Jeff Allen Finds Humor in America (Then and Now)

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Photo courtesy Milwaukee Improv

Jeff Allen

Jeff Allen

The name of comedian Jeff Allen's current tour, “The America I Grew Up In,” might suggest a politically conservative harangue or a condemnation of kids nowadays. But that’s not the veteran funnyman's angle at all. 

As Allen says of his latest material, “I always have to remind myself and my audience that the ‘America I Grew Up In’ show is not a judgement call. It is just a series of observations, and that’s it. The material is just a few things that I noticed are differences in how my wife Tami and I raised our children as to how our children are raising our grandchildren. An example: my youngest son has a lock on his toilet seat. Never in a million years would I have ever thought about doing that.” 

Allen brings his anecdotes about secured commodes and plenty else regarding domesticity and society at large to The Improv (20110 Lower Union St., Brookfield) for a 6 p.m. show on Sunday Jan. 30. And though once engaged in it more often, he pretty well promises to shun kind of shtick that may pit Democrats against Republicans also going out for a night of stand-up. 

Politics Isn’t Funny

“I don’t talk about politics anymore, unless a rare joke pops up on something I see in the news,” Allen offers, “but for the most part, I find what passes as political humor not very amusing anymore. Today, my failing body provides me stuff I never thought about when I was younger for obvious reasons.” 

What wasn't quite so obvious to Allen in his 44 years of slinging jokes in clubs, corporate settings and church functions until the recent pandemic hit the U.S. was how his line of work can have a greater effect than he may have first thought. 

“It really wasn’t until the COVID thing that I realized sometimes just making a roomful of people laugh is doing God’s work. I mean it,” Allen declares. And though he has Christianity as a reference point in making that observation, what he shares about the good his artistry can do is something husbands of any belief can confirm.

Healing through Laughter

“The healing benefits of laughter is well documented. I have had dozens of men come to me after shows with tears in their eyes telling me it is the first time in over a year that they heard their wife laugh. It means something, and I don’t take that lightly. I fell in love with my wife’s laugh. To not hear it for a year would be heartbreaking. So, I have lightened up on myself on what impact I am having on the world. I am working harder than I ever have on my craft and my material, I just wanna make people laugh.” And why not abet something that makes people unique? As Allen avers, “The ability to laugh is uniquely human, by design.”

Though he takes the role can play in bringing couples closer together seriously, Allen sees a wider role for those who crack wise behind a mic, too. “Comedians can be the nation’s eyes and ears; the good ones can be, anyway. When I started in 1978, comics could say just about anything without fear of the audience being offended; the sacred cows were all pretty much gone by then.”

But Allen sees things cycling back. And he invokes some of his comedic forebears, ones more risqué in their approach than his profanity-free style allows, as exemplars of how to shake things up again in terms of the breadth of comedy’s subject matter. “Over the last 40 years, a lot of sacred cows have been constructed. It is time for the comedians to start tearing them down. I don’t know if it is my place or not at my advanced age. I think a younger generation of comics need to speak to their generation’s hypocrisy, as Lenny Bruce, George Carlin and Richard Pryor spoke to theirs.”  

Though Allen leaves the role of being generational voices to others, he still values the time and expense audiences take to take in his act. 

“Being able to go back to night clubs and draw an audience, to have people leave their homes and buy a ticket to come hear what I have to say is such an honor. Most guys my age are winding down, I am just getting started. There is something about the energy of a full house and being in the middle of it that is soul affirming. Laughing as a group in public, there is nothing like it.” 

Here Allen is bemoaning the keto diet and what amounts to snacking under that regimen...