Should you include humor as part of your live music performance?  Well, by and large, the answer is yes… if you can pull it off.

Humor in any sort of public performance, or public speaking, is a funny thing.  If you can get the audience to stop what they’re doing and laugh, it’s like a quick brain bleach.  Almost like the crackers at a wine tasting, if you’ve ever been to one.  It clears out the audience’s head and makes them more receptive to what comes next.

Even acts you wouldn’t normally think of as being friendly to humor work well with it.  All but the blackest of metal acts can even work in a gag here or there.  If you are funny, fans will dig it.

Working Humor Into Your Live Music Performance

1 – Watch The Classics

“Humor” is in the eye of the beholder, but by and large, the routines and wordplay used in classic Vaudeville can still be pulled out today with few changes.  Watch some Stooges, Marx Brothers, Abbott & Costello, and similar acts.  Anything that still makes you laugh would almost certainly still work onstage.

2 – Use Your Personalities

Most of the best “classic” humor styles involve banter between contrasting personalities.  If you plus another member or two of your band can get some ‘skits’ going here and there, the audience will love it.   Go rewatch “Hard Day’s Night,” or even some old Monkees reruns and look at how the lads used their personalities to bring out their natural humor.

3 – Overact

When you’re trying to integrate any theatrical elements into your act, you have to overact according to how big the room is.  Whatever movement you’re making has to be so exaggerated that someone in the back row can still see you.  Want a good example here?  Catch a WWE show.  The big ‘melodramatic’ gestures the wrestlers make are specifically for the sake of people in the cheap seats.

So, got a funny bone?  We’d love to hear from anyone who’s working humor into their live shows!  Tell the world below!