Bret McKenzie: Songs Without Jokes Tour (This show has been moved to Royale Boston.)

Bret McKenzie’s Songs Without Jokes concert at the Berklee Performance Center has been moved to another venue. The event will now take place at Royale, located at 279 Tremont Street, Boston on October 15, 2022 at 8:00 p.m.

As you can probably glean from the title, Bret McKenzie—whom you know from such modern musical treasures as Flight of the Conchords, the Muppets movie reboots (and other ace kid-film soundtracks), Lord of the Rings fan blogs, guest songs for The Simpsons, cycling around the streets in his native New Zealand, and more—has a new solo record coming out filled with songs that are not comedy songs. 

So, yeah, Bret’s a ridiculously funny dude, and you might even call him one of the best comedy songwriters in the biz. (In Bret’s own words, there are fewer than a dozen people in the world writing comedy songs today, but who’s counting?) He’s had smash hits, he’s won major awards, he’s the better-dressed part of his duo... he’s got a good thing going! So, what gives with this whole “songs without jokes” solo stuff, man? 

“Post-Conchords, I’d been working on songs for the Muppets films, and during a session, I had the thought that it would be fun someday to work on some songs that weren’t for someone else, that don’t have to tell a story or be funny or continue the narrative plot, checking all the boxes for the character in the movie,” McKenzie says. “I thought it’d be fun to do a record like that, something different. It started as kind of a side project—it’s not like I’m trying to start a massive solo career or change the world with music. But now it’s turned into a full record and therefore requires quite a bit of time. It turns out it’s quite a big job, putting out a record. Why did no one try to stop me?” 

The Conchords landed McKenzie and Jemaine Clement a hit HBO television show, a BBC Radio series, chart-topping records, world tours, a Best Comedy Album Grammy, and a 2018 “reunion” special and accompanying live album, Live In London. McKenzie then transitioned to Hollywood, writing songs for 2011’s The Muppets (winning the Oscar for Best Original Song for “Man or Muppet”) and 2014’s Muppets Most Wanted, along with films in the Pirates! and Dora canons. But while he enjoyed and excelled at the work, he also endured the tedium accompanying all that plot-bound specificity, and began wondering what directions his songs might go if set truly free. He had already noticed his writing vocabulary expanding organically, something he attributed to the emotional needs of the films. And so, while in Los Angeles a few years back, recording movie music with a crack assemblage of legendary session musicians, McKenzie started playing around with a tune or two he had written simply as songs—songs without any external direction, songs without plot-pushing concerns, songs without jokes.