby.
The Interrobang: You should write a book. A travel book!
Kathleen Madigan: I can’t write. I can’t. Whenever Lewis [Black] writes a book, I call it he’s in book jail. And he can’t talk to me for like two days, because he’ll pretend like he’s seriously doing something.
The Interrobang: And I know you started the podcast over the pandemic, “Madigan’s Pubcast” and I got to tell you, you have the best episode headings I’ve ever seen. You have the most interesting conversations. Are you going to keep it up?
Kathleen Madigan: I am. Yeah. I can see the streaming numbers and it’s had over a million streams, but does that actually translate into someone showing up? That’s a big leap there. And if they are, because there’s young people that are like, I didn’t even know you were a comedian. I’m like really? So like the last 33 years, really? You never heard about that. What’s crazy to me is you’re just going to come see a lady that you heard on a podcast. What do you think I was going to do when you got there?
I don’t understand the kids. They don’t care. They just want to see you. And I’m like, okay, I’m going to keep it up. I mean, because Lewis said “What are you going to talk about?” I go, here’s the thing Lew, there’s like 50 things in a day that I read because I don’t have children or a job per se. And then like, I’ll call my brother at work and I’ll go “Patrick, this is fucked up, but there’s zebra’s loose in Maryland.” And he goes “You know what, Kathleen, I have a meeting. I have a job. Goodbye.” And then he won’t, but I’m like “Did you hear what I said, Pat?” I go “By the way, do you know what you call a group of zebras? It’s a dazzle. Isn’t that awesome?” And then he hangs up. So nobody wants to…My sister, all my siblings have kids and jobs and they’re like, we don’t have time for this. And I’m like, fine, fine. Then that’s what I’ll do on the podcast.
Kathleen Madigan is on tour now. For all dates and links to buy tickets go to kathleenmadigan.com
