Brett Davis: Nice and Tidy

There are those walk­ing among us that don’t believe in serendip­i­ty. As it turns out, one day I was sit­ting, star­ing at two loads of unwashed clothes need­ing atten­tion, think­ing ​“why isn’t there con­tent that is spe­cif­ic to this activ­i­ty, even capa­ble of pro­vid­ing me enjoy­ment whilst doing it?”. At that very moment (rough­ly, but for the pur­pos­es of this sto­ry, it was instan­ta­neous) Valerie Lopez reached out to let me know we’d be inter­view­ing Brett Davis. Davis, as many of our lis­ten­ers prob­a­bly know, has a pod­cast called The Pod­cast for Laun­dry. If that isn’t a serendip­i­tous, bor­der­ing on mirac­u­lous, nudged right up against ridicu­lous, sto­ry, then I don’t know what is. But I digress.

New Jer­sey native Davis is one of a very short list of Andy Kauf­man award win­ners, along­side every­day com­e­dy names like Kris­ten Schaal, Reg­gie Watts, and Nick Vat­terott. Beyond what some would call the pre­em­i­nent pod­cast about clean­ing your attire, he also runs many com­e­dy shows and spe­cials, includ­ing The Spe­cial With­out Brett Davis , which airs week­ly as a pub­lic access show. 

We hear a healthy vari­ety of back­sto­ries in the per­form­ers we speak to, but Davis eas­i­ly takes the award for ​“ear­li­est career epiphany” with a mem­o­ry of a preschool admis­sion of movie star aspi­ra­tions. So at a young age, he began the baby steps (sor­ry) of work­ing towards the stage, tweak­ing char­ac­ters, like his mid­dle school play ren­di­tion of the Tin Man, into ever comedic ver­sions of them­selves. A bit of a self-admit­ted lon­er dur­ing school, he turned to dial­ing into the well known radio show The Best Show with Tom Scharpling, debut­ing a char­ac­ter of his own: MC Stein­berg. As fate would have it, Tom Scharpling lat­er end­ed up being the first guest on The Pod­cast for Laundry. 

Stein­berg was a vehi­cle for Davis to test the bound­aries of his skills and com­fort, and led to calls into the Jake Fogelnest show as well, before being retired in favor of the next per­sona: a peren­ni­al­ly opti­mistic wrestler, Bob­by Blaze. Piv­ots like these are com­mon­place in Davis’ life. ​“I’m a bit of a workaholic…as far as per­form­ing and writ­ing goes…I’m like, I have to cre­ate some­thing new now!”, he tells Valerie. 

“I’m a bit of a workaholic…as far as per­form­ing and writ­ing goes…I’m like, I have to cre­ate some­thing new now!”Brett Davis

In the arts, this form of con­tent-dri­ven obses­sion is a boon, and one that has served Davis well. Whether it’s find­ing ever more inven­tive ways to build a rela­tion­ship with a bot­tle of Tide (lis­ten to the Laun­dry pod­cast, you’ll get it), or cre­at­ing an epony­mous spe­cial about a some­what his­tor­i­cal­ly accu­rate – but fic­tion­al – ver­sion of him­self, he’s will­ing and ready to try any­thing. On becom­ing more famil­iar with the deep­er sto­ry of Andy Kauf­man, Davis devoured every­thing he could on the legend’s craft and con­tin­ues to take inspi­ra­tion from the lib­er­ties and risks that made Kaufman’s career. ​“I’ll say ​‘yes’ to any show out there,” Davis quips, a per­fect­ly suc­cinct way of describ­ing his open­ness to new oppor­tu­ni­ties and chal­lenges. (Some­times for growth, some­times to put Tide on the table.) He shares with Valerie how this atti­tude has led to some of the best shows he’s had, in the most unex­pect­ed of places.

“I’ll say ​‘Yes’ to any show out there”Brett Davis

At this point, it should come as no sur­prise that Davis has even more in the works, and he gives Valerie a glimpse into some of the shows and char­ac­ters he’s next bring­ing to life. There’s plen­ty more to come from him, along with a tru­ly unique and diverse back cat­a­log. Make time in your life, and your bas­ket, to lis­ten to The Pod­cast for Laun­dry, and keep an eye out for an oppor­tu­ni­ty to catch The Spe­cial with­out Brett Davis live, in-per­son or online. Find even more videos, projects, and gen­er­al cre­ative diver­si­ty, at BrettDavis.rip.