JBTV LAUNCHES CHICAGO-BASED LIVE COMEDY SHOW
Published in Reel Chicago, March 2015
In March, JBTV began filming “Fourstar Standups,” a comedy show concept that combines homegrown performers, BYOB crowds and one of the best live production facilities in America.
Putting professional comedians and enthusiastic fans into the same room where thousands of rock and roll concert videos have been shot over the past thirty years, “Fourstar Standups” intends to capture the magic of Chicago jokemongers riding the arc from medium-sized clubs to national stardom.
“These are really good comics who open up for big headliners and they’re gonna break,” says Kevin Kellam, a veteran comedien and the show’s host.
“The next Louis CK or the next Maria Bamford is in Chicago already and is gonna be on this show.”
On select Tuesday nights throughout the spring, Kellam will invite four comics into the studio, where each will do a live ten-minute set for a full audience.
Their performances will be filmed, compiled and cut into a half hour pilot that will be pitched to networks as a glimpse of “the funniest city in America” this summer.
Enthusiasm for the show’s idea had been brewing at JBTV for about a year when executive producer Thomas Flynn decided to act on it last February.
Scoring a room full of chairs from Abby Pub owner Tom Looney and a Romanesque painting from JBTV’s collection of old set pieces, Flynn transformed the look of JBTV’s studio from music venue to comedy club, complete with an onstage backdrop that he calls “The Stairwell to Caligula’s Orgy.”
“It’s pretty original,” he says. “After I saw it on film, I was like, ‘it works.’”
Wielding a geek’s ransom of digital equipment — including eight HD cameras and an audio setup customized by recent JBTV sponosor, Shure — there is no doubt that JBTV will make the show look and sound as good as anything on TV.
“Music and comedy and JBTV are a perfect fit,” says JBTV founder Jerry Bryant. “The show gives comics a chance to be on a real stage and be properly recorded in a professional kinda atmosphere.”
But instinct and experience have proven that the fans are the only people who can dial it up to eleven.
To help get them in the mood, the online description of “Fourstar Standups” reminds potential guests that the “shows are BYOB” and suggests that they “go to Binny’s Beverage Depot down the block” before arriving.
Additionally, host Kellam works the crowd with finesse that he developed through years of live promotional work for WKQX 101 FM.
“This is a real show, an unbridled, underground comedy show with the best up and coming talent,” he shouted to the audience before introducing the first act on St Patrick’s Day. “So don’t sit on your hands. If you think something is funny, laugh!”
To see highlights from the sets performed so far, visit JBTV.com.
Photos by Dan Patton