SCHARPLING & WURSTER at the Mod Club (722 College), Saturday (November 28), 7 pm. $25. ticketfly.com.
For over 15 years, Tom Scharpling has been taking calls during his comedy/music radio program, The Best Show.
The format has led to some interesting contributions from listeners, including a whole stable of strange, ridiculous characters voiced by caller Jon Wurster, who plays drums in Superchunk, the Mountain Goats and Bob Mould, among others.
When Scharpling & Wurster began touring for the first time this year, fans wondered how the call-in format would work live and whether they’d be allowed to participate.
“No, they watch the show, like a normal thing you go see,” Scharpling says, chuckling during a Skype conference with Wurster ahead of their Mod Club gig. “It’s definitely a one-sided conversation going on.”
“Yeah, you don’t go to see Bon Jovi hoping someone from the crowd gets up onstage,” Wurster chimes in.
Scharpling & Wurster’s dynamic comedic chemistry broke through in 2015. In March, the Numero Group released a 16-CD box set collecting The Best Of The Best Show, which once aired on New Jersey’s WFMU and now streams live Tuesday nights from 9 pm to midnight on thebestshow.net and is then condensed into a podcast.
Promotion of the collection has led the pair to do uncharacteristically extroverted things like appear on TV talk shows and perform their hilarious scripted dialogues with each other publicly in person instead of by phone over the radio.
“I’m used to the show being so solitary and starting with this slow, quiet ramp-up,” Scharpling says. “To have this thing where people are cheering within the first second is the exact opposite of how every version of whatever Jon and I have done together has been. The energy is totally different.”
What’s familiar is that Scharpling continues to play a curious, if increasingly exasperated, straight man to Wurster’s array of bonkers, music-obsessed nemeses, like Philly Boy Roy (who loves all things Philadelphia), the Gorch (who claims The Fonz character was based on him) and “rock, rot, rule” music theorist/author Ronald Thomas Clontle. The live show also features musical numbers and local guests.
“We like to do some research on the city we’re going to be in and include little factoids and jokes that people will hopefully get and appreciate,” Wurster says.
“Oh, we’ve gone deep and we’ve got you guys pegged,” Scharpling adds about the Toronto stop. “You’re going to realize, ‘That’s what we actually are,’ once we hold the mirror up to you.”
music@nowtoronto.com | @vishkhanna
