Josh Johnson
I was shocked to see that Josh Johnson, the viral sensation American comedian who has been all over my social media feeds for the last couple of years, was bringing his Comedy Band Camp tour to the Rebecca Cohn in Halifax this summer. I was also surprised when Johnson kept adding performances as the shows at the Cohn kept selling out. There were five performances of Comedy Band Camp here between August 7th and August 9th. Clearly, I wasn’t the only person in town who had become charmed by his online presence, and who was excited to welcome him to Nova Scotia.
Josh Johnson is also one of the hardest working and prolific comedy writers in the business. Every week he releases a set of new material on his YouTube Channel, which means that he is continually commenting on the most topical moments in the political and cultural zeitgeist. He also works as a rotating host and correspondent on The Daily Show, and in May he released his first HBO stand up special, Symphony. I recently heard an interview with him on Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson’s podcast IMO, which I would definitely recommend checking out as Johnson speaks a lot about the charity work and community building that he also is able to do through his comedy.
I loved the concept of the framework for this show: summer camp. We arrived at the Rebecca Cohn- I was extremely early- and there was a pre-show video playing listing whimsical, and at times philosophical rules, in no particular order, for us to bring with us into this camp experience such as “Hold the door for the camper behind you!” And “Absolutely no gaslighting unless it’s helium” and “When playing badminton remember: not all mintons are bad.” There was also a QR code that would pop up on the screen encouraging you to take a quiz to determine which Camp Troop you would be sorted into. I am a “sponge for knowledge and new experiences,” so I got sorted into the Ivy Leaves, which was the troop I was hoping for since they are the one with a book in their logo. In a very shrewd business move on Johnson’s part you can buy merchandise specific to your troop. I came home with a green bandana. They also have snap bracelets. The opening acts are framed as being part of this camp experience- the orientation counsellor, the music component of camp, and the counsellors who do dancing, and cheerleading to pump the campers up. Johnson, then, is more like the story time around the campfire. It’s too bad the Cohn wouldn’t let us bring in s’mores.
First up was Mia Jackson, a stand up comedian from Columbus, Georgia whose career began in Atlanta, and who now lives in New York City. She is also a television writer and voice actor. Jackson came out ready to talk about Halifax, heaping praise on us about how beautiful our city is with all the trees and the ocean, and how clean it is compared to cities like New York, which is too be expected, but also like Chattanooga, which was more surprising. Of course, Haligonian crowds love when Halifax is seen and praised because our city is remote and small, and we don’t get the same amount of attention as larger places like Toronto, Montréal, and Vancouver. So, this immediately ingratiated Jackson to everyone, despite her Human Resources vibe. Jokes aside, Jackson, like Johnson, has a real warmth to her, which works well within the summer camp theme, because she does seem like the cool funny camp counsellor who has had some absurd things happen to her, and you can’t wait for her to regale you with all her crazy stories. I would love to see her come back to Halifax sometime for a longer set.
Then we were treated to the musical portion of the evening, which was absolutely gobsmacking. I don’t think many of the nearly 5,000 people who showed up in Halifax were prepared for the fact that Johnson had brought some of the best jazz musicians in America with him to blow our minds. Julius Rodriguez, performing as Orange Julius, is a multi-instrumentalist and composer who attended Juilliard and Manhattan School of Music who plays the piano and the synthesizer, and his bandmates play the bass, saxophone, and the drums, a combo that audiences here, I think, are a bit less used to hearing than the far more typical piano, guitar, bass, and drums, or piano, guitar, and fiddle that is so popular here; so this was a treat. The set was improvised and the audience was able to see how the musicians were building the foundations of the piece, taking their time to add in a bit of humour as well, and then building and building to finally create this electrifying crescendo wall of sound that left audiences leaping to their feet. The drumming was especially masterful, but in all it felt like an experience you would go to Carnegie Hall to see.
One significant difference between American and Canadian culture is that we don’t have America’s same zeal for marching bands and cheerleaders, which I think makes this next part of the show even more dazzling because, for me personally, the only other time I have experienced American-level marching bands and cheerleaders in person is at Walt Disney World. But for Johnson, adding duelling snare drum sets as a competition between two of the troops, and an extended dance/cheer sequence from the Camp Counsellors is part of a complete American band camp experience. Even though, of course, we do have marching bands and cheerleaders here, it still feels like watching a cultural experience we usually only ever see in movies and on television, which makes it even more fascinating for Canadian audiences.
It is gigantic fanfare for Johnson to travel with, and especially hilarious given that when he comes out, alone on stage, with just a stool, in his signature grey hoodie and jeans, small on the Cohn’s overly wide stage, everything suddenly becomes very quiet, intimate, and intense. It takes a huge amount of confidence and generosity, I think, to give your audience such a world-class spectacle of an opener before a stand up set, but Johnson knows that his audience is stoked to see him, and will listen intently, and hang on his every word- and that’s exactly what happened at the Cohn.
Josh Johnson has a very laid back approach to stand up, and while he certainly is the type of comedian that is observational, his set is largely constructed of stories, and he is thoughtful and meticulous in the way that he takes his time in building them with details, with humorous points of interest, and building, and building (like Orange Julius is doing with his music) to a funnier and funnier zenith. He makes interesting use of timing, often stopping in unexpected places to go on a tangent, or to repeat himself in a musing way, especially if what he is exploring is particularly absurd and he thinks the audience needs to take a minute to really absorb it first, and often he will laugh, gleefully, not at his own jokes per se, but just in recognition that the world has truly jumped over the shark, and laughter is really all we have to cope with it. The audience doesn’t feel like they are on the other side of Johnson’s jokes, that he is the caller and we are the receiver, but instead we are all inside the hilarious/ridiculous situation together.
It is a strange time for an audience of Canadians to gather to watch a visiting American comedian. While Johnson didn’t say anything specifically about Halifax like Jackson did, he immediately won the audience over by commenting not just on how badly things are going in the United States, but also how he knows that he doesn’t have to tell us that because we can see it very clearly from our physical proximity. Self-aware and self-deprecating Americans play very well here, especially because self-aware and self-deprecating Americans in general are rare, so it’s like getting to see a mermaid.
While Johnson spent a bit of time making jokes about the American political landscape, and about Trump in particular, that audiences here, of course, ate up delightedly, the bulk of his set was actually a much more earnest and heartfelt ode to the Internet of the late 90s and early 2000s, the Internet before contemporary social media- the time when MySpace was one of the ways that folks connected with one another online. His reflections on all the ways that the Internet has become toxic, and how quaint its naive and more innocent beginnings seem now in hindsight are woven with jokes that I won’t spoil, but the crux of this observation that in our perpetual quest to create better and faster and “smarter” we have, in a way, surpassed already what was a Golden Age of human connectivity and possibility, and instead have created a sort of digital cesspool that we now are all wading through trying to find our way back to the ability to just see our friends’ photos and share the music we like with each other.
What Johnson has created with Comedy Band Camp is an antidote to that cesspool. I saw a young person who was sitting by themselves in the audience before the show lean over and tap someone in front of them that they didn’t know who was around their age because they saw that they had both been sorted into the same troop. They made a real-life connection with each other. That’s the power of live performance- we all gathered together in this space and shared this experience together- we were introduced to talented folks we had never heard of before, we all laughed together, we all cheered together, we all stood up and showed our immediate joy and gratitude, and, as you can tell from the comments online, we all really hope that Josh Johnson and his friends had a lovely time in our city, and that they will all want to come back.
You can find Josh Johnson on YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram, and check out this website to see whether Comedy Band Camp is coming to a venue near you.
