Twenty Minutes to Sell, KELLY ANNEKEN’s first comedy album, may be the first one in her arsenal, but boy does it pack a punch. Anneken covers all those subjects other comics are often too afraid to touch like eating disorders, miscarriages and Gollum-husbands. Kelly’s self-deprecating style creates an instant rapport with her audience. Her delivery is delightfully dry and she can definitely keep an audience wondering how far she’ll take a joke. When the Bay area resident is not independently releasing a comedy album, she acts as Comedy Curator at Pandora Internet Radio where she is dedicated to creating a content library that puts artists at the forefront. Kelly co-hosts the internationally known Downton Abbey podcast “Up Yours, Downstairs” with husband Tom Schneider and is the “official third chair” of the Game of Thrones recap podcast “Boars, Gore & Swords”. The six-year comedy veteran is co-founder of the nonprofit organization Femikaze which develops female comedy talent and audiences. AND when she doesn’t feel like she’s contributed enough to this ungrateful society, she writes an wacky online humor journal called Hobo Pancakes. Do you now understand why we think she is more than prepared to achieve world domination? Heck, according to Anneken, Beyoncé once prophesied it. Sit back and learn more about this comedy creator.
COMEDY CAKE: Where do you draw inspiration when you are in the comedy album making process?
KELLY ANNEKEN: While this is my first EP, I think an album should exist to be funny and solve a problem. In the case of “Twenty Minutes to Sell”, I tried to solve two problems. I wanted to do my part to create more comedy content by female artists and I also wanted to get a sense of how having an album impacts independent comics’ careers in the digital age. The first problem was easy, since all I had to do was release the EP to accomplish that goal. The results of the second problem won’t be in for a while, but I’m excited about continuing to monitor that experiment.
CAKE: How important is audience feedback during a set?
KELLY: I think audience feedback is equally important to the artist’s writing, preparation, and delivery. Comedy albums should be a duet between the comic and the crowd. That give and take–there’s nothing else like it, and you’ve got to be able to hear it on a recording.
CAKE: Why do you think so few comedy albums are produced by women in this day and age? It’s 2014, right?
KELLY: Woof, okay, strap in! I don’t have any hard data on this, so maybe check with like Neil deGrasse Tyson or Geena Davis or someone who knows about data, but the number one reason is that there are just fewer women comics working at any given moment. Given that comedy’s still a pretty male-dominated space, we’d need a huge influx of female talent on the supply side to really move the numbers on women recording albums. The number two reason is that pretty much all comedy is bankrolled by advertisers trying to reach the 18-34 year old male demographic, and that group isn’t exactly clamoring for a hilarious, nuanced dissection of the female experience (even though it would totally help them get chicks). There’s also the problem of certain gatekeepers saying that they just don’t know where to find women comics. Like, dude, just ASK someone. You’re in the comedy industry. They’re less than six degrees away from you, I guarantee.
Beyond that, not every comic records an album in their career, which is fine, but from my perspective, there’s an extent to which women are sort of self-selecting themselves out of the process by not aggressively pursuing opportunities to record or just hanging back and waiting because they don’t feel “ready”. I mean, I get it–it’s pretty terrifying to put yourself out there in such a permanent way and confidently say “yeah, I’m good enough” in an industry that’s eager to tell you how much you suck and is already difficult to gain visibility in due to your gender. But on the flipside of that, I think there’s just tremendous opportunity for women to experiment with and breathe new life into a medium that’s stayed pretty static since the 1970s. There’s an audience out there for our experiences, and they’re really starved for comedy.
CAKE: Who are your comedy heroes and why?
KELLY: Ummmmmmmmmm, I don’t know that I have any comedy “heroes,” per se. There are definitely people who inspire me and challenge me to do better, but I tend to think of “heroes” as people who are like, super-liberal Supreme Court judges or firemen or the women who do pedicures in gentrifying neighborhoods. Patton Oswalt is the reason I started doing comedy, because he made me realize that I could make fun of my body and other people might enjoy that. Like every female comic my age, I was like holyshitSarahSilverman and spent a while imitating her style before I figured out my voice. Hopefully I’ve scrubbed all those videos from the internet at this point. But it really clicked for me that I should be doing comedy when I saw Judy Tenuta on that HBO Women of the Night thing from the 90s. Awful, terrible, no good, very bad title on that special, but she was just so far outside the box, playing her accordion and having her own religion and chewing gum onstage–I don’t do any of those things, but she just sort of opened me up to how much is possible in standup. As long as you’re good at it, as long as people are laughing, you can do whatever you want.
Oh, wait! I do have comedy heroes. Anyone ever who has kept an open mic running for more than a month. They all deserve medals. And health insurance.
CAKE: In “Twenty Minute to Sell” you touch upon some sensitive subject matter (miscarriage, eating disorders, Facebook ), which we appreciate greatly. Is it a just a tiny bit exhilarating to get those subjects out in the open and joke about them in a somewhat safe arena?
KELLY: I don’t think of a comedy club (or basement or bar or laundromat or wherever you are) as a safe arena. Comedy’s the alchemy of the performing arts–somehow it just works, except when it doesn’t, and no one can quite understand why unless they’ve done it themselves. People expect you to be dangerous, I think, or at least say what they’re too afraid to say. The arena isn’t safe, but the comedian has to be. You’re the audience’s guide–every time you pull the rug out from under them, you have to be there to tell them “it’s okay, and here’s why, and that part’s funny, too!”
I guess I don’t think of subject matter as “sensitive,” either. The only dangerous ideas are the ones we don’t make fun of. I mean, I understand why people don’t want to talk about miscarriages or eating disorders or Facebook in public, and I think it’s stupid. It just makes us feel bad about things we really can’t control. When I had my miscarriage and I told my friends about it, every single one was like, “Oh yeah, I have like 3 friends that have miscarried,” and I was just shocked. I felt really alone while it was going on, so I wanted to shed some light on a pretty dark experience in the hope that the stigma around that experience would dissipate somewhat and people wouldn’t have to feel like they’re the only one who ever failed to create life. Same thing about eating disorders–like most women, I’ve got a pretty abusive relationship with my body image, and I sometimes act that out in harmful ways. No reason not to laugh at that, especially if it helps you fight that particular demon. And Facebook, well–to speak of Facebook is to speak of humanity’s fundamental nihilism, is it not?
CAKE: So are doctors really still using fax machines? (You may have to explain what a fax machine is to our readers.)
KELLY: Oh, man, are they ever! I’m a huge hypochondriac, and I’ve discovered that the more serious the medical issue you might be facing, the more faxes are involved, which is terrifying. We probably could have cured cancer by now, but all the research teams are communicating by fax.
CAKE: We love your Law & Order:SVU Ice-T impression on the album. Do you do any others?
KELLY: I do James Van Der Beek for a hot second on the album, but I don’t think I’m doing any others in my material right now. I’m a solid mimic, but I never set out to do an impression, in general. I’ve got some in the wings that I’ll use if the right joke comes along. It’s all pretty much people in character from film and TV. I do a good Christian Bale in Newsies, I can do pretty much the entire casts of Valley of the Dolls, Ever After, A League of Their Own, and Requiem for a Dream. My husband and I have a Downton Abbey recap podcast called “Up Yours, Downstairs!” and I do a lot of impressions of the cast on that. Our listeners really like my impression of Elizabeth McGovern or “McG,” as we call her. She’s fun to do because she always sounds totally whacked out on Xanax.
CAKE: Do you think all husbands are really just Gollums with very specific agendas?
KELLY: No, much like the One ring or the Highlander, there can only be one Gollum-husband, and I snagged him. Sorry, ladies!
CAKE: So what are your thoughts on season 5 of “Downtown Abbey,” which has already started airing in the UK? Spoilers are welcome. Of course, you could probably makeup plot lines and diehards would still wait until January. Yay, fiction!
KELLY:Downton Abbey is like the only show ever where 5 seasons in, I’m still as in love with it as I was when I first watched. That first season was one of the tightest TV narratives of all time, and the subsequent seasons have all more or less been shitshows, but I still love the hell out of it. I’m doing instant reactions to S5 with my Gollum-husband on the podcast, and we’ve only seen the first episode. The most fascinating thing so far is that S5 appears to be all about sex. Everyone’s having it, or trying to, anyway–their clothes are still really hard to get in and out of. It’s so exciting. Hour-long dramas about people trying to have sex are probably my favorite thing to watch, hands-down.
CAKE: What other projects do you have waiting in the wings for us?
KELLY: I co-founded a non-profit called Femikaze a couple of years ago, and it’s dedicated to creating opportunities for women in comedy and developing audiences for comedy by women. We have our official 501 (c) 3 tax-exempt status now, so we’re going to start fundraising and grant-writing here at the tail end of 2014. We’re also developing a curriculum designed to introduce middle- and high-school aged girls to the idea of comedy, and we’ll be piloting that in partnership with Girls, Inc in January 2015. So that’s all happening in the Bay Area, but I’m also returning to write for my online humor journal, Hobo Pancakes, after a 6-month hiatus, which is a good way to see my work if you can’t come to my shows. Other than that, I want to travel a lot in the next year and perform standup in a lot of new cities. I have a concept for a full-length album, but that’s so far off, I don’t want to say anything about it yet.
Mentions: Be sure to pick up Kelly’s comedy album Twenty Minutes to Sell TODAY! Keep up with her comings and goings HERE. Feature image taken by Red Scott.