Dave Hill

Dave Hill steps out in a tailored three-piece suit, straps on an electric guitar, and starts bragging. The voice is soft, dry, and flat, the tone of someone quietly filling time at an art gallery opening. Then he hits a distortion pedal and rips a loud, intricate heavy-metal solo without changing his facial expression. When the noise cuts out, he goes right back to speaking in stiff, polite sentences about how cool he is, how women cannot leave him alone, or how he once handled business at a Guitar Center.

He occupies a distinct corner of the New York alternative scene, popular with crowds that split their time between comedy clubs and indie rock basements. Other comics respect the commitment because the bit has no safety valve. He does not break character to wink at the room or apologize for the volume.

The comedy lives in the friction between high technical competence and complete idiocy. Plenty of comics use guitars to cover for thin material, strumming simple chords under half-baked punchlines. Hill does the opposite. He can actually play, which makes the deadpan boasts about his apartment or sweet gear feel even sillier. The routine drags only when the stories turn conventional and the guitar goes quiet for too long.

He came out of Cleveland before heading to New York, spending years fronting rock bands alongside doing comedy. That musical history is the only reason the gimmick works. The solos are not a clumsy parody of playing guitar; they are the real thing, hauled onto a small stage just to prove a point nobody asked him to make.