Leder of the Pack

Annie Lederman says she’s “here to entertain, baby.” She is a podcast host and breakout Comedy Store regular — the legendary Los Angeles comedy club where all-time greats like David Letterman and Jay Leno got their start. Lederman’s touring the Pacific Northwest, preparing new material for her first hour-long comedy special, still in its planning stages, and stopping by Eugene at Olsen Run Comedy Club & Lounge on Sept. 12.

In addition to her Comedy Store spots, Lederman, known for a brassy, profane, off-the-cuff style, says she’s on the road two or three weekends a month. She’s been doing standup comedy for 15 years and was “passed,” or earned paid gigs at the Comedy Store, in 2012. She’s also written for scores of TV and online projects and appeared on major podcasts like The Joe Rogan Experience and WTF with Marc Maron.

On stage, Lederman, small in stature but big in spirit and always feisty, often wears a leopard-print coat with a purse slung over her shoulder, like she just wandered off Sunset Boulevard, where the Store is located, to drop some hot takes.

A recent bit has Lederman putting on her oversized, plastic-framed sunglasses. She says her boyfriend asked her to roleplay in the bedroom, but he didn’t tell her what he was into. “It’s like improv 101,” she says. Lederman puts on the comically large sunglasses and says, “I’m your dad.”

Lederman says she sees all kinds of audiences touring as much as she does. “I’ve had audiences that are 75 percent older Republican people and 25 percent may as well all be trans,” Lederman tells Eugene Weekly in a phone call. “Completely the opposite,” she says, and “that’s fun for me.” Still, she says, “I’m sweating. I have to play to a full range of people.”

That’s what’s fun about standup, though. “You gotta control the energy in a room for 45 minutes to an hour. It’s the best,” she says.

Lederman also sometimes draws on her history of odd jobs, like briefly training dogs to be guard dogs in New York, where she started as a comedian, and before she got into standup, working as a “go-go dancer” at a club in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she went to college.

“There were three go-go dancers: a drag queen named Brandy, and a stripper. And then just me: A 21-year-old college girl who can’t dance, but would get wasted and wear knee-high boots” she says. (Lederman is now sober, as she also mentions in her recent material.)

While in Santa Fe, Lederman met Adam Sandler and comedian and actor Nick Swardson, who were in town shooting a movie.

“This is weird to like seeing these people in real life,” Lederman remembers thinking. “I wasn’t going to be a go-go dancer,” she says, so why not try comedy? She moved to New York and started doing open mics, and before long, she relocated to LA.

Lederman is still feeling out the material in her debut special, balancing planned bits with in-the-moment stand-up comedy, which she prefers. She says finding that balance has been challenging. “Can I write it so that it feels like it’s in the moment for me?” she says about the new material, “or do I just go fuck it and just go crazy?”

Lederman adds, “I make the darkest stuff as funny as possible and kind of take all of the darker experiences of my life and other people’s lives and make fun of it.” But no matter what, “I’m a clown. I’m just here to be silly,” she says.

Annie Lederman performs with Eugene comedians Angie Bloomfield and Andy Andrist 7 pm Thursday, Sept. 12, at Olsen Run Comedy Club & Lounge, 44 East 7th Avenue; $30, 21-plus.

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