‘Comedy Bang! Bang!’ brings ‘Ground Beefing’ to Madison | Entertainment

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The 17th anniversary special for “Comedy Bang! Bang!” released on May 4 featured quite the lineup.

Podcast host Scott Aukerman welcomed his nana, Yoda, Jim Seals (half of the rock duo Seals & Crofts), a hotelier, the recently deceased NBA legend Bill Walton, a private eye whose sole focus is on one street in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles, and two teenagers trying to start a sneaker company.

All of these characters are played by comedians. Aukerman described the show as “improv comedy based in a talk show format with comedians doing fake characters who are crazy.”

The Comedy Bang! Bang! Ground Beefing Tour will stop in Madison on May 27 at the Barrymore Theatre. Frequent guest Paul F. Tompkins joins Aukerman at every stop.

Aukerman, who is also known for his work as a writer and performer on “Mr. Show” and co-creating “Between Two Ferns with Zach Galifianakis,” started the podcast in 2009 (as “Comedy Death Ray”). It was adapted into a television show for IFC in 2012, which ran for five seasons.

Frequent guests include Jason Mantzoukas, Lauren Lapkus and Carl Tart. “Comedy Bang! Bang!” has spawned a whole podcast network, Comedy Bang Bang World!, with dozens of comedy shows.

Aukerman said he gets very little information from comedians before they come on “Comedy Bang! Bang!”

“We don’t discuss anything beforehand about what we’re going to talk about,” he said. The tour will bring out “Comedy Bang! Bang!” all-stars playing characters frequent listeners will recognize.

Aukerman spoke with the Cap Times ahead of his Madison show about the tour name “Ground Beefing,” how he encourages comedians to be silly and how the podcast stays relevant for newer audiences.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Can you talk about the name of your tour, “Ground Beefing?” When I read this, I assumed it meant you and Paul F. Tompkins were going to fight.

No — we’re literally bringing ground beef to every audience member. That’s the promise that we make to our listeners: we want them to leave with their bellies full.

Some people will just get a meatball, and some might get a huge, Costco-size packet of ground beef that’s raw, but we want everyone to be munching on it during the show.

If you don’t know the very specific joke that the show title is based on (made on our Best of 2025 episodes), it might be confusing, but it sounds silly, right? If you don’t know exactly what it’s referring to, it sounds like it’ll be a silly show. And that’s what we’re trying to apply with it.

Wisconsin has a long history of meat raffles, so that fits right in.

Really? Like raffling off meat?

Yeah, you go to a bar, and they raffle meat.

Everything is described in the words “meat raffle.”

You interview a lot of comedians playing improvised characters, and you toe the line between sparking people to be silly versus seeking clarity from your guests. How do you see your role as the interviewer of a comedy show with made-up guests?

I think I described it once as comedy lawyering. It’s a particular way to do a scene where you’re the straight man reacting to someone’s quirkiness, and you’re trying to heighten that for them while still being the voice of reason. You’re picking apart their story and trying to find inaccuracies.

A lot of times, when people are playing characters, they’ll misspeak. Improvisation is based on “yes, and…” but sometimes, someone misspeaks and gives a funny detail that they didn’t mean to say, and I capitalize on it because it’s going to open up a whole new crazy level of improv.

That’s one of my jobs, picking apart someone’s story — not to make them not seem right, but to heighten the story, and turn down avenues that otherwise would go unexplored.

I imagine that requires a lot of active listening on your part.

Thankfully, I have a brain where I’m picking apart what someone’s saying and going, “Yeah, but why did this happen?” When someone’s telling a story about their personal life, I naturally am inquisitive about the details of why things are happening.

I’m there to ask questions that (the guests) haven’t thought about. They have to answer on the spot, which then will take us to a really interesting place, which is the whole reason to do improv.

I think if someone came in and just did a character that they pre-planned already, and they knew every part of their story, and I was just there to set up questions for them that I already knew the answers to, it wouldn’t have that special feeling right improv has, right?

“Comedy Bang! Bang!” just celebrated its 17th anniversary. What do you think has made the show relevant for so long?

I booked a stand-up/sketch show here in LA for 10 years. It was very hard to get stage time in LA … a show would get their roster of people that they liked putting up, and they wouldn’t actively search for new people. You would see the same people every week. And then your audience tends to age along with the show.

I always actively try to get new people (on the show). Some years I’m better at it than others. Sometimes, if I’m really, really, really busy with a particular job, I rely on the same reliable people that I know will be great, but I try to take chances on new people.

I think this is a particularly fun era of “Comedy Bang! Bang!” where there are a lot of new people, and I think this is going to be a fun tour, with a lot of people who have never toured with us before and who are appearing on stage with us for the first time.

What should our Madison audience expect from the show?

They should expect it will end. I know people go to a show, they see a start time, and then go, “Wait a minute — this is gonna last until I keel over and have a heart attack!” We will end. You’re not going to have to say goodbye to your relatives and never see them again.

Paul F. Tompkins, the great comedian and improviser, is going to be with me on every show. He’s doing a different character, not only every night, but he keeps track of the characters he’s done in each city. Madison will see him play a different character than he’s ever played anytime he’s been in the city.

I’m going to have Paul as well as probably three other guests there, and they’re all going to be playing crazy characters. I think Madisonites are going to be very pleased with who is joining us.

One of my co-workers, when I told him I was interviewing you, mentioned a 2014 episode with The Calvins Twins as one of his favorites.

That’s one of my all-time favorites. I asked Taran (Killam) and Paul (Brittain) to be on the show. We all got into the room, and Paul and Taran looked at each other and said, “What should we do today?”

Taran said, “Well, I had an idea about people who own a ranch, and they have boxing matches for horses.” Paul said, “Great,” and then we pressed record on the tape.

Here is one of the most insane unravelings of that basic premise, where the details get so heightened and so crazy … I think that’s the “Comedy Bang! Bang!” ideal. You start with the most basic kernel of a premise, and then the more you explore it, the lore gets so complicated and so incredibly detailed and funny that we’ve done so many sequels to that episode. They’re always a pleasure to do.