The emcee is the first comic the audience sees, and the emcee becomes the voice of the show and the representative of the club. It’s a job I used to do myself, but since I’ve retired from active performing, there’s one comic that’s my go-to emcee: Jay Brown.
I can imagine you scratching your heads trying to place the name. No, he’s not a star in this country, and that’s a pity. But he’s the best club emcee in Canada since Mike Bullard.
What makes Brown so good? Well, he is a perfect blend of friendly and authoritative. He can serve the corporate agenda of a VIP opening but still seem loose and alternative. Unlike too many comics, he doesn’t immediately launch into his own act but takes time to get to know the audience.
“I always approach the job that we’re all kids inside, sitting in a dark room being naughty, and I try to invoke the feeling that we’re all at a house party and I’m the big brother of the guy who invited you,” says Brown.
And he tells the audience where the washrooms are, a critical piece of information some emcees consider beneath them.
Brown is 42, Italian and takes care of his mother in her Woodbridge home. He’s single but is a legend around the circuit for having dated starlet Heather Locklear in the ’80s.
“I had her come see me perform stand-up, and … I bombed!”
Brown is still a handsome fellow, a big guy with his long dark hair slicked back and a hipster soul- patch on his chin. He calls himself the “metalhead of comedy.”
Another thing that makes Brown such a great emcee is that he knows a little bit about everything. A voracious reader, he can always be counted on for an intelligent quip when an audience member tries to stump him with an obscure profession or place of residence.
Most of his reading these days revolves around his passion for quantum physics. He can discuss it for hours — that is, when he’s not playing poker after hours. When he’s in New York, he’s a regular player with the Hammerdown Group, a clique of comedy poker heads such as Louis C.K., Sarah Silverman and David Letterman producer Eddie Brill. I wonder if he discusses quantum theory at that table.
Lately, Brown has been dealing with a health crisis. He suffers from severe gout, which I previously thought was a disease of dissolute 18th-century poets. But, it turns out, it is a painful, lifestyle-threatening inflammation. And that must be tough for an Italian boy raised on his Nonna’s gamberoni.
At a New Year’s Eve show last year, I put Brown on the bill even though he didn’t have the credits of most of the other comics. Just For Laughs has taken no notice of him. He was never asked to do a Comedy Now! show. But I thought he would rise to the occasion.
At the end of his set, capped off with a blazing guitar tribute to his heavy metal heroes, the audience of 2,100 cried out for an encore, the only time that has happened in the show’s 12-year history.
I know show business isn’t always fair. But isn’t there room for just one poker-playing, physics-loving, chopper-riding, gout-suffering, Locklear-dating star in this country?
Post City Magazines’ humour columnist, Mark Breslin, is the founder of Yuk Yuk’s comedy clubs and the author of several books, including Control Freaked.
