Shortly after the birth of under listening, the popular podcast that Mike Ward will bring to the Bell Center’s central stage on Friday, his friend Guillaume Wagner confided to him that he too had thought of creating his own podcast. “Guillaume told me: I’m going to let it happen, we can’t be two comedians with podcasts! »
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Guillaume Wagner’s restraint seems especially absurd in 2022, when it seems impossible for a comedian to exist without hosting his own podcast. This is undoubtedly the main success of under listeningspearheading the advent of a real Quebec podcast.
“Whenever someone was good as a guest at under listeningI said to him: ‘Leave yourself a podcast'”, says Mike Ward, met at Le Bordel, where he has recorded since August 2015 some 400 episodes of his show bringing together two comedians around several drinks, the time of a long conversation oscillating between the essential and the nonsense.
I thought that podcasts could catch as much as in the United States, but I knew that there had to be as many here as there for it to rise.
Mike Ward
Jerr Allain, Jay Du Temple, Sam Breton, Guillaume Pineault, Michelle Desrochers, Les Denis Drolet and even Guillaume Wagner have all since followed suit with podcasts in various tones. “They may have benefited from under listeningthinks the host, but under listening also really benefited from the wave created by everyone else. »
The importance of connoisseurs
It was in 2011, observing the rise of WTFthe influential podcast by American Marc Maron, which Mike Ward revives with an old dream: allowing the general public to hear the sometimes very serious remarks that usually die between the four walls of a comedy club. under listening will thus know its first life, embryonic, in a version recorded by Skype.
“Quebecers, we are the people who love humor the most, but I found that the public loved humor so much that they let it pass. Often, I saw comedians that I found bad and they had big laughs, ”he explains.
At that time, we still heard comedians say in interviews: “Me, in life, I am not funny.” But why do you do this as a job? It’s as if you said: I’m a chef, but in life, I don’t know how to make a sandwich.
Mike Ward
In addition to wanting to “show who the real funny guys are”, Mike Ward hoped to prove once and for all that his humor is not just a series of insults and obscenities. Although those who wish him the worst remain numerous, this ambition will obtain an undeniable success: under listening harvests approximately 400,000 unique listens per week and has allowed those known as comedy nerd – connoisseurs of humor – to multiply.
“Before, my audience was a lot of people who said: ‘Asti, he makes me laugh, because he crowns.’ It didn’t bother me, but felt like it wasn’t just swearing, what I was doing. There were still gags, a reflection. I was like, the only way they’ll find out is if they hear me talking about my process with other comedians. »
The necessary freedom
As a teenager, Mike Ward treasured his copied tape of an episode of Howard Stern’s show, recorded “by a friend or a friend of my brother.” “It was kind of trashy radio, right in my style,” he recalls. Of the radio where no one knew the meaning of the word prohibited.
Quite the opposite of Quebec commercial radio, on whose airwaves the troublemaker has already raged, in his early days, as a substitute columnist. “After two days, I was told: ‘You’re really good’, and after five days, I was told: ‘Don’t forget Mike, it’s Martine, 34, a resident of Beauharnois, who is listening to the show.’ »
What was the problem ?
I was too hard and I criticized the radio patterns. The animator presented a song by saying: “I really like this one”, and I replied: “Oh yeah, seriously, do you like this song?”
Mike Ward
under listening does not respond to any constraint and can accommodate both the vulgar and the moving, the relevant and the wacky, the octogenarian Yvon Deschamps and the twenty-something Mégan Brouillard. All things considered, a passage in the most-watched French-language comedy podcast on YouTube is, for young Quebec comedians, what a visit to the Tonight Show by Johnny Carson was for American comedians in the 1970s and 1980s.
“It’s always freaked me out, old comedians who aren’t nice to young people,” exclaims Mike Ward, 48, especially proud of his role as sponsor of the next generation.
But beyond this altruistic aspect, under listening will also have helped a lot Mike Ward himself by allowing him to display his sensitivity and by keeping him on the good side of things, at the height of his depression caused by his legal problems. ” This is under listening that kept me alive,” he confides, although the memory of some recordings is now blurred by the torrent of vodka-diet coke he was sluicing.
An unlikely legacy
It was then that he presented under listening at ComediHa! Fest-Québec, under a tent at the door of which hundreds of spectators were turned away, that the supremely eccentric idea of a recording at the Bell Center was born. “At first, we thought it would be even funnier if we only sold 43 tickets,” jokes Ward. Twenty thousand seven hundred seats have, fortunately or unfortunately, found takers for the moment (out of a possibility of about 22,000), the world record for the greatest number of pairs of ears gathered for the recording of a podcast.
Always 100% independent, under listening is now, thanks to advertising, ticket sales and subscriptions on Patreon, Mike Ward’s main livelihood. Several producers have tried since 2015 to acquire the rights.
The best offer he received? “7.5 million,” he replies. The journalist jumps. “ call her daddy [balado américaine sur la sexualité] had just signed with Spotify for 60 million. I said to those who approached me, “If you come to me with an offer below 10 million, I’ll take it as an insult.” They offered me 7.5, but I didn’t take that as an insult. »
After thinking of the cozy life that such a fortune would allow him to invent, Mike Ward remembered that he gave birth to under listening in order to taste a freedom he had never encountered in the traditional media. To trade it for cash would be to betray the essence of the podcast, which he considers his artistic testament.
“Jean Thomas [Jobin] once said to me, “I think this is going to be the most important project of your life.” I had answered him: “Let’s see! I’m on YouTube and I drink in front of the world.” But I think he’s right. In 20 years, when we talk about me, we will still talk about my trial, but maybe under listening will happen equal. »
Only the court of time will tell.
Mike Ward WiretappedJuly 22 at 8 p.m., at the Bell Center