The Chaser Report - EXTRA: Nick Lutsko still wants to host SNL

Episode Date: September 21, 2021

Interns Zander and Gabbi interview musical comedian Nick Lutski about his musical and comedic influences. He discusses creating Alex Jones Rants as a Folk Song and what it was like for his music to explode during the 2020 Election.Check out Nick's music on Spotify, Youtube and Bandcamp! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report, news you can't trust. Welcome back to a bonus episode of The Chaser Report. I'm one of the interns Zander, and today Gabby and I will be interviewing internet musical comedian Nick Lutzgo. Nick rose to success over the last few years, creating satirical and absurdist songs like, Celebrities are hot because they all drink baby blood. Joe butter was to take your knees, so you better find a hard as much that he can't reach. Nick's even written songs for Netflix, Super Deluxe and College Humor.

In today's podcast, we talk about his musical influences, his comedic process, and what it's like when crazy conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and his fan base starts to love your folk parody of his rants. That's after the break. We're joined right now by Nick Lutsko, creator of Alex Jones Rance as an indie folk song and Donald Trump's speeches as an emo song amongst hundreds of other bits of comedy. Nick, thank you so much for joining on the podcast. How are you? I'm doing well. I'm a new father. I'm somewhat sleep deprived, but I'm enjoying life.

Congratulations. Thank you very much. I know you're known for your musical comedy, obviously, but I just want people to understand, any of our listeners understanding, but the production quality on the songs you make is absolutely insanely professional. So I was just wondering if you might go over some of your personal musical influences. They don't have to be specific to comedy if you don't want them to. I was just curious as to who your favorite musos were. Oh, wow. Yeah. It's, I love so many, like such a wide range of artists. Like, you know, like the most generic answers, the Beatles have been one of my favorite bands. So I was very young.

really got into Bob Dylan when I first started exploring songwriting and then I got into like more college age I got into like the Beach Boys and Tom Waits and wean and Leonard Cohen and the talking heads and I guess more modern artists I really enjoy Arcade Fire and Vampire Weekend and Andrew Bird and yeah I think I got into music like before or like I never even like envision that I would be doing anything related to comedy. And so like I and in some ways I guess you could say I'm a bit of a failed musician who pivoted into comedy. So I think that's a part of the reason why like maybe the production and the musical aspect of what I do sounds a little bit more professional than most musical comedies because I kind of, that's where. I started and that's where I put a lot of effort into yeah no it absolutely shows and that kind of

all starts to change around the 2016 American election right yeah yeah definitely I yeah I um I don't know I don't know how to how to put it in words I was just so bewildered by um the whole 2016 campaign and it's just so old and boring to even talk about Trump at this point but yeah I was um I got really into the work of Vic Berger that he was doing at the time because I felt like he was just doing such a brilliant job of capturing like the absurdity and just how nonsensical everything felt. It just felt like this weird nightmare. And he did a really great job of kind of like solidifying those like feelings with myself, like making me feel like I'm not the only one experiencing this.

And he did this election special in 2016. and I just felt compelled to write a theme song for it unsolicited. And I tweeted it at him and Tim Hiderker, who is working with, and they ended up using it as like the official theme song for that special. There would be nothing else that I'm doing now without that one event. Like that was like, SuperDlocks produce it, and they were like, hey, do you want to do more like comedy type stuff for us? And it was just me being like, okay, like I wasn't qualified for it.

I was just a fan. And it was just a way to, you know, try to make some money, you know, because there's not a lot of opportunities to make money as a musician. And so, yeah, I just kind of went down that road, and opportunities just continued to present themselves, and eventually I ended up here. I feel like everybody in musical comedy kind of just finds their way there, and it feels like this weird twist of comedic fate of some kind,

where it's like a series of events led to the next series of events, which led to the next series of events. and do you find there's a certain joy from the impulsivity of all of it? Like, do you find that not really knowing what the next opportunity is going to be is kind of a thrill or is it a stress for you? Yeah, no, it's really exciting, especially now. I feel like, you know, I have released non-comedic records. And I will continue to.

Like, I still really enjoy that as well. But, like, I feel like the last record I did in particular, it was just such a painstaking process of everything was so long like it took so long to like settle on which lyrics I liked and which instrumentation I liked and how to mix it how to produce it and sometimes like I mean there were literally years that or there were literally songs I started on in 2015 maybe that I didn't finish until like 2019 for that record so that some of those had like a four year lifespan so it's been really cool um with these comedy songs just just like, you know, a lot of them I'll get the idea for the song in the morning and write it as fast as I can produce it as fast I can shoot like a crappy video on my phone and upload it on Twitter that evening. And like that's part of the process is like just trusting my subconscious and just like going with the first instinct. And yeah, it's been, it's just been cool. It's been very validating, seeing that people like enjoy it. It's just two very different things. And it's

cool being able to do both. And I think both are very rewarding. As far as the impulsivity of work, I've been lucky enough to where I've kind of got to the point that, like, there definitely was like a period where it was like, oh, wow, the first three months of this year have gone like amazing. and then I don't have another job for like another five months and it's always never going to work again I got to get a day job I got to do you know and that part of it like was not fun

but yeah it's been really cool that with these songs I've been doing on Twitter like every time I get enough songs to like put on band camp I just release an EP and it seems like I've kind of like accumulated this tribe of people that are interested in throwing money at the things I create which is just like the greatest thing I could ever

for it. I think that there's a certain accessibility to musical comedy that doesn't quite exist within regular stand-up comedy. Do you find yourself taking more comedic risks through your original comedy music as opposed to a risk you wouldn't probably normally take in just a regular stand-up set? Like, do you find yourself braver under the guise of comedy, musical comedy? Oh, man. I don't know, because it's, it's something that I fell into as a just, as a, as a, as a, a way to make money. You know what I mean? Like I did that song from him and Vic just purely for creative expression. There wasn't even really a joke to that theme song other than the fact that I was doing it, I guess. And then, you know, Super Deluxe, which was like kind of like this young

company that was looking for creators to like create stuff very regularly was just like could tell that I could make stuff quickly and was and it was just element of like taking this person's words and this person's context. There wasn't a lot of like joke writing. writing in the craft of it. It was more like puzzle making, like putting together, crafting these like weird puzzles. And then over time, like I became more confident in the comedy that I brought to that puzzle making, which eventually led to this point about a year ago where I started actually writing comedy music. Anyways, I guess what I'm trying to say is it's been such a weird path to where I am now that I've, it's still very new for me to even think of myself in terms of

being a comedian or whatever else. And it's especially interesting in that like now we're planning live shows and it's like, okay, I have to take it into consideration that a lot of these people probably are coming to the show expecting a comedy show. And it's like kind of blending these two worlds of like I've always put on very kind of theatrical fun, um, live shows but like adding an like a comedic element outside of the music like it's all very new and um interesting but i i do think just as far as like i did this one hour long special on my youtube channel um uh where i was inaugurated as the president of halloween and like that like an opportunity for me to like i mean yeah it's a comedy special technical

you know it's not like of the hour long special is probably like 10 15 minutes of music but like I do feel like whatever I'm doing you know in that or on Twitter or through these songs and what I'll eventually end up doing uh on stage all kind of fall under the same umbrella like I don't approach any of them that differently I don't think your songs have had a lot of different targets over the last year from wanting to play at Joe Bunn's inauguration. Joe, let me sing a cheer inauguration. Who hosting Saturday Night Live?

Let me host to sit down. Lord Markle's in myself. Please don't believe the stories with my boyfriend. What's the process for choosing the next topic? Yeah, man. So it's kind of impossible to say what's next just because it's so, like, so much of it depends on my, my schedule.

Like, it's funny because, like, towards end of last year, like the height of the pandemic, I didn't really have a lot of work going on. So it was like, I kind of made it my focal point to be like, okay, I'm definitely going to write a song this week. And, you know, I have these two days to work on it. And I don't know what it's going to be, but I'm going to write a song about something and shoot a video and put something up. It's almost like I have to like wake up and be inspired by whatever people. are talking about that day like like with Joe Biden's inauguration for example it's like well first of all the insurrection of January 6th on the United States Capitol had happened

just a few days earlier so I feel like every American was kind of dealing with the trauma of that and although the the song has its own like subtext of like why I'm in a neck brace and I have a black guy I feel like all Americans felt like they'd just been beaten up after four years of Trump and it was like the inauguration was coming up in the next couple weeks and it's like I've created this strange character who is having a very what's the word volatile relationship with his grandmother's new boyfriend you know like without getting into the weeds of all the background and the lore of everything but it was like okay how can I use the current event that a lot of people are talking about to tell my own stupid story around this

strange character that I've kind of created and I mean and same thing with Saturday Live that everyone was going on about having Elon Musk host that week and you know obviously it was just there's so many memes about it there's a lot to say about like it felt like here we go again in a way with them booking Trump in 2016 it's like maybe let's learn from our mistakes and not like book these like

eccentric billionaires who like may not have the best interests of like the most people it's been it's been harder to be as productive as I was Was it the latter part of last year just because I had a new baby and that's taken up a lot of time and I've had other jobs that have come like as a result of all these things I've been doing? I have to be more intentional in that like if I want to get, make sure I get a song out this month, like I need to like start thinking about like what is happening and how can I tie that into whatever the story is that I'm working on. So I don't know if any of that makes a lot of sense because I'm trying to tell a SparkNotes version of very common. I feel like you have to kind of stay topical,

particularly with political satire. It's always sort of a lottery every single day of what you're going to cover. But I do have to ask, and I know that you've probably been asked a gazillion times about this, but you are obviously the creator behind Alex Jones as an indie folk song. restore the paradigm of absolute control and that's why we're just out here doing simple things pointing out that we're meant to be in nature and be natural

and this is where we find the source that God made to transcend the new world order and that's why they want to try to keep us out of it which is one of the most to me iconic pieces of musical comedy political satire I think ever created currently sitting at 7.4 million views on YouTube but I did just want to say it is only one of many X as an X song in that series

Did you know that that one in particular was going to be as incredibly successful as it was when you were making it? Or for you, was it just a bit of fun that kind of blew up out of nowhere? Yeah, so that's something that I did for that company, Super Deluxe. And I definitely knew there was something special about it as I was working on it. But I never know how something is going to do, like, ever. Yeah. And I know with that song in particular, I'd been to be. doing the emo Trump videos.

Yes. We did enough of those where it was like, I think this is kind of like played out. And it was like, okay, now what else can we do with the same like format? Like who else do we have endless amounts of footage saying the most absurd things you can think of? And like it's a shorter list. I think like the three people that I felt like were the best candidates for that format were Trump,

Alex Jones and Tanya West. And we had to get more creative when we, like, did other ones. But I think those ones, those were the three guys that's just like, there's so much material of them just saying like the most ridiculous things. But yeah, it was, it was, I remember the day that they posted it on their Facebook, he messaged me within like five minutes and was like, he had some guy at Super Deluxe who's like on the tech side. And he was like, we can already tell just by how many times it's been shared that this is going to like be insanely viral just because I don't know, some metrics that they saw that I didn't have.

But yeah, people totally connect with it. The only other little piece of trivia I think I can add about that song that might be worth mentioning is it kind of started as let's do like a metal Alex Jones song. and then it was like it's too obvious like what like what's the opposite of that like and then it was like trying to find like this very um soft like ethereal white boy folk music and that was kind of like i really think that made it so much better than what would have been had we leaned into like the aggression like i think that would have almost validated the things he was saying in a way in that whereas the the indie folk i think under minds. Yeah.

His, I don't know, the intensity. Yeah, the absolute commitment to that genre in that song is what makes it funny to me is just how wonderfully arranged the harmonies are to his like yells of frustration. It's just brilliant. But what I did want to ask, like, the response to that song, though, did Alex Jones offer you a job? Like, I feel like maybe that might have been. by people who are less aware of the satire of it,

did you get some weird inboxes after that? Yeah, definitely. It was, yeah, it was a very strange time in that, like, on the one hand, I believe Super Deluxe was thrilled to have a song that was so popular, but, like, he really used it. Like, he did, like, it was on the weekend, I think, and he did an emergency broadcast to talk about this new viral song and about, he insisted that the person that wrote it was like a closeted info

war's fan that was trying to like red pill the masses and like yeah and he was like begging for more and he did this stupid cover contest and he offered like $20,000 to the winner to whoever did the best cover it was it was all just so insane so it was like this really kind of strange like reverse psychology of like this doesn't bother me I love this and super deluxe was like yeah let we just don't even want his attention like his his fans are too intense the too weird and like I definitely to this day it's the most viral like song or the most like you know viewed song on my or video on my YouTube channel and like the majority of the comments and notifications I get on YouTube are people commenting on that video and so many of them are Alex Jones was right everything he says is true tell me where the lie is I didn't know who this guy was and then I watched this video and now I'm such a fan and like initially I thought, like, this is Alex Jones. He's, like, making these bots.

And, like, because there's no person that can be this insane to watch this video and think, that's, you know, a reasonable guy. That's the guy I want to follow. But it's been four years since the songs come out. And it's constant. Like, it's nonstop. And it's, like, very depressing to think that that that,

many people that buy into that guy's like rhetoric and it makes me very sad for like the state of like human nature I guess not to get very dark with it but it is like it's I think the fact that like I get notifications on my phone it's like oh there's another reminder of like what we're up against like yeah a lot of the people around me who work with the internet have started to become concerned that they're terminally online does that part of your job why are you yeah yeah i mean i hate it it's um i'm definitely addicted to social media and my phone and um there's not really anything funny to say about it um uh and you know i use the excuse like oh it's my job like i kind of need to know what's going on but i mean like i don't know

it's uh it's it's problematic and it's something i like like even with my four-month-old daughter, it's just so easy, like, she's, you know, fussing or whatever, and it's like, here's Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, and then all of a sudden she's just like, cool, and she's just like, you know, into it. And it's like, oh, no, I'm already watching the cycle repeat itself. Like, we're all just, like, slowly becoming zombies that need, like, a screen in front of our faces. That's a very, you know, pessimistic view of things. Like, I know there's so many great things that come out of technology and social media. but it's very easy to see all the harm that comes with it as well.

Well, thank you so much for joining us, Nick, and talking about zombie babies, the U.S. election, and conspiracy theories, and everything in between. It's been a great pleasure. Yeah, of course. Thanks so much for having me, guys. And right before you go, too, actually, I was just going to ask, what's next in terms of tours or shows

or anything that you want to plug? I'm trying to release some new... vinyl like another album worth of collection of these songs by the end of this year. It's the world's worst kept secret. I'm working on another Spirit Halloween song that should be coming soon. Hell yeah. I do intend to start travel. We're playing a couple shows in Chicago next year and we're looking to book a lot more. I don't think we'll be playing in Australia next year. That's fair. We're not playing in Australia either at the moment.

Yeah, right, right, right. We'd love to get there eventually, for sure. Yeah. Oh, well, when a live comedy and music scene comes back, we'll see you there in 2041. It'll be great. Thank you so much for checking out today's bonus episode. If you want to hear more of Nick's work,

you can check them out on pretty much all major music streaming platforms and also on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and Bandcamp. We'll be back with another episode of The Chaser Report tomorrow. our gears provided by road microphones and we're part of the ACAST creator network. Bye.