Acclaimed comedy duo Scared Weird Little Guys are back with a vengeance for the 2019 Brisbane Comedy Festival.
“Well you know, when the Scared Weird Little Guys finished back in 2011, there was still a lot of love for the group,” comedy musician John Fleming, one half of the beloved pair says.
“On our farewell tour, we especially played a number of times in Brisbane because people there dig what we were doing, and the reason we were finishing didn't have to do with the quality of the work. One of the fantastic things about this is that we've had time to take a break from the material, reflect on it, hone it up, polish it.
"Now maybe two thirds of the show will be material people will know, but on steroids! And then a third of the show will be new stuff we've been working on, very much in the style of the fun trickster sort of thing we do.”
Alongside partner in crime Rusty Berther, John has been making making Queenslanders and the rest of Australia laugh for the better part of 20 years. A lot has changed since their on-again off-again hiatus of close to a decade (including a trip to the arctic by John and a book detailing the escapade), but the group has only strengthened in their unique sense of identity and comedic values.
“It becomes tangential that we will tie in a reference to some ridiculous thing going on in the world, be it political or the weather, often that happens spontaneously and often it's in a written and calculated way so that people can be surprised and amused,” he says.
“You know, for the two of us to get together and perform, there's a period of time, after 24 years of working consistently together every day – more time than we spent with anyone else – including families and kids, coming off the back of that there's a period of time where it's like, 'I don't want to see you for a while', like it's a break-up. Then you go, 'well, there's importance in having all that time spent together, you don't want to disregard that... When it's right, let's get together and do things'.
“So when our services have been needed, we have at times got together and done little spots on a benefit or something like that, and it's just so much fun to do something we've done over all those years, that has become fresh again. That just doesn't happen often, so we're very pleased to be celebrating that.”
When pressed for an answer to the origins of the group's zany name, John says, “There are probably a lot of answers to that question, most of them not being at all true. Scared Weird Little Guys has become a name that is without meaning in a way... Originally it's a quote from a movie we watched back in 1990, a quote from this movie called 'Cruisin'', a full-on movie about murders in the gay underworld of New York.
"We thought 'those words don't even seem to go together'... And we slot unusual things and juxtapose them together in a way to create a feeling of surprise and diversion for the audience, which is what we want. It's without meaning, and it's everything we're about.”
Back in business and ready to rock, the group are looking forward to returning with their much-adored musical stylings.
“It's really off the back of a good friend of ours who has said, 'there is such a groundswell of affection for the Scared Weird Little Guys, and we would love to have you back as part of the Brisbane Comedy Festival'. We can't wait to play at the Powerhouse. There'll be lots of flashing lights, guitars and things too, other technology... Audio looping technology, we're no strangers to that, fleshing out our sound with that, a lot of visual projection stuff, a number of video clips, we're exploring a whole lot of that stuff.
"What actually ends up in the show is still a mystery to me, but there's going to be quite a feast of audio/visual stuff. I reckon over the course of 20 years of touring, Brisbane is one of the most enjoyable cities to come to. Audiences really appreciate comedy. The joy of the anticipation of what it's going to be like... Audiences, please don't let us down. It's totally on the crowd!”
