The Jerky Boys are back. Well, at least one half of them.
In a new interview with Rolling Stone, Johnny Brennan confirmed that he’s planning to release the first new album under the prankster moniker since 2001’s The Jerky Tapes.
“It’s been a long, long time,” he explained. “I said to myself, ‘Let me do it.’ Let me put something else out there. My kids are growing up. And I feel there’s plenty great stuff left to put out there.”
While he won’t be reuniting with Kamal Ahmed, who left in 2000, he will be reconnecting with an ensemble of familiar characters, from Frank Rizzo to Jack Tors to Rosine. Brennan copped to some growing pains in revisiting the personas, adding, “I did Rosine 30-plus years ago and I had that shit down, but I’m in the call and I’m saying, ‘I don’t know if I sound that good. I don’t know if I’m nailing this character because I haven’t done it in so long.’”
Fortunately for him, he won’t have to lean too hard on familiarity, as he’s created a whole new ensemble of characters, some even influenced by his two millennial daughters. “They hear me in the shower,” he confessed, “creating characters and doing what I do. They’re totally used to it. It’s very cool.”
Aiding in the Jerky Boys return is Comedy Dynamics, who will issue the album. The label was responsible for all five Grammy nominees in this past year’s Best Comedy Album category, which should bode well for Brennan.
“It was important to me to do this one as closely as possible to how it was done back in the Nineties,” Comedy Dynamics CEO Brian Volk Weiss shared with RS, admitting he worshipped the group back in high school.
Even without Ahmed, Brennan contended that this is a true-blue release, even over The Jerky Tapes, which he called a “thank you record” and non-canonical to the group’s oeuvre. He also dismissed his 2007 record, Sol’s Rusty Trombone, as “an experiment.” “Those weren’t a sit-down, make-a-new-Jerky Boys record,” Brennan asserted. “Everything I do now, for this record, is brand spanking new.”
See for yourself below with a sample of the new album, “Frank’s Braces”, below. You can also snag some of The Jerky Boys’ past releases on vinyl and other physical formats here.
If new material wasn’t enough, you soon may be able to see the Jerky Boys live — for real. Brennan is apparently working on a hologram tour that would bring some of the most memorable pranksters to life.
“I’m working with a company in Los Angeles, we’re doing a hologram,” he revealed. “There’s gonna be a show that goes on the road where you see [the album] Jerky Boys 1performed onstage by the actual Jerky Boys characters in hologram.”
Sean Taggart, the artist who created the iconic Jerky Boy imagery on the comedy duo’s early releases, on the project; he also may contribute the artwork for Brennan’s new album.
