New Orleanians may recognize Luke Null from playing “Pontoon” on the “Saturday Night Live” sketch “Floribama Shore,” a parody of “Jersey Shore” and other reality TV shows full of loud, drunk and horny roommates.
They also might recognize the comedian from local streets, since Null spends a month here every fall. He returns this weekend for for two shows at Sports Drink on Saturday, July 27.
Null is best known as a guitar comic. He almost always performs with guitar in hand, singing humorous songs that sometimes channel emo and ’90s indie rock, or seem to mock bands like Third Eye Blind. He also strums through stand-up material and banter with the audience.
A native of Cincinnati, he was doing sketch, improv and his musical standup in Chicago when he was invited to audition for SNL. A song about Clay Aiken helped get him cast on the show. But there was a bit of a misunderstanding, Null says.
“When they took me, every time they saw me I was always doing some little chunk of a song,” he says. “They saw me a few times. When they hired me, I was like, ‘Oh, they hired me to do this.’ It took me until I was halfway out the door to realize, no, they really weren’t that interested in that. They liked the characters and sketch stuff. I tried so many times to get a song on the show, and it was a hard pass every time.”
It wasn’t for lack of trying. He pitched songs to many of the weekly guests. One song on his album “Guitar Comic” was pitched as a rap that would feature guest host Charles Barkley. Null and Barkley were to appear in white tuxedos and fellow cast member Chris Redd was supposed to handle some of the rapping parts in “That Soft Cheese Life,” an absurd rap combining bling-y NBA and rapper lifestyles and fontina, camembert and brie. (“Talk about the creamy blues, baby / We’re eating Gorgonzola in a Mercedes.”) But the pitch came up short.
“The night before, Barkley was like, ‘This is awesome,’” Null says with a laugh. “He liked it, but you have to realize, they read 30 to 35 sketches back-to-back. You read each one maybe one time. I am asking him to do a tight rap song at a table read-through. Man, he was not able to do it. He is not musical.”
Some other songs were too risque for the show’s standards and practices monitors. And even “Floribama Shore” was cut.
“It’s random and up to one person what gets in and what gets cut,” Null says. “There was one joke in ‘Floribama’ — me telling this girl, ‘Hey, I am all normal sized down there. But it’s all tip!’ Standards and practices was like, ‘Absolutely not.’”
Null got other notable screen time, like a scene as a beatboxing airplane passenger for flight attendants to rap the safety message. But the 2017-2018 season was his first and last.
“Now I can look back and see it with rose colored glasses and say, ‘Oh wasn’t that fun,’” he says. “But at the time, it wasn’t going well for me.”
The time also wasn’t wasted. Some of the material he wrote during that year appeared on “Guitar Comic” in 2019, including “You Are What You Eat,” a raunchy tune that didn’t get past a guest host.
Null notes that he may be better off solo, as he speeds up and slows down his songs as he goes, and sometimes interrupts with his own commentary. A version of his song “Accents White People Shouldn’t Do” posted on YouTube is a good example, as he cites his father’s role in the song.
After leaving SNL and New York, Null relocated to Los Angeles, where he’s found a place in the comedy scene.
He recently finished shooting and post-production on a new special, tentatively titled “Pretty Songs, Dirty Words.” He is shopping it to broadcast outlets for release.
Besides new solo songs, it includes an improv with Wayne Brady. There’s also a guest on a mock romantic song he does mimicking the hologram Tupac performance. And he managed to record one song with a full band.
Null has also been working on a feature-length script, and he appears in a film called “Stealing Jokes,” which will be released in September. He plays a jerky comic who steals jokes and posts them on TikTok, he says.
He travels often to perform, and he says he’s ready for New Orleans in summer.
He also concedes that he uses an improper pronunciation of New Orleans on “Guitar Comic.”
“Any time you pronounce it New Or-LEANS, you’re just trying to fit a rhyme,” he says.
“Don’t kill me. Lots of jazz guys are guilty of that too.”
Luke Null performs at Sports Drink at 7 p.m. and 9 p.m. Saturday, July 27. Tickets $25 via eventbrite.com.
