Comedy - Bacon and Beer Storytellers Tour puts bar stories in the spotlight

“Everyone has passed out drunk and been written on in Magic Marker,” says Atlanta comedian Mike Speenberg. “Everyone has a great 21st birthday story. We all have that in common.”

Speenberg and actor/comic James Sibley apply that we’ve-all-been-there brand of camaraderie to the anecdotes they share on the Bacon and Beer Storytelling Tour, which rolls up to the Punchline from Nov. 25-27.

Speenberg and Sibley are both working comedians, but on the Bacon and Beer performances they began last year, “We don’t do our normal stand-up show, we just tell stories about growing up,” says Speenberg. “I do have jokes in my show, but if the story’s good enough, the set can be fun without them. I’m a big music fan, and if you consider stand-up comedy as an electric set, this is more like an acoustic set.”

Both performers can fairly be described as Southern Good Ole Boys. A self-confessed former frat boy, Speenberg hails from North Carolina and faintly resembles Aaron Eckhart. Sibley amassed credits as a husky character actor on shows like “My Name is Earl,” but currently lives in Greenville, S.C. Speenberg distinguishes their brand of humor from the stereotypes of Southern comedy: “A lot of times, as a Southern comedian, you have to play to the lowest common denominator. We’re Southern and have Southern accents, but it’s not an ignorant redneck show. It’s a show about Middle America.”

At Speenberg’s last storytelling performance, he found inspiration in a friend’s recent 40th birthday: “My best recollection of Clay was when he turned 17 in 1988. He wanted a silver Mazda RX-7 for his birthday and wouldn’t shut up about it. Clay’s other friends and I finally called his father, who said he wasn’t getting one. So we paid $75 for an old Pinto on its way to the junkyard, and parked it in Clay’s driveway the morning of his birthday. Four of us covered it with a Mazda car cover and hid inside. When he looked under the car cover the morning of his birthday and saw the beat-up Pinto with us in it he looked like a boy who had lost his last friend.”

Speenberg often works out his stories in advance on the weekly Suds and Buds Podcast (you may be detecting a beery theme in his work), recorded in Atlanta. Speenberg and musician producer Brian Stephens drink and rate beers, introduce musical guests, and swap memories based on themes that range from dead pets to the loss of virginity.

Speenberg says that he and Sibley named the show “the Bacon and Beer Storytellers Tour” after two days they spent snowbound in a condo in Tulsa, Okla., with nothing in the refrigerator but cold bacon and warm beer. And therein hangs a tale ...