No Joke 2

Rather than performing standard, highly rehearsed setups and punchlines, Corey Adam focuses entirely on what most comics leave on the cutting room floor: direct, unfiltered, and often combative audience interaction.

Released in 2019 on Stand Up! Records, No Joke 2 is a follow-up to Adam’s 2015 crowd-work compilation, No Joke. Recorded at various dive bars and clubs across the country—most notably Minneapolis’s now-defunct Seven Corners staple, Bullwinkle’s Saloon—the album acts as a retrospective of a comic who excels at managing drunk rooms, handling hecklers, and shutting down bachelorette parties.

With 22 short tracks, the audio-only special ranges from swift takedowns to weirdly sweet banter. Highlights include ‘Corey Meets a Cop,’ the multi-part ‘Bullwinkle’s’ saga, and a bizarrely specific crowd interaction about Pokemon the Movie 2000. In an era where crowd-work videos have become standard promotional currency on social media, Adam’s approach feels less like structured content creation and more like a series of gritty, late-night bar negotiations.