In between sincere covers of pop, disco, R&B and rock songs, John Early performs “ranting musings.” That’s how he describes his new comedy special “Now More Than Ever,” which is coming to HBO on Saturday, June 17.
“I think it’s a little too sloppy to call it stand-up,” Early said on Boston Public Radio on Monday. “It’s kind of a sweaty, ’70s show.”
The special is filmed in the style of a “rockumentary,” pulling together Early’s various bits, ideas, sketches and songs from a show he’s occasionally performed in New York for years. “We couldn’t help but do these ‘Spinal Tap’-esque sketches between all of that,” Early said. “It’s a very dizzying show.”
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His comedy’s also infused with his progressive politics, found even in the title’s platitude: “now more than ever.”
“It’s just like a totally empty kind of phrase that people say in politically charged times that means absolutely nothing,” Early said. “I’ve always found that to be funny, ever since I was a kid growing up in Tennessee.”
Being raised in what he described as the “Clinton ’90s,” Early was attuned from a young age to the hypocrisies of Southern Democrat culture: talking about human rights while gutting welfare programs.
“I think that’s in a lot of my comedy is this ... posturing as being very liberal ... a good gay liberal, but actually being a kind of monster underneath,” he said. “[That’s] the essential joke of all my work.”
Both acting and performing stand-up has kept alive a kind of balance for Early. In his acting roles, like for HBO’s cult-hit “Search Party,” he spends a lot of time “playing gay, psycho monsters” in rude, edgy shows.
But in stand-up, Early has a chance to be more warm, a style that will be on display at his live show — called “John Early Live!” — at The Wilbur on Wednesday night.
“It's really, really nice in stand-up to be a little more ... generous and tap-dance-y,” he said. “I get to use some of my Southern hospitality.”
He found his comedic partner in Kate Berlant in New York City as they both performed their way through the New York stand-up scene. The two met in 2012 and immediately connected.
“It’s, like, the most romantic thing that's ever happened to me,” Early said. “We just totally fell in love.”
Berlant and Early developed their own shared comedic language and began writing and performing comedy sketches on YouTube. “All our work just kind of comes from endless hanging out and making each other laugh,” Early said. Last year they starred in Peacock’s “Would It Kill You to Laugh?”.
They each have their own careers — Berlant recently headlined her one-woman show and acted in Amazon’s “A League of Their Own” reboot — but Early said they continue to collaborate: “We always have kind of one foot in our collaboration and one foot in our solo work.”
