Mike MacRae's Website

Mike's Journal: The best place on the web for Mike-related information written by Mike


February 20, 2008 10:43am: CD Baby, baby! Hey all: just in case you've tried to purchase my CD from these links and have been unsuccessful, CD Baby (the website that handles my CD sales) is temporarily out of stock. However, a new shipment went out and they will be up and running Monday 2/25. Sorry for the inconvenience, and thanks for your patience. CLICK BELOW TO PURCHASE 'HOVERCRAFT'

February 10, 2008 12:27pm: MY CD IS NOW AVAILABLE ONLINE That's right, everyone. Your prayers have been answered. My new CD, "Hovercraft", is now available at CDBaby.com at http://cdbaby.com/cd/mikemacrae. Or just go to the link here: I've had it available to sell at shows for a few months now, but I'm really excited to be able to sell it online, so a special thanks to the good folks over at CD Baby. If you like my stuff, check it out. Its a good CD.

November 21, 2007 3:51am: Upcoming shows, including HOUSTON, TX Just got back from New York City, where I had met up with comics Greg Warren, Auggie Smith, and Geoff Tate to be the "Secret Public Guests" on Mike Birbiglia's "Secret Public Tour", which ended up being a blast. We had great shows at Rider College in NJ, Falls Church, VA, and Charlotte, NC. Good times, and thanks to everyone who came out. I'm currently looking forward to some upcoming weeks on the road (for a full list of my gigs, check out www.myspace.com/mikemacrae). I'm headlining at Morty's Comedy Club in Indianapolis Nov 28 to Dec 2. I haven't been there before, but I've heard nothing but good things about the club. And it is in the same space as the old Indianpolis Funny Bone, which I did twice before it went the way of the dodo. It sounds like Morty's is getting the same great crowds the Bone used to get. AND THEN, Dec 19-22, Bob Biggerstaff and I will be co-headlining over at the Laff Stop in Houston, TX. This will be my first time returning to Houston after moving to Austin. Bob and I are pals, so we're looking forward to this being a fun week. Bob has been seen on Last Comic Standing, among other things; check him out at www.bobbiggerstaff.com. Bob won the Houston's Funniest Person Contest in 2003 and will not let anyone forget it. THE 'BOB AND MIKE ARE FRIENDS' SHOW aka 'MACRAE COMES HOME' DEC 19-22 THE LAFF STOP 526 Waugh Houston, TX Call 713-524-2333 for advance tickets!

June 23, 2007 3:45am: LETTERMAN CLIP AND NEW DATES I did "Impressionist Week" on David Letterman and it went very well. Check out the clip on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmhHjhD3Hms Or you can see it on my MySpace page: www.myspace.com/mikemacrae Also, I have posted new dates for the fall on that page. Check and see if I am coming to a comedy club near you. That will be the best place to check for dates, and will be updated regularly. My website is in a transitional period and I won't be able to update my appearances page for awhile. More news to come....

April 30, 2007 3:51am: I'm going to be on Letterman... ... as a part of "Impressionist Week" this coming Wednesday, May 2nd. So check your local listings and tune in if you get a chance. I'll try not to suck. Drew Barrymore will be on there, too: we'll see if she can follow THE HEAT!!!

April 20, 2007 3:32am: Gary Rossington laughed at my Vince Vaughn impression today. One of the great things about doing "Bob & Tom" is that you never know who you are going to meet in the studio. They have a lot of classic rock legends as regular guests, and I've always hoped to run into one of them. Well, I got my wish this morning: Lynyrd Skynyrd was there, and I met them. Well, three of them. I've never done material on the radio with Southern Rock Legends watching me before, but I guess there is a first time for everything. They seemed to have dug my stuff, and the bit I did with my buddy Henry Phillips, so points for me, as far as I'm concerned. They also said they'd hook me up with tickets to their show when they come to Houston. To which I could only reply: Thanks, Lynyrd Skynyrd! Never thought I'd get to say that. I also got to tell Johnny Van Zant how glad I was that they got inducted into the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame (see blog below). I don't quite know if me telling him that was as much of a moment of closure for him as it was for me, but I'd like to think so.

August 28, 2006 11:41am: Friends of the Bob & Tom Show Comedy Tour ....I'm on it this fall. Check out the dates page on this website and see if I'm coming to your town. If I am, come out and laugh and say hi. I'll be on each of those shows with four great comics, ie Henry Phillips, Greg Warren, Auggie Smith, and Mike Birbiglia. If you are familiar with their acts, you realize what a bang-up show this will be, and I greatly look forward to being their Jay Davis (but with more crying). We've all been talking a lot about our tour this Fall and we're excited about making it a unique subset of the Friends of Bob & Tom tour. I'm pretty happy about it, and anticipate this being one of the highlights of my career so far. I will be making this blog a sort of a journal throughout the course of the tour, so stay tuned and drop me a line if you are able to come to one of the shows! So tomorrow I am off for a short vacation in Maryland, but shortly thereafter the five of us will kick off our tour with a week at Zanies in Nashville. More to come....

May 12, 2006 3:37am: GOOD NEWS FOR ME AND FOR PEOPLE IN 18 US CITIES THAT LIKE MY JOKES AND THE JOKES OF SEVERAL OTHER COMEDIANS ....will be coming soon. Until then, here are my current road dates: May 10-15 Westport Funny Bone St. Louis June 3 JOE WARMBRODT BENEFIT (See below) June 7-10 Laff Stop Houston June 29-July 2 Wiley's Dayton, OH August 9-12 Cap City Comedy Club Austin, TX Sept 6-9 Zanies Nashville Nov 15-19 Westport Funny Bone St. Louis ....more to come soon! Also, if you are into the whole MySpace thing, and you know you are, "friend" me or whatever at www.myspace.com/mikemacrae. There you will find my blogs of a lesser god.

May 12, 2006 3:06am: Dates/Joe Benefit This website was created and is maintained by the Austin-based Monkey Department, ie Joe Warmbrodt and Jenn Baldillez. Unfortunately Joe, who is not only my webmaster, but my cousin, good friend, and my brutha from anothah mothah (my aunt, technically), has recently had a spate of nasty health problems. Their concern now, of course, is his recuperation so he can get back to being his bad self. So, this website is sort of on the back burner of their priorities at the moment, meaning there won't be any updates to any non-blog part of the site for a while. Therefore I will be posting any changes and updates to my tour schedule here on this blog. But back to Joe. As we all know, health care costs in this country are retarded (especially for the retarded), so after as long a hospital stay as Joe's illness required a little help can be nice. Therefore we are planning a BENEFIT FOR JOE WARMBRODT (Joe-palooza? We're not sure yet) that will be going down on SATURDAY, JUNE 3RD in AUSTIN, TEXAS at RED'S SCOOT-INN. Because Joe is not only my webmaster, but a super-awesome, well connected man about town, the event is shaping up quite nicely and lots of people are pitching in. I will be emceeing the event, which will include 5 or 6 ultra-hip and cool Austin bands that I have never heard of because I listen to Genesis and crap like that (see below). Doors open at five, and donations are, naturally, heartily encouraged. More info to come. So if you live in Austin, go to this event and spend liberally. It will be fun even for those who are not yet well-versed in Joe. It is for a good cause.

March 22, 2006 4:32am: Yes, Virginia, Fairies Do Wear Boots. I never thought I'd live to see it, ladies and gentlemen, but it happened. Last night Rob Mungle and I sat in front of the television basking in triumph... ...and watched as Black Sabbath was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Why the dorky obsession with this moment, you might (rightfully) ask? Well, let me explain. An artist or band is eligible for nomination for entry into the RNR Hall of Fame 25 years after their first US full-length LP release. Then, some Trilateral Commission-esque body consisting of music journalists (a shameless collection of self-serving scum), record company nabobs, and other undesirables meets in a room somewhere and decides which of the eligible nominees deserve to be inducted that year and then that body departs, leaving hapless janitors trying to figure out which cleaning solution to use on the pulsating slimetrails that such a collection of hipster trash would produce. At least that's what it says on the official HOF website. Some bands get in their first eligible year; your Elvises, your Beatles. Fine. For others, it takes a few years. Black Sabbath was eligible in 1995, 25 years after their first eponymous LP release. They have been nominated and denied seven times. Pure injustice. Perhaps you are saying, 'hey Mike, should Black Sabbath even BE in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame? Only Satanists and longshoremen listen to them anyway'. Well, hypothetical fairy of my creation, yes they should. Not only because their fan base is much wider than you might imagine, but primarily because they single-handedly invented an entire genre of music. The whole realm of hard rock and heavy metal as we know it would not have existed were it not for their groundbreaking body of work (by the way, I am talking about pre-1982 Sabbath here. I'd even go pre-76 for argument's sake. Let's be honest, some of those later albums are pretty bad. BUT STILL!). How can the Godfathers of Metal not be acknowledged by an organization calling itself the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame? Heavy Metal is by any reckoning a subset of rock. It is a large musical umbrella; Miles Davis was posthumously inducted this year. I admit he is a monumental musical figure of the twentieth century, but if what he did counts as 'rock', you can't EVER weasel out of allowing metal in the party as well. And they were a good band. Whether you like that type of music or not, you cannot deny the musicianship of that quartet. They could play well and wrote amazing songs, and there were others of that time trying to do the same thing but couldn't do it as well or creatively. There is a reason heavy metal comes from Black Sabbath and not Frijid Pink or Atomic Rooster. Thus discounting any technical or musical reason for their perpetual denial into the coveted hall, one must look for other, more sinister forces. The aging scenesters who decide who go in hate hard rock and heavy metal. They are of the age group that feels that Punk and New Wave rendered everything that went before them musically invalid (except the Beatles) and that Sabbath and their ilk, especially, were persona non grata. A genre that was once celebrated for speaking directly to the lonely and disaffected was now derided for it. We don't let that creepy, unfashionable stuff at CBGBs. Metalheads, in their misguided, smarmy, Kurt Loderian conception of cool, are losers. And their denial of Sabbath's place in the Hall was their symbolic gesture thereof. So Sabbath stays out, but OF COURSE, the Sex Pistols, a boy band created just like 'NSync who couldn't play their instruments gets in immediately when eligible, and they CHEERED the ultra-cool chic of Blondie, and pretended to be enthralled during Debbie Harry's horrific performance of "Rapture", ignoring the unsettling reality that they were watching a 55-year old white woman rapping. So what happened? After all, they did get in. Well, first, I met Rob Mungle. Rob is a good friend of mine. We don't really have all that much in common, but we both do comedy and really dig those Black Sabbath fellas. We have collectively bemoaned this rape of justice for years now. Every year when the nominations come out without Sab, our other friends have to put up with our ranting and raving. "Gladys Knight and the Pips are in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame!" Rob would shout. "PIPS! There are fucking PIPS in the Hall of Fame, but no Black Sabbath." We would do jokes about it at open mic. One theory we had was they couldn't induct them in because the stage would give way from the sheer weight of all the people who have ever actually BEEN in Black Sabbath ("Ladies and gentlemen, Black Sabbath! Ozzy Osbourne! Tony Iommi! Geezer Butler! Bill Ward! Ronnie James Dio! Vinnie Appice! Bev Bevan! Ian Gillan! ... " and about 10 more). But we weren't alone. There were many, many people like ourselves who were beginning to make a stink of it. The members of Nirvana refused to allow Kurt Cobain memorabilia to be displayed in the HOF for this reason. Of all people, Dave Alvin lamented this injustice at a show Rob and I were at. For whatever reason, they ultimately relented. I don't know if it was from fan pressure, or how Ozzy Osbourne has very publicly been transformed into a harmless heavy metal grandpa in the media. Either way, it happened, and we saw it last night. James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich, the Scooby-Doo and Scrappy of Heavy Metal, gave speeches basically saying what I said above and what Rob and I have said for years, and then they were inducted. We both a little misty, I'll be honest, dear readers. And I started to think that maybe, just maybe, I have been too hard on the Hall of Fame and their middle-age hipster junta. Naw, fuck 'em. Deep Purple and Motorhead aren't in yet.

January 25, 2006 2:42am: Blogeriffic! Hello everyone, and welcome to my new and improved website. The good folks at The Monkey Department have set it up so I now have a blog, so keep coming back for more info, pictures, and live dates. My Texas tour continues tonight at the Laff Stop where I will be featuring (just tonight) for Finesse Mitchell from Saturday Night Live, then a week off followed by a tour of duty at the Laff SPOT in Willowbrook with Carl LaBove. I don't hit the road until mid February, when I'm off to Boise again. So until then I get to fatten myself on Tex-Mex and sleep in my own bed.