A double-dose of bummer news dropped this month outta Seven Corners. The owners of two longtime Minneapolis establishments—the sporty Corner Bar and its basement club Comedy Corner Underground—announced that their new landlord won't be renewing their leases. That means CCU will shut down August 23, with Corner Bar scheduled to last one additional day.
"I'm proud of what the club has done for local comedy, which is all we've really ever tried to be about," CCU founder Bob Edwards tells Racket. "This ain't the last form of the club, so tell the local comics they're not done dealing with me yet."
He ain't lying about CCU's influence on the local comedy scene. Writing over the weekend via Instagram, rising comedian Geoffrey Asmus praised the 20-year-old club as a launching pad for Twin Cities comedians. Its self-stated ethos ("Minnesota's weird little punk rock comedy basement") always shined through, and hopefully Edwards can recapture that magic at a different address.
In the meantime, CCU is hosting an accelerated run of farewell shows—the opposite of the Minnesota Goodbye. Chloe Radcliffe, another former local who's stoking national buzz, scrambled Thursday afternoon to organize Friday's stacked showcase; the adopted New Yorker touched down at MSP just this morning, and late last night she fielded the following email Qs from Racket.
Turns out Radcliffe didn't need any press to move tickets: The show quickly sold out. Still, you never turn down the chance to eulogize a great club and catch up with a great comic.
What was your initial reaction when you heard CCU was not just closing, but closing so damn quickly?
Honestly, the speed at which it’s closing is the only thing that made me actually believe it was over. This club, and the bar above it, have survived so much—including a fire where the only reason the building didn’t burn down is because the bar’s soda gun melted and sprayed until the fire department arrived—that if the vibe was “the club is closing in six months,” I would have been like, "nah we’ll find a way to save it." I’m so sad… I’ll miss the shitty carpet on that weird stage, that crammed green room, those yellow stairs. But I’m so happy I had it while I did.
Can you describe what that little venue has meant to the Twin Cities comedy scene?
A comedy club that both welcomes everyone and maintains a relatively healthy relationship with its own authority in the scene is a rare find. The scene got its structure from multiple clubs/shows, but the CCU was the beating heart, the nucleus of the nuclear family. It felt like the bar in Cheers. It’s scrappy, shoestring, handmade. You can feel when someone puts every fiber of themselves into a place, and Bob Edwards did that with the CCU.
What did it mean for you and your career, specifically?
I mean, that stage taught me how to perform. That bar taught me how to hang. That parking lot taught me how it feels to realize your car has been towed. More than anything, that club gave me confidence in myself and my career, a gift that it gave over and over, in different forms, as my career grew—and a gift it’s still giving literally right now, with the ability to produce (and I think sell out) a show in LITERALLY LESS THAN 24 HOURS. My favorite feeling is when everyone's gone and the club is quiet at the end of the night. Some part of me will be in that hole in the ground forever.
You helped organize this last-second farewell show in extremely quick fashion—how'd it come together?
Well I’m headlining in South Dakota on Saturday, so I was already heading to the Midwest this weekend. I decided last-minute to fly out a day earlier to swing by the club, and I literally only wanted to hang in the green room and do the open mic. But when you’ve given so many of years to a place (and received those years back), you get some license to make a few “fuck it” calls. This was one of them.
Me, personally? I know the lineup is stacked with hilarious locals and former locals. But briefly plug 'em for our readers.
We’ve got…
- Ben Katzner: so funny, spent years in New York sharpening his comedy and JUST released a special on YouTube called Supple Harlot!
- Patrick Susmilch: lives in L.A. now, brought their perfect solo show "Texts From My Dead Friends" to the month-long Edinburgh Fringe! (Raghav, from the next question, appears in that show!)
- Ryan Kahl: a Minneapolis favorite who hosts the very funny podcast We Cool!
- Greg Coleman: magnetic and hilarious, has staffed in writers rooms and headlines Acme!
- Joey Hamburger: one of the hardest comics to follow because he just destroys and totally molds the room in his image!
- Aaaand Kelsey Cook: a bonafide Hulu-special-having, Tonight Show-appearing touring comic who happens to live in Minneapolis now!
My good friend Raghav Mehta, a comedian who died in 2019, was close with a lotta folks on this bill. Kinda hard not to think of him, considering he got his start at CCU, his leaving-for-NYC roast was held there, and the venue hosted his local wake, right?
Oh it’s impossible not to think of Raghav. I wish so much that I could bully him into flying back to Minneapolis to do this show! He would have loved to get onstage and tell stories of every bad time he ever had at that club. He’ll be a part of this show for sure.
Let's talk about you! After leaving your writing gig with The Tonight Show, you acted in a Steven Soderbergh movie, correct? Tell me about that.
A webseries, yeah! (Basically the same length as a movie, if that counts.) I got staffed in the writers room for the show Command Z, and then I got cast out of the room. Steven is a completely weird genius—he’s very funny, but he barely ever laughs out loud. The times that I got him to like, sort of smirk, felt as good as if I got an applause break in Madison Square Garden. (That series is available on Steven’s website for free)
And, holy shit, you just scored "New Faces" honors at the Just for Laughs fest? Between that and the Vulture nod and the Deadline nod—everyone seems to think you're ready to break out. Does it feel that way?
It’s hard to feel sure of anything in this industry. But it definitely feels like I have a real shot.
And now you've got this Bradley Cooper movie, Is This Thing On?, about standup? What can you share about that?
Yeah! Will Arnett wrote a script and Bradley came on board and cowrote and directed the film, and they cast real New York standups in it. I did my own material in the shoot, and at first the extras were laughing in a fakey way, so I told them they could just treat it like a show and laugh honestly… but then I did the same material and they barely laughed because they had just heard the same jokes, and I had to be like, well you have to fake it a little. The premiere is the closing night of the New York Film Festival… I can’t wait to see it.
I'll steal a Q from that Jesse Fox guy's podcast: What's the last thing, person, movie, joke, etc. that made you laugh super hard?
This is nepotism at work, but I’m dating a British standup named Stuart Laws and I just think he’s so fucking funny. He directed James Acaster’s HBO special from last fall, and he’s currently running a show called "Stuart Laws Is Stuck" for the full month at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and it’s screamingly funny and so fucking weird. I laughed a lot watching him develop that show for the last couple months.
Chloe Radcliffe & Friends
With: Chloe Radcliffe, Ben Katzner, Patrick Susmilch, Ryan Kahl, Greg Coleman, Joey Hamburger, and Kelsey Cook
When: 6 p.m., Friday, Aug. 15
Where: 1501 Washington Ave., Minneapolis
Tickets: Sold out!
