Arj day will come!

US comic and Flight Of The Conchords star Arj Barker makes his way to Ireland on the June bank holiday weekend for the Carlsberg Cat Laughs Festival. What sort of topics will be on the agenda when he hits Kilkenny?

“There’s no specific theme to the show,” he replies. “The sets are short, 20 minutes, so you have to make a choice at that point. It’s usually the material I’m most excited about doing at the time.”
As it happens, before Arj arrives in Kilkenny, he will doing some shows with the aforementioned Flight Of The Conchords, in whose TV show he plays Dave, the pawn shop worker who frequently imparts – usually highly suspect – advice to Jemaine and Bret.
“We’re doing gigs in Scandinavia and London, Then we’re going to fly back and do the Hollywood Bowl and the Greek Theatre in Berkeley. That’ll make three venues I’ve seen Radiohead perform at that I’ve also performed at! Which, as a nerdy fan, kind of makes me happy. It’s fun to think that I’ve been where, say, the guitarist has been. What’s his name? Jonny Appleseed?”
Er, Jonny Greenwood.
“Yeah – Greenwood!” he laughs. “It’s nice to think maybe he was in the same dressing room.”
What are Arj’s feelings about playing huge venues such as the Hollywood Bowl?
“First of all, I would never play a venue that size on my own,” he responds. “It’s only cos I’m supporting Flight Of The Conchords. But it’s pretty hectic, because when you have that many people, it’s not like a comedy club, where you can hear a pin drop. Still, as long as you have 70 or so per cent of the people listening, you just focus on that and get the laughs.
“We’ve done other places that are similar like Red Rock, where U2 famously did their concert video. Again, as with the Hollywood Bowl, it generally has music gigs rather than comedy shows, but it’s the coolest venue I’ve ever seen. I suppose at those kind of shows, there’s more of a concert atmosphere. But it was a lot of fun. The best moment was when Jemaine was introducing me, and I was looking at this dark mass. You know there’s around 9,000 people out there, and you’ve got the mic in your hand, and it’s really thrilling. The second before I walked on was one of the most exhilarating performance moments in my life.”
How did Arj first start working on Flight Of The Conchords?
“I was friends with them, in the same way I know any comedian I’ve seen around at festivals,” he says. “I hung out with them in New Zealand a few years back, and became friends. They liked my show, and when they were putting the TV series together, they just decided to write a part for me. The part was written with me in mind, I believe. People ask if Dave is like me, and I say, ‘No, Dave is maybe a cartoonish version of me – I’m not that stupid or misogynistic.’ There may be elements of me in that character, which is too painful to consider!”
What was working on the show like?
“It was the best,” he enthuses. “Everyone on the whole production was super cool and I believe these things trickle down from the top. The guys and James Bobin, the writer/director, set the tone and they’re nice to everyone. They’re really professional but also very cool, so that created a good atmosphere on the set. It was a fun show to work on.”
Does Arj get recognised more now as a result of the series’ success?
“A little bit, it’s not endemic,” he responds. “Not generally walking around, but people come to my shows all the time and say, ‘We love Flight Of The Conchords’. There are always people at my gigs who come along because they love the TV show. It’s been real helpful for my numbers when I do live work, which is primarily what I do. I do some acting obviously, but my real thing is stand-up – I think it’s what I’m best at.”
Another project Barker worked on outside of his stand-up was Arj and Poopy, an animated online series based around the relationship between the comedian and his pet cat, who communicates by farting.
“With regard to doing more of those, it’s really up to the animator. He’s ready to start working on another one, it’s just that he has two kids and that’s not his real job – it’s not the one that pays. For me it’s as simple as recording some stuff, but it can take him hours and hours just to do one. He’s one of the best flash animators around I’m sure. We probably do about one a year. The collaboration came about in the first instance because he animated some of my stand-up and sent it to me.
“He was a fan who made like a short of one of my jokes. Then he sent it to me, we started working together and now we’re good buddies.”
Arj says he’s currently “kicking around an idea for a TV project”, but doesn’t divulge any further details. Earlier this year he did release the album LYAO, a recording of one of this live performances. Was he happy with the finished product?
“Yeah, I’m not sure on sales figures or anything, but I’ve had a lot of good feedback. I don’t know if it’s platinum – I probably would have heard about that – but I think it went fine. Although they still haven’t sent me one, which is a little bit low budget. Somebody brought it to a show. We called it LYAO and all of the track titles are text abbreviations – ‘LOL’, ‘WTF’. ‘OMG’ and so on. There’s no hidden depth to it – everyone texts now and it’s part of our culture, simple as that. I actually hard time figuring out what to call the album, and then it ended up as LYAO. And we had a good design team who helped us create the theme through the whole thing.
“But once I put something out, I don’t think about it much anymore – you’ve gotta move on.”