DETROIT — Comedian and actor Bill Burr is set to play his biggest show in Metro Detroit to date this month at Little Caesars Arena, which is part of his 2024 tour of large venues and theaters.
While he’s spent decades honing his observational material that goes from a laid-back guy’s thoughts to exasperated outrage, he’s had a lot of success over the past two years.
In 2021 the Massachusetts native performed at Red Rocks for a Netflix special that was released in 2022. That same year, Burr became the first comedian to perform at Fenway Park. In 2023 a comedy film that he directed, co-wrote and starred in, “Old Dads,” was the most-watched movie worldwide on Netflix for two weeks.
That was not even the only No. 1 Netflix movie that he starred in last year. Burr also had a lead voice role in the Adam Sandler animated film “Leo,” which had 34.6 million views in its first six days.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
You played Little Caesars Arena, which is your biggest show to date in Detroit. This whole tour is bigger venues. How have they been going?
They’re pretty nerve-wracking because you got to sell a bunch of tickets, but the shows are always great. And I’m always amazed how much they figured out the sound at these bigger venues where I mean you can take (the audience) on the same sort of ride you can at a comedy club where you can bring them down, you can get them going up.
I just I’ve been doing these arenas now for a couple years, and I’m used to it but I’m not gonna lie to you, you definitely have imposter syndrome when you first get in there, like why are all these people coming to see me? So the fact that people are showing up is, you know, is amazing. And then also, I don’t take the responsibility of that lightly. You can’t be doing shows and just be on cruise control. You really gotta make sure everybody gets their money’s worth. So that’s my big thing every night.
Which is funny because people say ‘make sure you’re taking it in.’ This is stand-up comedy, you can’t take it in. If I start sitting back looking at the joke I just told, my timing is off and I immediately start bombing. I can reflect on it afterwards, does that count?
What topics or themes can people expect from this tour? Will this be material for a future special?
I’m definitely always examining why I’m such an idiot. My recipe has always been sort of topical things, making fun of myself, talking about my family life, and then also kind of looking where I can get the areas of my life where I could use some improvement. (Laughs)
Which I always think people enjoy and connect to in the crowd because no one’s out there like ‘what I’m gonna do today, I’m gonna be a bad person.’ Nobody’s thinking that, but you end up doing things and saying things that you regret or whatever you are, you just keep making the same mistake. And that human experience I find, like just trying to improve yourself, change results or just get out of a rut is very relatable. I think people connect with it and it, makes me feel good hearing them connect with it. So I don’t feel alone.
You’re definitely an equal-opportunity finger pointer whether you’re making fun of yourself or conspiracy theorists, or someone else. For you, everyone’s fair game.
Or racist morons, yeah. I’ve been having a fun time examining, you know, things like why people have a real problem with affirmative action but had no problem with segregation? (Laughs) And if it wasn’t so painful … it’s hilarious though, the juxtaposition of those two things. I always compare it to like boarding on Delta Airlines where everyone’s trying to protect their status, as if it’s racial, rather than what row you’re sitting in.
So you’re in town March 10, and I have to tell you this can be a crazy day in Detroit. It’s the same day as the St. Patrick’s Parade in Corktown, not too far from Little Caesars Arena. It’s basically our St. Patrick’s Day, not that it has affected your ticket sales at all at LCA.
Listen, I remember one time I went to Australia on Australia Day. If I can survive that, I think I’ll be OK in Detroit. I was out in Perth, where Bon Scott from AC/DC is from, those people were like … I just went into my hotel room. I’m like, I’m not going to be out here with this level of partying going on. It was insane.
Let’s stay on the topic of rock ‘n’ roll. You’re a drummer. What’s your setup like at home, and how often do you get to play?
Oh, I play all the time. Doing standup, playing drums, playing with my kids. All of that keeps me out of my head, which keeps me out of going into a depression. So I play a lot. I have a Gretsch Broadkaster. It’s sort of two kits in one. I play either a four- or five-piece set up but I have two rack toms and two floor toms so I can set it up small or big.
I’m back in a Steve Gadd thing right now as far as, like just being so thrilled with his playing and how he approaches solos. Especially nowadays, these kids today, the chops that they have they are just insane, and they play them blindingly fast, but they kind of start the solo at some insane speed and they never stop. It’s like speed metal to the 90th power. After a while it all starts to sound the same, like you’re falling down the stairs with your drum kit.
When I watch Steve Gadd do his solo it’s almost like a stormfront moving through, so there’s sort of the initial a little bit of rain and then it gets more intense and then it’s the height of it, and it comes back down again. A lot of times he’ll start with the groove, winding solo coming out of the groove and I just think it’s beautiful.
Later this month you’re playing the Patrice O’Neal Comedy Benefit show in New York (a fundraiser for the family of the comedian who died in 2011). I know you were a friend and a fan of his, can you tell us a little about this show?
After Patrice died, Comedy Central was going to do a benefit. And my agent goes, do you want to do it? I was like, absolutely. And then the date was getting closer and closer and I was living in Los Angeles and I’m like, hey man I gotta get my flight, what’s going on with this benefit? He goes, it went away. And I was like, what do you mean it went away? What went away? Our love for this guy? What went away?
He said basically they couldn’t get enough comedians to commit to doing it for the venue they had. So I was like, well there’s no way we’re not having a benefit and we sort of kicked the ball … I think because they wanted to film it or something and there were people trying to protect their material for specials, but it was bad. It was bad. That should not have happened. I was talking to Jim Norton … so we just decided to do it on our own. And it was a huge success. We raised money for his mom and everything. Something I’ve always hated is when somebody dies, there’s like one night for them and they raise money and then you give it to their loved ones. It’s like ‘all right, good luck the rest of your life.’ Patrice was taking care of his mother and she would have been, you know, she was retired, like what’s she going to do?
It’s like one of those things in this country where we should stop yelling about politicians and we should just show them what we want them to be doing, which is we should be taking care of each other. Especially a mom to lose your son. I can’t even imagine the pain of that. So the only thing she should have to deal with is her grief. She shouldn’t also be thinking how am I going to make rent or pay my health insurance or something like that.
So we started doing it every year. It’s a great thing. It’s a nice way to have a little reunion with a bunch of comedians that I used to see all the time when I was coming up. And then also, for younger comics, it’s become a thing like people really consider it an honor to be asked. It’s one of my favorite things that I do in this business.
Your big project in 2023 was the Netflix comedy film “Old Dads,” how was that and do you have any other movies or projects fans should be looking forward to?
“Old Dads” was such a thrill because that came out during the (Writers Guild of America) strike and I was just sitting there. Like, I couldn’t promote it at all. I was so proud of it and I couldn’t promote it … it was still number one globally on Netflix for two weeks straight and it streamed over 50 million. For the first one out of the gate, I wrote it with my writing partner Ben Tishler and we had an amazing group of actors that helped me along. So I’m very proud of that one.
What do you want your fans who are coming to the Little Caesars Arena show to know?
You’re gonna have a good time. Put it that way. I have an hour and 40 new minutes. I am ignoring the presidential election this year. I refuse to accept the fact that these two old idiots are the two best choices we have. I feel sad for everyone in this country that was stuck in this loop, and the last thing you need is to listen to another person talking about that stuff. So I’m going to pretty much talk about anything other than that.
