You'll Laugh 'SOHARD' at Pabst Comedy Show

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Photo credit: Joanna DeGeneres

Kristin Hensley (left) and Jen Smedley (right) have a popular web series, "#IMomSoHard."

Stand-up comedy performed by solo acts is a plentiful nowadays. But you know what's rarer? Comedy duos, that's what. YouTube and Facebook make for great ways for a twosome to develop their shtick and find a following, especially when those two are parents of young children. Mining parent-child interactions for laughs is fair game for that comedic fodder, too. It's worked for Krisin Hensley (the brunette) and Jen Smedley (the blonde) who have parlayed their IMOMSOHARD YouTube channel into a multi-format media presence that includes return touring dates at Pabst Theater, 8 p.m. Thursday, March 7 with 7 and 9:30 p.m. shows Friday March 6. The first of those Friday shows is already sold out.

The IMOM's professional partnership grew out of friendship with roots already in comedy. Says Hesley, "We both take great pride in being raised by funny people. We are Midwest to the bone so it helps keep everything in perspective especially when you live in a city like Los Angeles. Kristin was doing standup and Second City, and I was writing comedy, performing improv, and studying at The Groundlings. Once we both got married and had kids, we both thought maybe that would be the end of our careers because kids can be the 'great cooler.' Turns out our kids actually helped our careers. Mainly because the only way to cope with motherhood is to laugh at it. Otherwise you’d be locked in your closet shame eating Chipotle."

Though the IMOM project is an all-around family affair with Hensley husband producing the ladies' videos and Smedley's other half directing them, the male presence is kept to a minimum. Smedley says of making their primary audience able to project themselves into her and Hensley's routines, "We’ve tried to keep our husbands out of it. We may post an anniversary photo or something, but we kind of like the idea that the moms, our audience, don’t know our actual husbands and can mentally plug in their own husband in to our stories and experiences." Out of sight doesn't mean out of mind, though, as Smedley adds, "The truth is, they are both great guys, and for often as we roll our eyes at them, we know what we are doing is only possible with their support. Initially it was just the biological factor, you know, supplying chromosomes, but now it’s them taking on more at home and even sacrificing parts of their own careers for us to do this."

That husbandly DNA was contributed, of course, to conceive the children who provide much of their moms' material, of course. The Hensleys' eight year-old Finn and little sister, five year-old Eleanor and the Smedeys' youngest household members, six year-old Dashiel and three year-old Delilah, provide comedic fodder without provocation, like cranking on a soft serve dispenser. Hensley shares, "They just act like themselves. Kids are awesome and open and very honest so you don’t have to do anything. They’ll serve it up like ice cream."

And if the kids are dishing up amusing honesty, their mothers are about as transparent. Smedley confesses, "We are both live-out-loud types, which is ironic because we can both be pretty tough on ourselves. Maybe sharing our mistakes is also our alibi… 'Like, I told you I was not good at this.' My daughter goes to school in costume every day. That’s battle I’ve chosen to lose. I can live with it, but I’m sure people have their thoughts. If someone genuinely thought I was a bad parent, I’d feel bad. I care about my kids more than anything and not just that people think I’m doing a good job, that part I don’t care about. I want to actually do a good job because they deserve it. All I need is more second-guessing myself."

No second guess is needed as to whether the IMOM's brand of semi-improvised artistry, which will soon be in podcast and TV special form as well, appeals to demographics beyond their maternal core of followers. The number of men at their live shows is usually negligible, but, Smedley confrms, "Like 10 (men) out of 3,000 sometimes. However. Those 10 men have a blast. We’ve never had a wife write us and say her husband didn’t have a good time." More unusually, she tells of a less common experience. "Once we had a show in Vegas and the entire front row was 60-80 year old men from Eastern Europe. Needless to say, they were expecting a different show, but they were happy nonetheless. They even came backstage to get photos with us afterwards!"

Still, the primary goal of the IMOMSOHARD experience is one of humor relatable most to women. Hensley boasts, "There is something really magical about 2000 women being in the same room together with the intention of wanting to laugh and spend time with their friends. There is an energy to it that is unexplainable. Just wait, you’ll see."

Stand With Nick Hart

Nick Hart hails from Madison, but he possesses just enough of a drawl from his South Carolina upbringing to give a slightly exotic flair, at least for us Midwesterners, to his stand-up attack. The former-and perhaps future-mayoral candidate for Wisconsin's capital city (he got 2% of the primary vote, but that's a start, hey?) who on his website describes his act as possessing "no safety net or safe places, utter contempt for an audience" headlines Milwaukee Comedy's next Blue Ribbon Comedy Show, 9 p.m. Saturday. Feb. 23, at The Pabst Taproom (1036 W. Juneau Ave.).

He will be coming off a Friday night of preparing material he intends to shop to a cable channel or streaming service for an hour-long special, so Hart should be in sharp form. Evidence such as his album, The New N-Word, find him playing in a far coarser NSFW mode, but here he is playing less profane and more contemptuous of himself than anyone else for not knowing that a certain vegetable can go by multiple names, and, by extension, his unfitness for fatherhood. He got more laughs here than roughly the same material netted him on Conan, so go figure!

Insane Open Mikes

Under the auspices of the ridiculously industrious Milwaukee Comedy and other organizers, Milwaukee hosts a nigh insane number of open mic nights for established and upcoming comics to test whether their material kills audiences or puts everyone present in a more or less zomboid state. If I counted correctly, there are over 20 such opportunities between the deadline for this column installment and the next.

The often brutal winter and my not living in Shepherd Express' home city has left your correspondent unfortunately unable to hit any of those opportunities since the inception of this column. Look forward to that changing in coming weeks as frigid conditions thaw to become more welcoming to highway travel.

In short, look forward to reviews, for lack of a better word, of some of Milwaukee's manifold open in the near future. Ideally, it will be a once monthly thing here. Look forward if you like.