Kyle Kinane is a comedian. Sure, he’s also a podcaster (teaming with Shane Torres for the No Accounting For Taste pod wherein the co-hosts joke about and celebrate things others drag). He also has more than 50 credits as an actor and voice actor, but stand-up comedy is the job. It’s the one that sends him all over the country (and the world) on an everlong tour, building up jokes night after night before moving onto the next one; the next challenge.
Kinane is talking with me because he’s got a new special out, Dirt Nap (which you can and should download now for $10). There are no nine-foot neon letters that spell out KYLE. The smoke machine went unrented, no fireworks or 5-minute dance routine played to applause at the start. It’s a comedy special, filmed at a comedy club (Acme in Minneapolis). It’s really fucking funny, leading off with an extended riff on the dumb brilliance of the Fast And Furious franchise before driving along to Kinane’s transition to suburban life (he left LA for Portland during the pandemic), dealing with his parents, and jerking off in front of ghosts.
Everything about Kinane’s relatable material, his approach (which avoids pot-stirring verbal clickbait, faux edginess, and punch-down meanness), and the presentation of his specials inspires people in my job to hang labels like “comedy craftsman” and “people’s comedy champion” on him. You know, because we can be a little hacky. But really, it’s that we want to convey to people the idea that in a world of comics with a gimmick, egos, and world-beating ambitions that view comedy as a stepping stone to some kind of cross between rock god, famous actor, thought leader, and style stars, Kinane is delightfully low bullshit and happy to be just a comedian. But as with all things, it has been an evolution.
In the following conversation, we track that evolution, discuss past failures, and relationship challenges that come from a life on the road. We also dive into the new special and brainstorm wonderful places for Dominic Toretto to go next.
Grantland called you a cult hero. When I wrote about the last special I said that you had a grab a beer after a show vibe. I’m trying to stop saying vibes in 2024. But do you ever feel limited by the notion of you being the “regular guy comedian” and man of the people? Limited by the idea that this is who you are and you can only speak to this audience?
I mean, I know it’s a simple thing. That’s why I shave the beard because this is, “Oh, well, you’re this.” “Well, watch. I’m not.” It’s what subject matter do I want to talk about. I think Chad Daniels is one of the best guys right now at taking expectations of who the audience thinks he is and twisting it.
God forbid you actually try to appeal to both sides of anything right now by pointing out similarities rather than differences. I think divisiveness, like that angle of comedy, it’s so easy because you have a built-in audience for your viewpoint if you’re, “I’m this.” And so the comedy doesn’t even have to be that good. You can just get your side riled up to laugh at the other side, and that’s not interesting. I’d rather get the side that I happen to agree with to laugh at themselves by going, “Oh yeah, maybe we’re a little tightly wound about this. I mean the other side still has their problems.”
I would also like, if there are people that have opposing viewpoints to go like, “Wow, that joke was so funny.” I would rather be funny enough for somebody to be like, “I don’t agree but, boy, that was fun to watch.” My buddy, John Roy, made that point. He’s like, “Really great comedy is when I’m laughing at somebody I disagree with.” I would like to be that.
What’s the mindset behind constantly generating new material?
Well, I can’t sit with something. I mean, I don’t have short jokes. I’ll say an idea and then an idea goes longer and longer. I work a lot. I’m lucky enough that I work whenever I want to. I’m doing hours. You’re doing an hour so you do a little three-minute idea. By the end of a weekend, you’re at a comedy club where you’ve done five shows and five hours, a three-minute idea could be a 10 or 12-minute idea by the end of that week. By the end of the next week, it could be a 15, 20-minute idea. And that’s the writing process for me, it’s seeing how much meat I can get off the bone.
Once I realize, “Oh, this works,” that’s the reward — getting it to work. The reward isn’t repeating it to get accolades. The reward is like, “Okay, that thing works. Now I have to write another one.”
So, it’s more about when you get tired of it rather than worrying an audience is going to get tired of it?
Yeah, I mean an artist doesn’t paint a painting and then just hang it in a museum and go look at it every day. They paint another painting. [Laughs] I get bored hearing myself and I lose the ability to deliver it. My acting isn’t that good. I can’t act enthused knowing I’m telling a story for the fifth year in a row. When I recorded Shocks and Struts, I had two hours that I was going to record. So Shocks and Struts was the one hour, and then the long story that’s in this new one was the other hour that I was working on. So it was kind of on deck for a year already even when the other one came out.
And now the new tour, I’m guessing this is all new material?
Yeah. Yeah, this will be new material from that. If you come see me live, it’s not going to be something on a recording.
So I believe in the special and I think in one of the previous specials, you’ve said things along the lines of letting people like what they like. That very much seems like a philosophy of yours. You don’t want to be divisive for the sake of being divisive. I’m curious about why that’s a root part of your act and where that came from.
I mean, I’ll be divisive if it’s about something I believe in, but I’m not going to just be living clickbait. I don’t know. It’s looking at comedy that I don’t like. I don’t like when comedians are like, “Let me tell you how the world works.” You know how the world works for you. You don’t know how the world works for me. I can sit there and say, “Well, this is how things work for me.” I’m not going to say what’s good for me is good for you.
I guess anytime I’m like, “You know what? I hate this thing,” instead of feeling like I’m automatically correct about why I hate it and writing jokes from there, I’d be like, “Well, wait, why do I hate it? Do I not understand it in my lack of knowledge about it?” And also, that’s more fun to write. I’d rather write from a place of curiosity than a place of like, “Boy, I know how stuff works,” because I don’t. That’s a lie. [Laughs]
Anytime I start doing comedy that’s a little bit righteous, I’m like, “You don’t know what you’re talking about right now.” [Laughs] So it’s easier for me to write from a place of curiosity because there’s so much more available material when you’re like, “Am I the problem? Do I not understand it? Let me try to understand it.” Maybe that’s just a more fun way to mess around on stage.
In the announcement for the special you said, “I’m not doing this to level up into a different career. Performing standup is what I do.” Has that always been the mindset for you and I guess what does it take to get to a place like that where you’re comfortable in your place in the world?
Yeah. I know that I’m beyond like I wanted to do standup. That was the goal. It wasn’t a stepping stone to get into other facets of show business. Stuff has happened. I lived in LA and I get to do voiceover stuff here. I got to act and that stuff. That was fun and it builds awareness of who you are, but it draws people back, hopefully, to the standup.
I was just having frustrations in Hollywood because show business has a great way of making you depressed because it convinces you you want things you don’t want. And then when you don’t get the things you didn’t want in the first place, you’re sad about it. Like shows that you pitch and they don’t take or something. You’re like, “I wasn’t even here to do that! I was here to do standup.” And so I kind of had to look at myself and be like, “Yeah, but you have the thing. Hold dear the thing that you wanted in the first place, which was standup.”
And so that’s it. If somebody wants to come in and be like, “Hey, we wrote a part for you. You’re in this movie,” great. But I’m not going to live in LA and drive around to auditions all day or what have you. This is the thing and I have it. And so I’m being very precious about it and making sure I get to keep it, whatever level it’s at. So the level I’m at now, shit, man, my lights are on, my bills are paid because of jokes. Awesome. That’s great. People come to shows. Phenomenal.
Not to dredge up something. Hopefully, it’s not painful. But I watched the pilot this morning for Going Nowhere, and I’m just curious what happened with that? Because it seemed such a brilliant premise [Kinane on the road, checking out different scenes and meeting interesting people]. It was really well executed.
Yeah. You don’t really get answers sometimes. You just find out that they didn’t want it, which is the heartbreak that yeah, they didn’t want it. I have a difficult time going into the public as source material. These people are going to let me come into their shop, and then I got to make jokes. There’s certain people that are just inherently, they’re comedically benevolent. They’re always the target of the jokes. They’re funny and the people around them, it’s a little weird. And then I feel like they’re like, “You’ve got to make more jokes.” And that’s where I revert into this, “Look at this thing and look, this is stupid,” and I make a joke. I’m being a smart ass about the stuff around me, and I didn’t feel good doing that, knowing that somebody’s letting me be there with a camera crew. And then I’m like, “Oh, what they’re into is weird. What they’re doing is silly.”
Just kind of like what the premise for the podcast that I do with Shane Torres, No Accounting for Taste is like, let’s celebrate things that everybody makes fun of, almost maybe a little bit as a penance for the years of mocking stuff that’s different. We’re like, “All right, let’s take all the things that people make fun of and try and lift them up.” But it was just sometimes that just doesn’t click. And that’s the thing, you spent months and months getting it ready and shooting it and editing it, and then just one person just gives you the emperor thumb down with no rhyme or reason. You’re like, “Ah.” And I’m too sensitive for that. At least with comedy, I know if a joke works right away. I don’t have to write it and wait six months.
You’re in a long-term relationship, right? How is that impacted with you on the road that much? What have been some of the lessons about making that work?
She’s probably happy about it, I think. Yeah, we each have a lot of space. [Laughs] I mean, we met when I was already working on the road. There’s a massive level of trust that you have to both have in each other. Like, “All right, I’ll see you in a few weeks,” and be okay with that. But we talk all the time, really working on communicating and being open with people about feelings or what’s going on with each other which is… like, [I’m] Midwestern, it’s not always the easiest thing for me to be like, “Oh, there’s my feelings right now.” You bottle them up. You bottle them up and you push them down.
Under the bed, in the closet, wherever you can throw those bottles of feelings. Absolutely.
What’s that, an emotion? Get it out of here. So being better with that stuff or attempting to be more mature with your own feelings and expressing yourself. But some people are in relationships where somebody’s emotionally gone five days a week.
That’s true.
Getting up to drive an hour into a city, then drive an hour home, and when they’re home, they’re vacant and want to empty their brain, and they don’t want to engage in anything emotional or conversational because that’s what they’ve done all day. And the weekend comes and you want to check out because it’s like, “Oh shit, well, Friday night’s blasted because I had to drive home, I’m tired.” Saturday is the one day you have, and then Sunday you’re just thinking about how you got to go back to the job you don’t like. So that’s also its own form of turmoil in my opinion. [Laughs]
Yeah. I mean I know in my own relationship, my wife and I both work from home, so we’re around each other all the time, and that’s its own challenges too. Every relationship has its own challenges. “This is my best friend. This is the person I love the most in the world. They’re always, always here.” So in anything like that, there’s a challenge to try to be present in all the moments that you’re actually together. So I get what you’re saying.
We’re always looking at some ideal representation of a family or a career or how something should work. Ideal to who? Why can’t these ideals be different career path choices, be unique to the individual as opposed to like, oh, we’re still trying to look at a … I don’t know. It’s like how many weddings have I been to where there are two sets of parents on each side of the aisle because both people are getting married, their parents are divorced and on their third relationship. But I’m like, “Here’s the air fryer. We got hope for you.”
There’s a gift receipt in the box, just in case. Um, I really enjoy the long story about the Fast and Furious franchise in the special. Do you want to see Fast and Furious go to space?
They did, so obviously you’re not a fan of the films.
No, I am a fan of the films, but which one did they go to space?
Well, Ludacris went to space, I believe it was in F9.
He touched space. I mean full on, we’re going to the moon. I don’t mean just getting through the atmosphere.
It still needs to be a car. If it’s like moon runners and stuff, then yeah, it just needs to be car-based. That’s why Hobbs & Shaw, as much as I’m a Statham fan, it was more fighting than it was cars and it bummed me out. Fast and Furious has proved that they’re going to do whatever they want, and they got at least one ticket sold with your boy here. So go to space? Well, they already went there and a submarine. I mean, they’ve done a lot.
I enjoy the films. I’m not hardcore. Most of them I’ve only seen once. I’ll be honest. And I was late to it.
As was I. As was I. They’re dumb. But that’s part of the bit. Like that’s why I’m watching them.
Yeah. Camaros on the moon would work. I think time travel could work. I think maybe going subterranean, drill into the earth, little Jules Verne action.
Camaros on the Moon sounds like a band that would open for Tame Impala or something. It sounds like a lo-fi Chillwave band. [Laughs]
