When Matt Shore first set out to do comedy, he didn’t initially intend to do it with music, or regular housekeeping equipment for that matter. Now, both have become huge elements of what he brings to the stage as an artist, and he’s looking forward to showing us what he’s been up to, back where it all began.
Preparing for a mind-bending full circle moment at The Comedy Studio on Wednesday (June 17), Shore makes his way back to headline the room where it all started for him as a young and determined comedian with an acoustic guitar, as he unleashes his one-man show, Matt Shore Does Songs at You, on the Harvard Square crowd. To complete that full circle, Shore’s longtime friend and fellow comic Tyler Durniak, whom Shore met at his first Comedy Hell open mic at The Comedy Studio after moving back to New England in 2019, will join him on stage once again for their tried-and-true double feature of hilarity.
“When I first got to Boston after college, basically my goal was to get to the Comedy Studio’s open mic every week, so that I could hopefully get a showcase spot, and work my way up to a showcase on a Friday night,” Shore tells Vanyaland. “Now here we are, seven years later, and I’m now headlining the place. It’s pretty cool to think about.”
While it’s wildly clear, from a spectator’s perspective, that musical comedy is what Matt Shore was destined to do, it wasn’t always so clear in his crystal ball. After his father began teaching him how to play guitar in second grade, Shore started playing in bands once he hit middle school, including a blink-182 and Green Day cover band, and all the way into college at Gaucher College in Baltimore, where he admits he took himself a little too seriously in the songwriting department by penning darker, more brooding emo tracks that were truly a 180 from his rather outgoing and friendly personality. Once he went home for the summer, something clicked after binging some stand-up specials, and the rest is history.
“There was a point while I was in college where I couldn’t find any bands to play with, then over the summer, I started watching a bunch of stand-up specials, and it got me very interested in trying to do comedy myself. So, when I went back in the fall, I started doing stand-up at the school’s open mic, which was one of the most popular things to do on campus at Gaucher,” says Shore. “So, the first time I ever did stand-up was in front of 120 kids I went to school with, which was a lot, but of course having played in bands before, I knew I could do it. I got some laughs and it felt great, and I loved doing it, but then I got to a point where I did miss playing music. It was also around that time that I found Flight of the Conchords, and that’s when it hit me that this is what I was supposed to be doing.”
With a guitar in his hand, and joke-driven melodies in his heart, Shore worked himself to the bone to get in front of crowds all over the area – and then the pandemic happened. Looking back, though, the shift to Zoom shows were something of a blessing in disguise, as the format forced Shore to think beyond the natural ring of an acoustic guitar. It was at this point that he started really diving into the “inside baseball” of audio interfaces and taking inspiration from artists like Marc Rebillet by working with loop stations and all the fun gadgets that ultimately bolstered his own live shows once fellow comedian Kathe Farris asked him to open for her as soon they were able to be back in front of a live crowd. However, one question remained. Where was he going to put all of this new equipment?
DJ tables proved to be too short to accommodate any sort of keyboard playing, and he needed something adjustable that could work with his height and still fit all of the fresh new gear he was now bringing to the stage. Enter stage left: a run-of-the-mill ironing board that has now followed Shore to every show he’s played, and become synonymous with his stage presence.
“I thought ‘I’ll just get an ironing board for now, because this show with Kathe is coming up, and we’ll see how it goes from there.’ Then I just started bringing my ironing board around on the T to do different shows, and people would give me looks trying to figure out what was happening,” says Shore. “I ended up playing a couple of shows with it, and it got to the point where people thought it was pretty hilarious, so I started writing jokes about the ironing board, like asking the crowd if there was anyone out there who was ‘feeling wrinkly,’ and it just became a whole part of what I was doing. I very quickly became ‘Ironing Board guy,’ and it all just stuck.”
While the full circle moment at our beloved local ComStu will surely be a highlight of Shore’s year, he’s also looking ahead to unleashing his full-length debut album in a few months. Teaming up with his childhood friend and Berklee-trained producer, Max Grazier (who not-so-jokingly told Shore he would produce his first album someday), Shore had the time of his life tinkering and getting into the weeds on his nine year labor of love, and brings forth a new layer of what makes him such a versatile musician and comedian.
“A full album is something I’ve wanted to do for a long time, and when it comes to the comedy world, as I found with including the ironing board into my show, is that it all moves very fast. I might have this idea before a show, so how fast can I translate it from the stage as a cohesive thing that connects and makes sense? It’s okay if it’s a little wonky, I’m sure there’s a better way to do it, but how it manifests is how it manifests,” says Shore. “In recording the album, though, I liked having the chance to really sit down with all these songs that I’ve written over the course of the past nine years and really build them, and be able to think about them deeper, in a musical way.”
While the opportunity to dig deeper into his songs from a production standpoint has Shore excited for this next milestone, his work in a more music-centered space has proven to show him another side of his craft. Of course, he’s enjoyed his years getting on stage alongside his stand-up comedy comrades night after night, but the ability to hold his own on a bonafide concert stage, as he did while opening for comedy trio On Company Time, has given him the confidence to expand on his songs and feed off the energy of a standing concert crowd after years of playing in front of seated rooms of comedy fans.
“It’s been a really interesting shift where I’ll tell my jokes while playing these concerts, and instead of laughing like they would at a comedy show, people will cheer,” says Shore. “It’s a completely different energy, but I love it, and that’s where I feel like I’m heading next.”
As musical comedy has taken plenty of forms over the years, Shore has taken inspiration from a myriad of artists that have brought the art form into the spotlight, from Demetri Martin and his guitar-backed punchlines and alt-rock titans They Might Be Giants who bring passion and soul to their music while holding on to a particular levity in place of outright jokes, to groups like Tenacious D and Wolves of Glendale, who carry both elements with gusto. Shore has also been introduced in the past as “the Boston Bo Burnham,” which he finds particularly funny seeing as Burnham, a native of Hamilton, is quite literally “the Boston Bo Burnham.”
Point being, Shore has continued to do his homework when it comes to figuring out what it takes to be a successful musical comedian while always honing his approach, and he’s hoping that his dedication to upholding the integrity of both punchline and riff-writing shines through on the album once it’s in the hands of the masses.
“My ultimate goal is always wanting the musical part of it to be as good as the comedy,” says Shore. “In an ideal world, people would listen to this album, then come see a show, laugh at the show when they see it for the first time, then put the album on at home while they’re doing dishes or whatever, and have a little chuckle to themselves when they remember that the song is about CVS.”
Getting himself to this point in his career, where a shift to the next level is more than imminent, Shore has certainly put the work in to get where he is. From cold calling showrunners up and down Route One, to a two-year stint as co-runner of Bad Intersection Comedy, a weekly live show he helped start and run at Garrison House in Brookline alongside Durniak, and the pandemic Zoom shows to now headlining one of the most well-respected stages in the city — the stage he cut his teeth on, no less – Shore is loving every minute of it, riding the wave for as long as his trusty ironing board can hold up, and loving the true sense of belonging and community within his not-so-niche position in the scene.
“The coolest thing to see in this scene is that there’s a spot for everyone,” says Shore. “I do write songs where I talk about my anxiety and mental health struggles, and it’s great when I run into people after shows who struggle with their own anxieties or don’t normally like to go to shows, but really enjoyed my show. It’s amazing when I see that it’s not just me who feels like this. We’re all kind of just being strange and anxious together in the same space, and I love it.”
MATT SHORE DOES SONGS AT YOU :: Wednesday, June 17 at The Comedy Studio, 5 John F. Kennedy St. in Cambridge, MA :: 6:30 p.m., 18-plus, $23.95 :: Advance tickets