Opus Dave: When being a character comes naturally

Two weeks ago, Dave Labedz and Dave Fisher walked away with each of the top prizes at Dane101’s first-ever "Aristocrats" contest, wherein local comics and personalities bared their most twisted and disgusting thoughts in an attempt at comedy. Labedz wowed the judges with his raunchy rhyming couplets, and Fisher used his creativity with the English language (“Shitake shit-taco” being the more memorable of his many turns of phrase) to earn the audience-favorite award. The two twentysomething comics, known together as "Opus Dave," met years ago in an English class at UW and have been performing comedy together since the now-closed Klinic Bar began hosting its comedy open mics. Ahead of the pair's gig headlining their own evening of comedy tonight at Electric Earth Café on West Wash, they sat down with Decider. (You can also stream some audio of the two trading bits below—the first voice you'll hear is Fisher's.)

Decider: How did each of you get into comedy?

Dave Labedz: When I was 17, I saw the movie Comedian by Jerry Seinfeld. Up to that point, I didn’t realize that comedy was so rehearsed and scrutinized. It’s so much more of a writing process than a performance process. So, I was like, "Fuck, I can do that." Prior to that, I thought it was something only cool people could do.

Dave Fisher: I was the funny guy in my family and possibly in my social circle in high school. I think that’s how a lot of comedians start out, but they don’t realize that that’s completely different than comedy. I still haven’t made that realization.

D: You both have distinct, yet similarly theatrical bents to your comedy. How did you arrive at that?

DF: When I first started doing comedy people would always talk to me about what “character” I was doing. That hadn’t really occurred to me. I thought of myself as a guy who gets up on stage and delivers the jokes he wrote.

D: People thought you were playing a different character.

DF: Yeah…It was me.

DL: People probably think we are characters. For me, up until recently, my delivery style was the way that I talk. The problem that I would always run into is that I just talk too fast. For the last few months, I’ve tried to speak more slowly and over-articulate a lot of things. Stand-up is doing theater. You’re just the actor and the writer and the producer and the director and the promoter.

DF: And usually the audience.

DL: There are definitely comics that have really excellent comedic timing, and that kind of carries their material. We don’t. We come more from the Mitch Hedberg end of things. If we had to give a comedian that summarizes our aesthetic goals, Emo Phillips would be it.

DF: Imagine if Emo Phillips grew up reading Nintendo Power. That’s where we’re at.

D: What do you think set you apart in the Aristocrats contest?

DF: I remember one guy saying that we’re all going to know who really needs the money—

DL: And we are easily the two poorest people that took part in that competition. Both of us said, "What can we do that absolutely nobody else will be able to do?" For Dave it was the flowery, graphic language. For me it was writing poetry, 'cause I’ve been writing songs since I was 12 years old. Also, a lot of the content of my Aristocrats joke was drawn from the kind of things that you read in death-metal lyrics. I feel like Cannibal Corpse is a big influence on my comedy to an extent. Our stuff can be pretty dark, anyway. I once did a set of jokes involving suicide, spousal abuse, child abuse, incest, and eugenics.

DF: I once debuted a joke at open mic involving prayers giving people cancer.

Assorted comedy bits by Dave Fisher and Dave Labedz

D: You're also roommates. What’s it like performing together and living together?

DL: It just allows more things to fester. We kind of play editor to one another.

DF: But usually we’re wrong.

DL: A lot of times we’re off, 'cause we only understand what we think is funny, but it does help to have one other person to bounce ideas off of—however warped his sense of humor might be. Over thinking things is where we get most of our jokes from.

DF: There’s something really absurd and kind of funny about how scrutinizing we are about everything we talk about. There’s something that was once said about Tom Sawyer, that he’ll be president if they don’t hang him.

DL: I don’t think either of us is going to be president.