Andrew Murphy Keeps Up the Beat

A trans­plant from his birth­place in upstate New York, Andrew Mur­phy is a face (and voice) you’ll be famil­iar with from the Fun­ni­est Per­son in Austin final­ist line­up the last few years. 

Like many Aus­tinites, when he land­ed here he first pur­sued the twin pas­sions of col­lege and music. (Don’t miss his fiery endorse­ment of rhythm instru­ments in the inter­view.) But when he dis­cov­ered the local com­e­dy scene, and tried his first open mic at – of all places – a fur­ni­ture-shop-cum-part-time-the­atre, the begin­nings of Murphy’s com­ic fire start­ed kindling. 

While drum­mers lit­er­al­ly keep the pace of a show, he found mov­ing from the back of the stage to front and cen­ter very much to his lik­ing. In anoth­er sim­i­lar­i­ty to musi­cians, comics know that pro­fi­cien­cy requires prac­tice and rep­e­ti­tion, so he set him­self to the task of nur­tur­ing his style and pres­ence on a reg­u­lar basis. 

In Austin, that means not only indi­vid­ual open mics, but get­ting into shows like PUNCH, and run­ning oth­ers Bounce House (which sad­ly had its last install­ment in June of this year). There are a ton of great shows and venues of all vari­eties to be found in Austin (check out Last Gas Com­e­dy for a com­pre­hen­sive cal­en­dar), and Mur­phy gave Valerie Lopez some great advice for hon­ing your per­for­mance and ​“build­ing your cal­lus­es” (in a good way) in the rich local scene. 

Get out to see Mur­phy per­form­ing with Lisa Friedrich and JR Brow at Cap City Com­e­dy June 29^th through July 1^st. After that, catch him in the next Six Shoot­ers at Bar­rel O’ Fun, a recur­ring freestyle wild-West­ern themed show co-host­ed by Mac Blake and Aaron Brooks, that runs the sec­ond Wednes­day of every month. He also co-hosts The Joke of Paint­ing with Avery Moore, the fourth Mon­day of every month at Spi­der House Ball­room.