Michael Penn is mixing a live album drawn from last year's Acoustic Vaudeville tour, which featured sets from Penn and his wife, Aimee Mann, along with humorous spoken-word interludes from comedians including Janeane Garofalo, Andy Kindler, Paul F. Tompkins and Patton Oswalt.

"It kind of grew out of the fact that neither one of us has ever felt particularly comfortable with the entertainer part of playing live," Penn says. "Playing your song for people is great and enjoyable and something I can connect to. But actually having to engage in public speaking has never been my strong suit. So we got to know a lot of the comedians that performed at [Los Angeles club] the Largo comedy nights and we started to have them do our between-song banter. The response was really great. At that point we said, 'You know, we should probably start taping these shows -- we may not get anything out of it but we may be glad we did.'"

Penn and Mann plan to release the record through their own United Musicians, a collective label of and for independent musicians, this fall.

Buoyed by the success of last year's outing, Penn said he and Mann plan to take Acoustic Vaudeville back out on the road later this year or early next. "I think that we came upon something inadvertently that was pretty unique," he says. "We're two songwriters who both have a reputation as being fairly serious and even perhaps dour in our songwriting and to have a comedian come out sort of acts like a palate cleanser. And I think it pokes fun at that aspect of Aimee and myself, as well as giving this different kind of experience to an audience."

COLIN DEVENISH
(April 26, 2001)