The one-of-a-kind Crowd Work Tour arrived over two decades into the standup career of
Todd Barry, who was already well-known to comedy fans for his deadpan delivery and measured sarcasm. He had also earned a reputation, particularly among peers, for his ease with this particular component of the job, one that many standups deliberately avoid. In the fall of 2013,
Barry embarked on a seven-city tour of the U.S. West Coast, doing only crowd work -- purely improvised interactions with audience members and no prepared bits. Throughout the tour album,
Barry teases absurdities in the atypical professions and passion projects he elicits from attendees, from raising chickens in Portland to tweeting about soda in Seattle and acting in Vancouver (and a few that are punchlines in themselves). Consisting of highlights from each stop on the tour,
The Crowd Work Tour was originally released in 2014 as a five-dollar download exclusively through comedian
Louis C.K.'s website. After being edited from 70 minutes to an hour, it received a multi-format release two years later by Comedy Dynamics. ~ Marcy Donelson