Julie Klausner may be the most charming person in the world. The fire-haired podcast host/author/cabaret chanteuse/friend-of-everybody-you’d-ever-want-to-be-friends-with invites us into her life every week with her podcast “How Was Your Week?” To a packed crowd at the Bagley Wright Theater on Saturday, Julie brought us an unplugged version of her show, complete with theme song performed live by Ted Leo and interview guests Patton Oswalt and Danielle Henderson.
Full disclosure—I’m a Klausner superfan. For those who listen to her weekly podcast faithfully the show was full of insider goodies—Julie showed us her beloved cat, Jimmy Jazz! She casually mentioned her “big naturals”!
And with the frequent big laughs it seemed like the crowd was becoming superfans too. But from the occasional nervous titters I heard throughout the hour, I got the feeling many were hearing Julie for the first time. I saw a couple near me exchange uneasy glances as Julie noted that eating a cronut (hybrid donut-croissant) was like “Mr. Entenmanns cumming in your mouth!” Same thing when she announced that Eric Clapton just died so everybody should live-tweet the show with #RIPEricClapton (just don’t Google it right now, she said). But perhaps that was just confusion about what live-tweeting means.
Or maybe they were still trying to grasp her show. It wasn’t all stand-up. She sang a lyrically-altered version of Loretta Lynn’s “Coal-Miner’s Daughter” as her introduction (noting that she has literally never touched coal—and as she grew up celebrating Hannukah she has never even been threatened with joke coal). She showed us cat videos. The uber-talented (and who knew so funny?) musician Ted Leo sang a song from his extensive catalogue. Interestingly the crowd seemed to get really riled up with Ted Leo’s impersonation of Holder, “the hip hop cop” from AMC’s The Killing. Hometown pride for the Seattle-based murder show? Can we get a Season 4, please?
I digress. There’s no doubt Julie has many talents, but it’s her conversational interview style that I really love. Her guests, “America’s favorite lesbian” Patton Oswalt and the always wonderful Danielle Henderson (creator of the Feminist Ryan Gosling), took us through a whirlwind conversation on media, race, gender, and pop culture that was so interesting, and so, so funny. Julie shines because she lets her guests shine.
I like to think people who went into the show not knowing what to expect came out feeling a bit the same. That’s what makes her podcast so fresh each week, and her live show so fun. She sometimes sings, sometimes jokes, sometimes gets political, and always kills it in a short-crop blazer. Either way, I think Seattle is now ready for even more Klausnerama. And RIP Eric Clapton.