Before fall tour dates and recording sessions for another album of witty, uncensored songs, Shirley Gnome found time for an interview after a busy summer of doing Fringe and music festivals in Canada.
The Surrey-raised musical comedian is booked on the national Comedy Here, There & Everywhere tour with headliners Jon Dore and Dave Merheje, along with special guest Sean McDonnell, in partnership with SiriusXM Comedy Club. Gnome will perform on select dates to start the tour including Sidney on Sept. 23, Vancouver's Hollywood Theatre on Sept. 24 and four Alberta cities after that.
Gnome grew up in the Panorama Ridge area of Surrey, went to high school in Langley and now lives in Richmond.
"I'm an old lady and want to be left alone, you know — I just didn't wanna share a bathroom with four other people," she said of moving from more expensive digs in Vancouver.
"My bladder just isn't what it used to be. When I was younger I could live up a flight of very dangerous stairs and still get to the bathroom in time, but I just don't think I could do that now."
All jokes aside, Gnome is a talented writer of some explicit and very entertaining songs including "Horrible Sex Dream," "Egglant Emoji," "Masturbation Over Breakfast" and "Sentient Dildo," among many others over the past decade-plus.
Back in 2017 her album Taking It Up The Notch was recorded for Vancouver-based 604 Records, with another due next year on the Comedy Here Often? imprint. "The relationship between us is great," Gnome reported, "not just the tour that we're about to do, but also producing albums."
On stage, Gnome adjusts her act depending on the venue.
"If I'm doing a comedy club, which I'll be doing on this tour, then I definitely pick my sort of zippiest material, stuff that has the laughs every 20 seconds, the kind of rhythm that you would expect from a stand-up comedian," she explained.
"When I'm doing a festival, then I can kind of branch out a bit more and I can do songs that are maybe just a little more clever and thoughtful rather than laugh-out-loud funny, with a band sometimes," Gnome added.
Tickets for the Vancouver show start at $40, plus taxes and fees, on ticketweb.ca.
"We all know everyone's pinching their pennies these days," Gnome said, "so for starters, anyone who shows up is guaranteed to get gratitude from the performers because we're just barely holding on to any kind of arts and culture scene in this town. So you'll get that and then you'll get a night of very hilarious comedy and different styles of comedy.
"I'm obviously the sort of weird cousin of it all because I do music comedy," she added, "but you have a bunch of comedians who have all these different takes and perspectives that will be pretty great. And the theatre itself, the Hollywood, is such a great venue, it's beautiful, and people should come down to check that out if they haven't already."