“America’s Funnyman” Neil Hamburger has worked every imaginable
stage, from New York’s Madison Square Garden, to a show in a gorilla cage in an abandoned Catskills zoo. He has performed countless American, Australian, British, Irish, and Canadian tours, as well as in Norway, New Zealand, and the Bahamas, alongside acts ranging from Faith No More to Robin Williams. Neil Hamburger was the subject of the 2015 movie Entertainment, co-starring John C. Reilly and Michael Cera. His Live At Third Man album was produced by Jack White in Nashville; an earlier Hamburger effort, Laugh Out Lord, was included in SPIN’s “40 Greatest Comedy Albums Of All Time.” The latest album on Drag City Records, Neil Hamburger presents Seasonal Depression Suite, is a full-blown musical concept album that portrays Hamburger's inner turmoil while locked down in a chain motel, with guest appearances from Neil Finn, Bonnie Prince Billy, Puddles Pity Party, Annabella Lwin, and others.
Press quotes:
“A phlegm-filled sack of putrid self-loathing, Neil Hamburger is the perfect satire of a slick, professional nightclub comedian. If you’ve ever suspected that behind the glossy veneer of fake bonhomie of those perma-smile acts lies an ugly, embittered, grotesque soul – well Hamburger is that demon made flesh. In some living Sisyphean hell, every night he dons his tuxedo, greases down his hair and ploughs through the vile set that disgusts even him, just so he can earn a three-piece chicken dinner. His contempt for his own pitiful existence is surpassed only for his contempt for the audience who compel him trudge through his despicable
cavalcade of jokes. And my, these gags are certainly not for the faint of heart, as he plumbs the depths of depravity for the sake of a laugh.” –(Chortle (U.K.))
“Hamburger is the clapped-out husk of a decorous Southern gentleman, now coughing in painful hacks, suppurating filth through his tuxedo, and her to tip a slurry of abuse all over celebrity and modern life…a combination of malignance and desiccated vaudeville.” (The Guardian)
“Neil Hamburger remains the greatest comedian I’ve seen the greater majority of an audience walk out on….No one was leaving their seats this evening though, as this peerless performer shocked and delighted in equal measure…On the road for 12 years with scarcely a day off, Hamburger is a condemned showbiz lag, doomed to perform his antagonistic anti-comedy to potential hostility forever.” (The Scotsman)
