Meet Jason Bader and Jason Blackman of The Jasons

Today we’d like to introduce you to The Jasons.

Thanks for sharing your story with us Jason and Jason. So, let’s start at the beginning, and we can move on from there.
Blackman: We met in the 3rd grade– at Hebrew school. We bonded over a mutual love of bands like Weezer, Green Day & Blink 182. It was actually a long time before we became close. We both knew that the other was a funny kid, but never really talked about it to each other. Then, in the 10th grade, I started a band with another friend, and we were looking for a drummer. We went through several kids in our class with drum sets until we found Bader. He was super excited to join, and we all hit it off pretty quickly.

Bader: I loved being in the band– shout out to The Adventures of! But it was really those post-band-practice hangouts where Blackman and I would binge my older sister’s Office DVD’s and download Tenacious D albums on LimeWire (remember that?) where we really bonded. It was the first time I found someone with the same sense of humor as me, which is a pretty magical experience.

Blackman: Oh yeah, it was awesome. I remember a couple of years earlier I saw “Airplane!” for the first time and spent the next afternoon trying to explain the entire plot of it, joke for joke, to friends at school and nobody cared. Then I found Bader, and that was it. With him, I’d bring up a movie like “Airplane!” and he’d already seen it.

Bader: We were in that band through high school & college, and then after we graduated, Blackman moved to LA. He got a job as Writer’s Assistant on The Ellen DeGeneres Show. I moved out a few months later and got work as a production accountant, which is quite possibly the most boring job on the planet. At this time we were focusing on sketch comedy.

Blackman: A few years into that we were working on material for a show we were putting up at a little place called Echoes Under Sunset which isn’t there anymore, and we wrote a song about our friendship. That song got the biggest reaction from our audience, and we were just kinda like, “Ok, let’s do this now.”

Bader: Yeah, that’s pretty much how we got to doing the musical comedy act. After the massive failure that was our Kickstarter campaign to film our own feature, we needed to do a 180, creatively.

Blackman: Then I became a writer at Ellen, and Bader got a gig as an Associate Producer at the show. It was a fun couple of years, but we made a decision to focus on ‘The Jasons’ full time.

Bader: At this point, we’ve been doing this musical comedy act for a few years, and it’s definitely the most fun, creatively engaging thing I’ve ever done. It’s so fun. It’s also the type of act I would’ve been such a big fan of as a teenager which is a fun thing to think about. It’s just so silly.

Has it been a smooth road?
One interesting thing that we’ve dealt with is people’s perception of us before they see us perform. We wear matching Hawaiian shirts & we’re always holding guitars. We know what we look like. It’s intentionally bright and silly. That often leads to people assuming we’re gonna be hacky. Our favorite part of any show is when those people, who literally did not want to like us, are the ones laughing the loudest.

We’ve also had a lot of people say, “I love you guys, but I don’t know what to do with you.” We’re talking about managers & agents. We’re not stand-ups, but we perform on stand up shows all the time. So we see how some people can think we’re out of place. But we feel like, if the audience is laughing, you’re in the right place.

A few weeks ago, we were lucky enough to find agents who really believe in us- which is a great feeling. We’re excited to start working with them.

So let’s switch gears a bit and go into The Jasons story. Tell us more about the business.
We’re a musical comedy duo, and we’re creative partners, but most importantly, we’ve been lifelong best friends. That comes with a shared language and way of thinking that you can’t manufacture.

In our act, we play ‘The Jasons,’ two Hawaiian-shirt clad best friends who’ve lived through some pretty wild adventures and met a ton of VERY interesting people- and we sing songs about all of that. It’s a very high-energy, absurdly silly act.

How do you think the industry will change over the next decade?
A lot of the comedy that’s come out in the last ten years has been grounded in very political, dark truths. However, I can see a resurgence of silliness taking place. I think we’re gonna see a lot of acts & shows that are made for the sole purpose of making people laugh as opposed to the more cerebral, drama-heavy comedies that have been really popular.

Contact Info:

• Website: thejasonscomedy.com
• Email: [email protected]
• Instagram: @thejasonscomedy
• Facebook: /thejasonscomedy

Image Credit: Jon Premosch 

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