Interview: Dave Hill, comedian and musician

DAVE HILL and his band are mega in Japan, a fact that still astonishes the New Yorker and the rest of the Valley Lodge group, despite the fact that, when they tour there, they are mobbed by legions of autograph-hunters and everyone sings along at gigs.

"It's incredible, because the four of us were borderline broken up until this Japanese record company contacted us out of the blue over a year ago, saying they wanted us to release an album," admits the softly spoken 36-year-old, who is debuting his stand-up comedy act, Big in Japan, and his nebbish take on the chat show, The Dave Hill Explosion, on the Fringe.

"We've put out two albums in Japan - and we can't even get a gig at the corner bar in this neighbourhood, where they're like, 'But you guys have no following'," drawls Hill when we meet in a cafe near his West Village apartment. "So we've gone from barely being a band to having the other side of the world love us. It's the coolest thing; it's like being in some alternate universe."

A baby-faced, curly-haired, latterday Renaissance man, Hill is an award-winning author, screenplay writer, freelance journalist, filmmaker, actor, stand-up comic, dancer, songwriter, singer and guitarist - and has recently recorded an album with Moby for his hard rock Diamondsnake project. He's been named by Variety, the showbusiness bible, as one of the top ten comics to watch in the States.

Describing his comedy, he says: "I ramble. I just decided to out-ramble everybody else, but I do think I'm different; I'm total. I didn't set out to be different, it just worked out that way, although I was the goofball in the family. I'm not a traditional stand-up, more of a professional moron."

Unmarried and childless, he sighs: "I don't hang out. I've no life, because if something interests me, I just have to find time to do it. Sometimes I think I build all these little hills - pun intended! - instead of one big mountain."

So who is Dave Hill? Well, as a stand-up he's certainly big in Manhattan, where his admirers range from Robin Williams and Rufus Wainwright to hardcore divas such as Sandra Bernhard and Joan Rivers, with whom he has dined at her Palace of Versailles-like Fifth Avenue home. ("What gift do you take to a legend's dinner party?" he fretted. So he baked La Rivers a bread pudding garnished with her initials in raisins. Apparently, this moved her to tears as no one had ever personalised a pudding for her before.)

You'll find out why Robin, Rufus and Rivers love Hill if you check out his deadpan reports from New York Fashion Week on YouTube, in which he interviews feather-brained fashionistas, asking them what they think of Kofi Annan's latest gowns or Tripp Palin's new collection.

Desperate not to show their ignorance, the vacuous respond with, "I love Kofi Annan's clothes. What makes Tripp Palin special? It's the difference, although I'm not wearing him today, that would be too obvious," clearly blissfully unaware that neither the former secretary-general of the United Nations nor Sarah Palin's grandson has an eponymous fashion label.

"I actually think they were nice people who didn't want to look stupid on camera – people give you so much credit when you have a camera crew – so they just agreed with me; I love that," says Hill, who's been described as "Borat-lite."

That he does not like. "It was a poor choice of words. It makes me sound like a weak version of him. What I do is different. I don't play a character, just a different version of myself, a dumber, more confident me."

He admits: "On The Dave Hill Explosion, for instance, I come on and I treat people like Robin Williams or Sandra Bernhard as my peers – they're just as lucky to be on my show as I am to have them. I don't do a tremendous amount of research, just Wikipedia. I say to myself, 'What does the kid inside me want to know?' I ask the opposite of the fluffy showbiz questions they ask on the networks here.

"I love to have smart people like New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell on and I'd kill to get Jonathan Ross, who I met at a dinner party in London this spring, but it wouldn't have been appropriate to ask him then so I'm still scrambling for Edinburgh guests."

In addition, he hopes to stage a site-specific show that he does with other comics in New York. It's called Fancy Meeting You Here and is performed in public spaces, such as the Metropolitan Museum. Three or four stand-ups do guided tours, riff on various statues or just run through the marbled halls yelling at the paintings, offering one-word commentaries.

"The museum gets mad at us, but we're very popular. The guards all give us the finger. For some reason they hate us." He wants to repeat the exercise at the National Galleries of Scotland. "I'm working on it," he says.

Born in Cleveland, Ohio, Hill's boyhood ambition was to be a musician and a writer. "I never thought I'd be a comic. Ever. When I was a kid watching Peewee Herman, Bill Murray, David Letterman, it never occurred to me that these charming guys were telling jokes. I gravitated towards them because they were funny, so I think I'm just trying to entertain the 15-year-old inside me."

As a teenager, he taught himself piano and guitar and between high school and college he formed the rock band Sons of Elvis. "Horrible name, huh? But we were just teenagers. We never thought we'd get out of the practice space."

Nonetheless, they recorded an album and their video got late-night airings on MTV. They toured and did lots of gigs. "I just assumed we'd get more and more successful," he says. But by 1996 the band had lost its recording contract, and Hill was earning a living painting houses and doing freelance writing.

In 2003, he went to New York City for the weekend to visit friends and was offered a job writing for a Spike TV hidden-camera show, Crash Test. He never went home to Cleveland, and a year later began doing some stand-up in his cousin's bar in Manhattan.

Always, though, he was playing in bands, such as Uptown Sinclair and Cobra Verde, as well as being the Walter Schreifeis Band's resident guitar player. He was dancing in drag with a heavy-metal parody band when Moby first saw him.

"He came up to me and said, 'What is that? If you put all that into dancing, I want to see what else it is you do.' We became friends. He guested on The Dave Hill Explosion, then he came to a Valley Lodge gig and asked me to play with Diamondsnake. We've just toured to Los Angeles and we were desperate to bring Diamondsnake to the Fringe, but the dates didn't work for Moby.

"Being a musician is my big thing. My home is full of guitars. I've a little amp in my apartment so I'm basically still that 13-year-old with his first electric guitar. I remember thinking then that I'd probably stop playing and dancing when I got to be 21."

He laughs at himself, explaining: "I didn't want to be one of those old guys in their twenties playing at the corner bar. 'Hang it up already!' I'd think. Then I realised it's got nothing to do with your rock star dreams, it's like a physical act you have to do. It's just who I am."

Dave Hill: Big in Japan runs until 29 August, 8.15pm. The Dave Hill Explosion runs until 28 August (three times weekly), 11pm. Both shows are at the Pleasance Courtyard

A version of this article first appeared in the August 8 edition of Scotland on Sunday What makes Tripp Palin special? It's the difference, although I'm not wearing him today, that would be too obvious," clearly blissfully unaware that neither the former secretary-general of the United Nations nor Sarah Palin's grandson has an eponymous fashion label.

"I actually think they were nice people who didn't want to look stupid on camera - people give you so much credit when you have a camera crew - so they just agreed with me; I love that," says Hill, who's been described as "Borat-lite."

That he does not like. "It was a poor choice of words. It makes me sound like a weak version of him. What I do is different. I don't play a character, just a different version of myself, a dumber, more confident me."

He admits: "On The Dave Hill Explosion, for instance, I come on and I treat people like Robin Williams or Sandra Bernhard as my peers - they're just as lucky to be on my show as I am to have them. I don't do a tremendous amount of research, just Wikipedia. I say to myself, ‘What does the kid inside me want to know?' I ask the opposite of the fluffy showbiz questions they ask on the networks here.

"I love to have smart people like New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell on and I'd kill to get Jonathan Ross, who I met at a dinner party in London this spring, but it wouldn't have been appropriate to ask him then so I'm still scrambling for Edinburgh guests."

In addition, he hopes to stage a site-specific show that he does with other comics in New York. It's called Fancy Meeting You Here and is performed in public spaces, such as the Metropolitan Museum. Three or four stand-ups do guided tours, riff on various statues or just run through the marbled halls yelling at the paintings, offering one-word commentaries.

"The museum gets mad at us, but we're very popular. The guards all give us the finger. For some reason they hate us." He wants to repeat the exercise at the National Galleries of Scotland. "I'm working on it," he says.

Born in Cleveland, Ohio, Hill's boyhood ambition was to be a musician and a writer. "I never thought I'd be a comic. Ever. When I was a kid watching Peewee Herman, Bill Murray, David Letterman, it never occurred to me that these charming guys were telling jokes. I gravitated towards them because they were funny, so I think I'm just trying to entertain the 15-year-old inside me."

As a teenager, he taught himself piano and guitar and between high school and college he formed the rock band Sons of Elvis. "Horrible name, huh? But we were just teenagers. We never thought we'd get out of the practice space."

Nonetheless, they recorded an album and their video got late-night airings on MTV. They toured and did lots of gigs. "I just assumed we'd get more and more successful," he says. But by 1996 the band had lost its recording contract, and Hill was earning a living painting houses and doing freelance writing.

In 2003, he went to New York City for the weekend to visit friends and was offered a job writing for a Spike TV hidden-camera show, Crash Test. He never went home to Cleveland, and a year later began doing some stand-up in his cousin's bar in Manhattan.

Always, though, he was playing in bands, such as Uptown Sinclair and Cobra Verde, as well as being the Walter Schreifeis Band's resident guitar player. He was dancing in drag with a heavy-metal parody band when Moby first saw him.

"He came up to me and said, ‘What is that? If you put all that into dancing, I want to see what else it is you do.' We became friends. He guested on The Dave Hill Explosion, then he came to a Valley Lodge gig and asked me to play with Diamondsnake. We've just toured to Los Angeles and we were desperate to bring Diamondsnake to the Fringe, but the dates didn't work for Moby.

"Being a musician is my big thing. My home is full of guitars. I've a little amp in my apartment so I'm basically still that 13-year-old with his first electric guitar. I remember thinking then that I'd probably stop playing and dancing when I got to be 21."

He laughs at himself, explaining: "I didn't want to be one of those old guys in their twenties playing at the corner bar. ‘Hang it up already!' I'd think. Then I realised it's got nothing to do with your rock star dreams, it's like a physical act you have to do. It's just who I am." v

Dave Hill: Big in Japan runs until 29 August, 8.15pm. The Dave Hill Explosion runs until 28 August (three times weekly), 11pm. Both shows are at the Pleasance Courtyard