After countless shows and two specials recorded in Boston, as well a New Years romp to boot, Jim Jefferies’ soft spot for the city has only gotten softer over time. This time around, however, as that spot continues to soften, moisture will be a more prominent culprit.
Bringing his Moist tour to The Wang Theatre on Saturday (February 26), the straight-shooting Australian comedian returns to the city he lauds as the first to really embrace him for a night with the biggest crowd he’s played to in Boston, but the expansion in crowd size doesn’t have him shaken one bit. The only challenge he’s facing as he makes his way back is whittling down the surplus of material cultivated over the past two years — but, the way he sees it, that’s just a good problem to have.
“It’s like being on a baseball team that has too many players,” Jefferies tells Vanyaland. “Of course it’s a good problem to have, but then there are jokes that I had written and performed maybe ten times before the pandemic started, and I just had to throw them away because they were too topical. I had a huge chunk on the bushfires in Australia, and two years ago it was all burning down, and we thought the world was ending. But now, it just feels like such a distant memory.”
Now, while it is in his nature to make people somewhat uncomfortable over the years with the subject matter he broaches onstage, the name of the tour may actually make people squirm a bit more this time around. In fact, that’s kind of the point, and it seems to be working so far.
“You get asked to name a tour before you’ve even written the first joke for the tour. If you’re writing a music album, you might choose a track from the album as the title, but I don’t have any jokes about the word ‘moist,’” says Jefferies. “I honestly just googled ‘most offensive word that isn’t a swear word’ and that is the one that came up the most. Also, I didn’t know this, but as it turns out, there are a couple of acts in Australia that called their tours the same thing, so it is apparently not that original of an idea. We also have a big backdrop behind the stage that lights up with the word, and it gets people giggling as soon as they see it, so it’s doing its job.”
Before he had ventured out on this trek, Jefferies hadn’t made his way across the country or performed on stage, like many of his peers, in over a year and a half. As a result, getting back behind the mic and working out the new material actually made Jefferies nervous, as if he were starting all over again after twenty years on the grind.
But, with so much on his mind, he’s found his groove once again, and he’s looking forward to returning to the process that has curated the timely and unapologetically upfront final products we’ve come to know and love (or despise) him for.
“Normally, when you’re coming up with jokes, you write one and then you throw one out of the set, and you keep doing that until you get yourself a brand new hour. With this one, it was all brand new, so of course there’s going to be talk about COVID and stuff like that, but there’s also a lot of stuff about my new baby and getting married, my father being ill and about how my mother passed away. I’ve got a lot of stuff to talk about this time.”
Although the ability to get in front of people and talk himself through some tough personal matters hasn’t necessarily proven to be therapeutic or cathartic like others might see it as, Jefferies has come away with a renewed appreciation for the opportunity, and the support from fans that allows him to do what he loves at such a high velocity once again.
“What [the time away] taught me is that you can’t take this job and people showing up to see you for granted, because it can all be taken away real quick, whether it’s because of something stupid you do in your career, or a pandemic,” says Jefferies. “Maybe I was getting a bit more cynical before the pandemic, but now I’m just super appreciative to anyone who buys a ticket to come see me.”
Jefferies’ perspective may not have changed too much with the times over the past two years, as we’ll come to see from his new batch of comedy, but after progressively pulling his hair out a little more over the course of quarantine — a period in which he was admittedly grateful for when it came to the first six months of having nothing to do — the chance to get back to a city he holds in high regard has Jefferies chomping at the bit, and resting to get back to spend time with even more folks he can level with from the spotlight.
“Looking at the calendar, the Boston date is definitely one that pops out at me. I can’t wait to do this one,” says Jefferies. “I’ve done New Year’s Eve in Boston, and shot a few specials there. I’m well-versed in Boston, and I like the people, because they seem to be my kind of people. They’re a little bit left, a little bit right, and I like that. I consider myself to be someone in the middle who really couldn’t give two fucks, as well.”
JIM JEFFERIES: THE MOIST TOUR :: Saturday, February 26 at The Wang Theatre, 270 Tremont St. in Boston, MA :: 7 p.m., $39.75 to $69.75 :: Wang Theatre event page and ticket link