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Not all people or bands have it. My guess is that once you have stage presence mastered then humor would be the next thing to work on.

Anyone have any 'trics-of-the-trade' on this subject?

These guys had stage presence in spades:

Well there's stage fright, which puts an end to stage presence quickly.. My advice is have a great time, enjoy what you do and don't be shy...everything else will fall into place...Eye contact and talk to the audience, keep away from over tuning guitars inbetween songs, this makes one look and sound unprofessional. Remember: you don't have to be good to be liked, but you have to be liked to be good. These are things I've learned over the years.

Good advice Dale!

(With apologies to Steve Martin...)

How to have a sense of humor on stage:

First, get a sense of humor...

Why wait for mastery of stage presence?

I think my basic rules are: keep to the decorum of the environment, be respectful, don't overdo and have fun. (In some situations and music genres, a lot of humor doesn't fit in, anyway.) Even if some portion of the humor doesn't go over- too deadpan, too obscure, to weird, whatever- the will to have a good time is infectious. Furthermore, if you manage a way to get some hooks into them musically or with your banter, they'll be more receptive to everything you do.

Standing up there and telling jokes doesn't usually work for me- I'm not good at memorizing them, they're usually somebody else's and everybody has heard most of the good ones. I will also acknowledge that because joke telling is not something that I do well, others can and do tell jokes on stage and it can work.

For me, humor is a natural element of my life and having a musical partner who can do at least half the humor heavy lifting helps. Because jokes are pretty much out for me, I try to stay reactive to what is happening and make a little light commentary, building rapport with whomever in the audience makes it is easy to do so. (Part of developing the comfort of performing in my living room is finding a person or persons I feel like I can easily meet eyes and get some form of help/assistance/laughs/etc.)

The band may be rehearsed and practiced, but what keeps this show from sameness for you and the audience? If it's dull and samey for you, it will be for somebody else.

Frank Zappa borrowed Groucho Marx's use of "the secret word" to keep things fresh every night. For me, usually something from the audience gets some amount of schtick happening, or something happens in a song that allows us to keep a rolling joke for the evening. Sometimes we are just verbally riffing on something from practicing or driving to the gig earlier that day.

During the most recent gig, the spark for the the evening's schtick was a friend asking us if we could do something "funky" at the gig. Being respectful to her, but making light of the fact that we were two middle-aged white guys with acoustic guitars meant that we had to explore other options. Through the evening, we back announced songs as "our funky, funky version of "The Boxer" (Simon and Garfunkel), etc., we offered to remove our footwear, I even threatened to do a version of "Brick House" with totally made up on the spot, extremely unfunky lyrics describing the crafting of a person who was much as though they were an abode formed entirely of masonry.

Another thing that we do is to encourage some amount of audience participation, which allows some natural empathy and kinship with the crowd. Since my buddy is a human jukebox, we do take a lot of requests. We also do things like Elvis's "Suspicious Minds", encouraging audience vocal participation that drives very hard at the line between comedy and complete reverence to The King "DON'CHUKNOWAAHM CAUGHT IN A TRAP..."

I think the big thing is that it should be organic and funny to the presenters of that humor, or it might not come off well. For me, I'm all for recycling to benefit the earth, but repeated routines come out a bit flat and well-used humor doesn't seem to work. Your mileage may vary.

For me, watching a band try to be funny is sheer torture. Unless they just ARE funny, naturally.

I rarely, rarely am able to hear what those bandmembers are saying between songs through their PA systems...I just see that expression on their face that says, I'm being funny now, please love me.

Play the music. A few quick, zippy one-liners, sure...but play the music. That's what we came for.

I saw a guy open for Frank Zappa in '74 who, between singing his tunes and accompanying himself on a Fender Rhodes, told joke after joke after joke...

...but, then again, he was Tom Waits...

Even though he doesn't sing much, our bass player does the talking on stage for the group. That works best for us. Otherwise we're all standing up there talking over each other trying to be funny.

We do a lot of "Stump the Band" to keep the crowd engaged. From doing that we developed a 45 second version of "Freebird" that usually kills.

Do you play it that fast, or is it creatively edited?

I'm guessing they play it fast, Mark...the only 'creative editing' I can picture for that tune is a big, fat 'magic marker' line drawn through the title on the song list.

I confess: I like Free Bird.

I liked it the first million times I heard it.
We usually know we're in the wrong place if someone yells out "Free bird" (or "Crazy Train" for that matter)!

Whenever I hear someone shout Freebird they are doing it in jest. I have the last laugh by actually playing it. They learn their lesson after that. Don't mess with THE DOG!!!

Sometimes a humorous ice breaker is gluing different song lyrics to well known songs, like the "Stairway to Gilligan's Island" bit or "Green Acres" over "All Along the Watchtower", but that feels a little gimmicky sometimes and can get old. Occasionally just doing a few bars of a thing like that, or playing part of a different song with the same progression as the song on the set list is a way to inject a spot of humor.

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