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Picking Out A Great Robe With Marc Rebillet

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Marc Rebillet is a one-man show, a performance artist and “loop daddy,” and altogether one wild and funny man. Many will know him from his YouTube channel, which has been making the rounds on social media with such unforgettable hits as “Look at that ass,” “Chaos and Destruction”, and “Stop the Rape.” Videos like these have propelled him into sold-out shows on his current tour, which hits Richmond on Sunday night at The Camel.  

If you get a chance to check out any of his “Idealogue” videos, you will see exactly what makes him so appealing and popular. Rebillet is, in a lot of ways, the perfect performer for today’s social media world. His performances are funny and exciting, and what’s more, he has real piano and singing chops. Despite the humorous approach, his music seriously gets hype, with banging beats that run the gamut from trap to funk and R&B. His live performances are ad-libbed on the spot, and often include audience participation.     

As soon as I found out Rebillet was coming to Richmond on December 23, I jumped at the chance to speak with him. I learned that he is very approachable, and genuine in his love for what he does. I was excited to ask a few quick questions and talk a bit about his trip to Richmond. Speaking of which, the show is quickly heading for a sellout, so get your tickets right now. See you there — let’s get wild!

Check out this amazing live set below (start at 38 seconds to jump right to a great part), followed by our interview with Marc:

Can you help me say your last name.  I have been going with Mark Reb-il-it, just like that. But it’s French, I believe, and I need help with this.

Before we go on, my first name is Marc with a “C”! The French way. The last name is pronounced “Rub-ee-yay.” Also extremely French.

Would you say the Reggie Watts is one of your biggest influences?  What other loop-based artist or musicians have influenced you?

Reggie Watts is absolutely one of my biggest influences, especially regarding the live show. I don’t watch or listen to many other looping artists, to be honest. Lots of musical influences, but not too many that loop. I’ve seen some cool stuff from Moses Sumney, a few others whose names escape me. But Reggie really inspired the format of the show.

Is a good robe important? And what do you look for in that? I feel like you could guide me in finding this.

A good robe is extremely important. I only own one, but I find lots of satisfaction in hotel robes. I sometimes wear them to shows. You just feel good with one on.

How does one go from hype to ratchet? Can we make some kind of device that would measure this correctly? We can share the copyright on this.

I hear Lockheed Martin is developing a hype-to-ratchet converter, very excited to try that out. For me, I usually just start screaming. Tends to work.

You have been working on your sound and performance for a while now. How did you develop the current video format with performance and humor? Do you mostly ad-lib on the spot, or plan things out a bit more than people know?

The videos are just slightly more planned out than the live shows. The live shows are 100% improvised. I have no plan going in and whatever happens, happens. I’ll usually make one or two songs from my online videos but the rest is unique to that night’s show. For the videos I mess around for a bit until I have a good idea, and then I do a few takes to make sure I’m performing it efficiently. The early takes are the best, because there’s an energy there that’s lost in the later ones. Words and melodies are more or less made up each take.

Will this be your first time in Richmond VA? What do you know about Richmond (RVA – slang)?

Yes it will be! I don’t know about this slang but now I’m probably going to bring it up onstage.

What idealogue are we on here? Can we get a general number or idea on it? How did you start with this series?

We’re in the 40s. We’d be in the 50s if I kept the first ten online. But they were different — I was just talking to the camera about stupid ideas I’ve had written down for years. The 10th one is when I started filming myself using the looper.

Do you talk to yourself in the mirror? Like do you get up and look at yourself and say “I’m fucking Marc Rebillet…” I’m not sure how to finish that exactly, so you tell me.

Hahaha, I don’t say that, but I definitely talk to myself in the mirror. Doesn’t everybody? It’s one of those alone things that we all do but rarely discuss.

Whats your favorite thing about connecting to an audience and playing live?

It’s exactly that. The experience of connecting with a crowd that’s giving me big, big energy is irreplaceable. When the audience meets me there, I give it right back to them as big as I can… The audience truly makes the show what it is. Plus I never have to plan anything. It’s a great job.

See Marc Rebillet at The Camel, located at 1621 W. Broad St, on Sunday, December 23, with special guest DJ Harrison. Doors open at 8, music starts at 9. Tickets are $10 in advance, $12 at the door, and can be purchased at this link. For more info, click here.

Check out Marc Rebillet’s website, learn all you need to know about him in one BIO, or follow him on Facebook. 

Music Sponsored By Graduate Richmond

Izzard is King: “Believe Me” Tour Lands In Richmond

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Eddie Izzard is 56 years old, and wears six-inch red bottom-heeled, knee-high leather boots better than I could ever hope or dream to. Surprisingly, I can still sleep at night knowing this. What I really wish I could do, however, is be even a fraction of the immense story-telling comedic powerhouse that Izzard is, and has been, for the last 36 years of his incredibly expansive career.

The U.K. comedian is currently on his Believe Me Tour, which performed at the Altria Theater on Saturday night. The tour is the stand-up comedy version of his memoir, Believe Me, which was released in June of last year. And undeniably, he remains one of the most fascinating and talented comics of our era.

Izzard, who was born in Yemen, starts from the beginning by explaining how his parents met and how he was conceived. Through the beauty of a PowerPoint projector, Google Maps, and a super savvy (and above all else, patient) tech guy named Greg, the audience went back in time: not only to see where Izzard was born, but also learning fun anecdotes about his illustrious childhood, getting his start in stand-up, and how he broke into Monty Python.

Yes. He became an unofficial member of Monty Python because he broke in. He broke into their studio.

Before the show started, guests were given the option to tweet questions to Izzard, or fill out cards in the lobby so he could answer them during a portion of the show. Even though I may never know the answer to my question: “What is the best lipstick to wear as your car breaks down on the side of the highway?” Answer: Definitely MAC’s Russian Red — trust me. Nevertheless, he did cover a bevy of other topics: learning what a jazz chicken was, how badass a tea cozy can be, and whether he actually knew why James Bond was codenamed 007.

Unsurprisingly, a big focus of the show was Izzard covering gender and sexual identity politics, and how they have changed since the eighties when he first came out. Which is significant, since Izzard is widely regarded as one of the most well known and successful gender-fluid comedians of all time.

Knowing since he was young that he identified as transgender, he struggled on how he could come out in 1980s Wales. During the show, this was discussed and reminded the audience just how lucky we are that we live in 2018. This was a powerful reminder that it is easy to glaze over the obvious daily struggles the LGBTQ community endures, but doing so in 2018 rather than the early 1980s makes us fortunate.

Another anecdote that is core to Izzard’s personal and comedic identity was the first time he wore a dress in public. He recanted how great it felt to walk around in it, but acknowledged the panic which came when he realized that he had to change before coming back home (where he had roommates). He thought he was safe to do so in a women’s washroom, until he realized that there was a group of bad girls — thirteen year old girls in heavy black eyeliner, smoking cigarettes, and every latch was broken.

He ended the show by saying he hopes that, in his lifetime, we will eventually come together so everyone can have the exact same opportunities as their peers.

Izzard is undoubtedly a gifted comedian. Yet something he doesn’t get enough credit for is how much of a humanitarian and political activist he is, no less than making genuine plans to run for mayor of London in 2020.

“I’m trying to do an Al Franken,” Izzard told George Stroumboulopoulos in an interview. “I want to bring all the energy of doing gigs in different languages, of touring around and playing lots of crazy places, of doing marathon running, of all this stuff. I’m going to bring that energy into it and hopefully do something positive. I can think in a different way, I can see things in a slightly different light.”

Izzard’s stream of conscious comedy always makes for an amazing show, but it’s really when he gets raw and vulnerable that it makes for an honest performance. He’ll always be known for his comedy, but what he should be known even more for his is heart.

Eddie Izzard is currently on tour for his Believe Me Tour. He can next be seen on October 9th at the Gaillard Center in Charleston, SC. 

 

Yedoye Travis Is Tackling Racism, One Podcast at a Time

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Imagine Shark Tank, but instead of a better toothbrush, white contestants pitch solutions for racism to a panel of black judges. In the first few episodes, they’ve proposed everything everything from reparations to white slavery and the Rachel Dolezal-linked concept of “transracialism.”

The show is Dark Tank, and it’s just been released by Yedoye Travis on the Brain Machine Network. Travis is a comedian and actor who came to attention for many via a viral tweet about wanting to host “Blue’s Clues” as the next Steve. He was named a “New Face” in comedy at the Montreal Just For Laughs Festival, where he opened for W. Kamau Bell, and has appeared on Comedy Central, on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” and even in a cameo on the dark comedy hit, “Search Party.”

Dark Tank album art, Travis headshot

Travis arrived in New York from Atlanta two years ago, and seems destined for a fast ascent to comedy fame. He’s having to adjust a little; when I caught up with him on the phone, he’s just dropped off his mom at the train, and he was running around between TV shoots. With a touch of self-deprecating humor, he said, “Normally I’m just sitting around at home, writing a little bit, and playing a lot of Donkey Kong.”

It’s part of his skillset. Even on the phone, he turns mundane answers into wry jokes, often at his own expense. He was similarly quick-witted when he came up with the Dark Tank concept, which developed after his friend and neighbor, comedian Leif Enoksen, asked him about collaborations. “Enoksen said, ‘you’re someone I want to work with, if you ever have an idea, hit me up’,” Travis recalled. He immediately thought of Shark Tank–a host, a panel of judges, a contestant–and Dark Tank was born.

Although the show is wickedly funny, it’s not light. The conversations cover serious ground. Travis is looking forward to navigating the potential awkwardness. “I’m excited to see some people really have to stretch when they know that black people are staring them right in the face,” he said.

In the first episodes released, Travis is kind to the contestants, although completely honest about the flaws and weaknesses of their solutions. As on his debut album, “Ok,” Travis addresses racism and racial issues on the show with a nuance and slightly-barbed wit that produces both laughter and discomfort in equal measures.

Yedoye Travis’ debut stand-up comedy album

In one early episode, a contestant suggests white couples be required to adopt black babies, or that science finds a way to make white babies black; although the panel starts with laughter, things turn serious as they discuss Rachel Dolezal, the woman who claimed to be black while working for the NAACP. The humor doesn’t stop, but it’s a deeply revealing moment of radio that lays bare the pain and trauma many people of color feel around Dolezal’s appropriation of their identity.

The show is recorded by Enoksen in his bedroom, which he described as “a recording studio with a bed in it.” Before turning his apartment into a studio, he used to lug 60 pounds of recording gear around in a backpack. His approach to Travis came even before he’d had the idea for the Brain Machine Network, which now hosts nearly a dozen podcasts. “He was someone I approached well before there was any talk of the podcast,” Enoksen said. “When I heard his idea, I said, that needs to happen immediately.”

Getting white people to share their views on racism in front of a microphone, especially in what many might see as a difficult political climate, was something Travis thought would be “labor intensive.” It was not. “They message me. Everyone’s seemed very eager to see if they can handle it,” he said. He did invite some people; they all accepted. Deadpan, he added, “Maybe white guys just have immense confidence that I don’t understand.”

White slavery was proposed way earlier than I thought it would be.

Other surprises came from the suggested solutions. “White slavery was proposed way earlier than I thought it would be,” he said. “I thought it’d be at least a few months in, but no, third episode.”

While he loves all of the podcasts he produces, Enoksen says Dark Tank is something special and different. “It’s just so good. When you’re recording a lot, you sometimes miss the jokes because you’re so busy. But with this, I was rolling in laughter the entire time. You can’t ignore it, it’s amazing.”

Nickelodeon said no to this

Travis said he’s planning to pitch Dark Tank to network TV, but reluctantly, admits that we probably won’t see him earn “that Nickelodeon money” hosting “Blue’s Clues” as Steve. “I’ve been so anxious about having to say this, but I don’t think I’m going to be Steve at this point. Most of my Twitter followers started following me after that saga, and I’ve been worried they’ll abandon me when I say I’m not going to be Steve,” he said.

While he won’t be the next Steve, he’s confident that his efforts might have helped steer Nickelodeon to pick an Eve. He said, “They almost exclusively interviewed black women from what I saw, so I think I at least pushed the needle in a good direction.”

And, even if his Twitter followers drop, he’s going to keep tweeting.

“It’s like the prewriting stages for me. I have a thought, I put it out there,” he said. Is it his writer’s room, I asked? “No. It’s like, I don’t want to say this to another comedian yet, but I’ll say it to the whole world first. It’s the dumbest writer’s room, I guess. Most of it is just dog shit.”

One man’s dog shit is another man’s comedy gold. I note that he’s followed by the New Yorker’s comedy section, Shouts and Murmurs. “They gave me a standing offer to write something for them. I guess, if they’re reading RVA Mag, they should know that I’m working on a good one.”

Dark Tank has just been released on the Brain Machine Network. Episodes are available on iTunes, Spotify, and coming soon to Stitcher. Travis says that bold people who have ideas for solving racism can reach him at [email protected]. Collage image inspired by Yedoye Travis’ Twitter profile.

Comedy in the Era of Trump: A Chat With David Cross

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Stand-up comedian, writer, actor, director – the list of David Cross’ talents are near endless. He’s done it all, from entertaining on stage with his unique brand of political comedy, to small screen portrayals of iconic characters like Tobias Fünke in the Emmy-award winning TV series Arrested Development. On the big screen, he’s recently been in Spielberg’s newest biopic, The Post, and appeared in his own independent film, Hits, which he wrote and directed.

Stand-up, however, is where Cross truly shines, and in this political climate, his humor and cynical observations are needed now more than ever. RVA Mag had the chance to catch up with Cross ahead of his show in Richmond next month as part of his “Oh Come On Tour,” his first since his 2016 tour, “Making America Great Again.“ Make sure t0 catch Cross at the Dominion Energy Center on Saturday, August 4.

This article originally appeared in RVA #33 Summer 2018, you can check out the issue here, or pick it up around Richmond now. 

RVA Mag: You’re coming back to the capital of the Confederacy. We’re looking at a statue of Jefferson Davis from our office window — how does that feel?

Cross: I [was excited to] come back and eat at that deli….please help me out with that. Perly’s? Oh man, it was the best. You are never really in a place for too long, if you can squeeze out two meals you are lucky.

RVA Mag: Has your comedy changed in the era of Trump?

Cross: You can’t craft a lot of bits about something Trump said or did because every outrageous moment is replaced by an increasingly outrageous moment within hours or days.  My take has been to talk less about him, and more about his fans and the people who love him.

I try not to do anything too specific and timely because two weeks later, I have to drop the bit.

RVA Mag: Is it harder to tell jokes?

Cross: I think comedy is harder in the overall sense that the helplessness and loss of feeling of any kind of anchor to normalcy, reality, or to what America was up until a couple years ago, has altered our ability to focus and enjoy things the way we did prior to that. There is a lot of stuff you can joke about that feels almost irresponsible and dismissive; like ‘why are you focusing on that’ because these awful things are happening to innocent people.

People are understandably upset, and feel that they are treading water trying to get air, asking, “What’s happening?” It is one horrifying thing after another – if you care about people other than yourselves. I should qualify this: If you are concerned with other groups of people, other than straight white Christians, then you are going to be upset. If not, things are going great.

Cross performing on his Oh Come On Tour. Photo Courtesy of Just For Laughs

RVA Mag: What’s a coping mechanism in this political climate?

Weed is the first answer. I don’t know how you cope with it. You try to fight it.

Cross: Do you worry that mocking Trump voters emboldens them?

I wouldn’t say I worry about it, but I am aware that that might be a response to what I am doing. But also, that ship has sailed a long, long, long time ago. I find this idea that gets picked up and pushed around as not having as much weight as the people that come up with those ideas [think]- this sounds like a David Brooks idea!

The things I’m saying or feeling, I would not pull back on or edit myself because I thought, “Oh no, what if I make Dan and Margaret from Bloomington upset.” I am not going to be the one that pushes them over the edge.

RVA Mag: On the flip side: Are you finding it challenging to play to a young liberal audience?

Cross: That is 100 percent true. I have experienced this on my last tour. One of the worst shows I had in a place I am not going back to was in Northampton, Massachusetts, which is a very liberal town. I have always had problems, even when I was opening for headliners and no one knew who I was. I really grew as a comic in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which is also very liberal, and I go to San Francisco, and always had problems with that very attitude you are talking about, where you say a word and they just shut down.

They don’t listen to the bit, they don’t listen to what the context is; they just heard the word, concept, or phrase and then shut you down by saying you are a racist, homophobic, you are whatever they want to apply. It is definitely a much stronger presence now than there ever was.

How do I reconcile it? I don’t, really. I do my stuff. Most people, by far, 90 percent of people get the context. Funny is subjective, I can’t fault someone for going “that’s not funny.” But if they think it is offensive or shouldn’t be said, there are tons of stuff you can look at and cherry pick and say, “You said this word or you said that thing, and I don’t like the joke.”

RVA Mag: You’re headed for Europe on this tour. How does it feel to be an American ambassador in the era of Trump?

Cross: I went to Europe on the last tour, and we are very alien to them. Most people really like America and like Americans, but they are just perplexed and head-scratching. [They wonder], “You have most of the money in the world, but have one of the highest illiteracy and teen pregnancy rates; you allow automatic rifles to be sold to people who shoot people up and kill children and don’t do anything about it. You work really hard and don’t make that much money and you aren’t happy.”

[Europeans] are right. They’re like, “We don’t have the money you have, but we’re happy with our lives.” They have universal healthcare, no one goes broke if they get sick. They have three months of maternity leave, and are unionized, and have six times the vacation days as Americans. They get a month off with their families.

RVA Mag: Do Europeans understand the redneck character you sometimes play?

Cross: I think they see it as a caricature that is pretty common. It is an easily gettable person.

Interview By: Landon Shroder and David Streever. Photos by Daniel Bergeron

HBO’s New Robin Williams Documentary is a Thought-Provoking Portrait of a Comic Genius

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“Stand-up is survival. For me that’s jazz, that’s what I have to do.”

It is hard to overstate the impact that Robin Williams had on just about every aspect of comedy since he broke the scene in the mid-1970s. His sheer energy, razor-sharp wit, ability to morph his persona into characters both known and unknown, and genre-defining stand-up shaped almost two generations of film and TV. A person would be hard pressed to not know many of his iconic characters, which spanned an impressive range, from the alien Mork of Mork and Mindy, through serious roles like those of Adrian Cronauer in Good Morning Vietnam, or the unorthodox English teacher John Keating in Dead Poets Society and the influential psychologist in Good Will Hunting, through to comic roles like the jinni in Aladdin.

Williams, who would have been 67 this week, died four years ago at 63 after taking his own life, shortly after he was diagnosed with Diffuse Lewy Body Dementia in August 2014.

To celebrate the impact of his life, HBO has released a new documentary, titled, “Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind.” Directed by Marina Zenovich, who has also made films about Roman Polanski and Richard Pryor, the film is primarily comprised of clips from Williams’ life and interviews with other comics, family, and actors who knew him best, including Billy Crystal, David Letterman, Eric Idle, and Steve Martin.

The documentary is a thought-provoking look, not just into the genius of a man whose talent was omnipresent, but the trials that come with fame and the expectations of comedy. His life was a portrait of a man who was genteel, decent, and generous, not a self-obsessed celebrity who could not escape the trappings of wealth and access.

“Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind” can be found on HBO and HBO GO.