The Human Comedy

Adam Wade operates entirely without malice or cynicism. Instead of firing off quick punchlines, he stands at the microphone and reconstructs life’s small humiliations with patient, self-effacing detail. An agonizing crush at a teenage diner job or an awkward encounter on a Hoboken street carries the weight of genuine tragedy, with the comedy coming entirely from his earnestness.

He is a storyteller who refuses to posture.

Before releasing this debut album, Wade was a fixture on the New York storytelling circuit, having won twenty Moth StorySLAMs while teaching the craft at the Magnet Theater. Recorded in front of a sold-out room at The Bell House in Brooklyn and released by Comedy Dynamics in September 2015, the eighty-five-minute set collects the autobiographical material he spent years performing across the city.

The tracklist follows long narrative arcs centered on his youth in New Hampshire and his adjustment to city life, including extended pieces about a bus driver named Freddy, college roommates, and misadventures in dating. Writing for The New Yorker, Sarah Larson noted that his stage persona resonates because it speaks for the small-town misfit inside everyone.