179: Johnny Brennan (The Jerky Boys)

Johnny Brennan was a wise cracking kid from New York who had a natural gift for doing voices and making up characters. First, he did it to crack up his family. When he started recording the prank phone calls that he made to try out his characters in the real world, he made tapes for his brothers. At the time, he was “hanging off of buildings, doing construction.” His friend Kamal Ahmed got involved and the duo would eventually call themselves The Jerky Boys. Those original tapes started circulating, being passed around at college campuses and among musicians. The Jerky Boys became one of the most bootlegged acts in the world, before ultimately signing a proper record contract (their first record was on Atlantic Records) and going on to sell millions of copies of their prank call collections. They made a movie, did commercials, became famous, launched careers, and created classic characters.

Then the Jerky Boys stopped making new recordings and the two friends went their separate ways. Johnny became a voice actor, notably voicing characters on the animated comedy Family Guy (the creator of the show, Seth McFarlane, was a huge fan of the Jerky Boys). Now, after over 20 years without a new record, Johnny Brennan is back with a new Jerky Boys record.  We talked recently about how he developed his characters, why his career was an unexpected success, the role of improvisation in his calls and how he knows when it’s a good one, what makes a classic skit (hint: it involves what he calls “catchphrases up the ass”), how the world has changed since he first started and why this was the perfect time to launch a comeback.

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