I began podcasting in 2011 with the Comedy on Vinyl podcast. It started and ended as an exploration of the history of vinyl comedy through the lens of how and why people make friends over comedy and, specifically, comedy albums (and usually on vinyl; I made occasional exceptions in the early days). A student of comedy, Comedy on Vinyl taught me how much and how little I knew, and it introduced me to a host of amazing people I wouldn’t have otherwise known or known of. I interviewed legends like Tommy Chong, Rusty Warren, and Harry Shearer, and up-and-comers like future Golden Globe winner Rachel Bloom. In 2015, we even premiered a long-lost one-of-a-kind acetate by Bob Newhart that hadn’t been heard on 50 years, and never publicly.
In 2018, I used Comedy on Vinyl as a way to explore a little deeper into vinyl comedy history with the “Family Albums” mini-series, where I spoke with Vaughn Meader’s widow Sheila, and interviewed the surviving member of an independent comedy group from the 1960s called Dawson and Harrell who had never been interviewed about comedy before. My final “Family Albums” episode of the year was spent uncovering the true identity of civil rights activist and comedian Dick Davy. I ended the weekly show in 2021 with the show’s white whale, Weird Al.
Around the same time as I ended the show, I put together a mini-museum of sorts at the Berkley Public Library in the Detroit Metro suburb of Berkley. There, using samples from my vinyl comedy collection, I briefly told the story of recorded audio comedy, with samples from Richard Pryor, The Dr. Demento Show, and Detroit legends like Lily Tomlin.
In September 2025, I finally made good on an unspoken promise of Comedy on Vinyl: I produced my first vinyl comedy album, consisting of unearthed material called Presenting… Dick Davy, which was released by Stand Up! Records. I wrote 6,500 words of liner notes for it, covering the journey to finding out who Dick Davy really was.
In October 2025, I donated the bulk of the remainder of my vinyl comedy collection to the Detroit Public Library’s Popular Library on the 3rd floor of the main branch, with the intention of continuing to add to this collection which, I’m proud to say, will have my name attached to it. My hope is that people will have access to some of the most unusual and popular examples of recorded audio comedy on vinyl in order to explore the depths of these things I’ve been studying most of my life. Comedy deserves its place in the study of culture, as the thing we use to ease some of life’s pain by laughing through or at it. Audio comedy is even less explored, even though it is ironically hidden in the wide open.
