Jay Chanoine headlines Queen City Center afterparty
As his comedy special Chanoinigans hit YouTube on Halloween Day last year, Jay Chanoine already had enough new material for a follow-up. A week later he flew south to do a half hour of it at the Altercation Comedy Festival in Austin. His headlining set got a standing ovation.
Chanoine will debut the full special Sept. 19 at Queen City Center.
“I think this is the strongest hour of material that I’ve ever written,” he said as he prepared to do a quick set for a food pantry benefit at Manchester’s Shaskeen Pub recently. “I am so proud of this new batch.”
The show is the latest in a series harkening back to a weekly comedy night at the Shaskeen, where Chanoine did his first open mic in 2009. Matt Barry, another comic who also started there, though a bit later, also appears, with Brienna Woodward rounding out the bill.
Future shows in the QCC series, booked by Nick Lavallee’s Wicked Joyful, include Kendall Ferrall on Oct. 3, Sam Jay (HBO, SNL, Netflix) on Oct. 21, Alex Giampapa on Nov. 21, and two nights from Tina Friml (Comedy Central) on Dec. 11 and Dec. 12. A New Year’s Eve bash is also slated, with a lineup still being finalized.
Chanoine’s show is also part of Granite State Comicon, and telling jokes is only part of what the confirmed pop culture nerd will be doing at the event. He’ll also moderate a few celebrity panels, including one with Felicia Day, whose movie spinoff from her gamer-themed series The Guild just broke a Kickstarter record.
Additionally, he’ll run panels with voice actors from Teen Titans and the Grand Theft Auto 5 video game.
“My personality has two sides; take a comic book and a comedy stage and put them together,” he said. “I’ve wanted to do a comedy show to tie into Granitecon for years — because that’s me, man, and those are my people. Get them in a room where I can do jokes for them.”
The show starts promptly at 6:30, with doors at 6, and there’s a reason for the early start.
“They always do an after party at Shaskeen on Saturday night at 8,” Chanoine said. “Comicon stuff ends at 5, so there’s this gap in the middle of your nerdy Saturday. I was like, let’s give them a nerdy thing to come do in between.”
It caps a big year that included a trip to Alaska for the Before You Die Festival.
“The people that run it are friends of friends; we’ve been connected online,” Chanoine said. “It’s been a destination thing that I wanted to do eventually, and this year they were saying it might be the last one. I was like, well, I need to go, to cross it off the list.”
He’s not surprised to be one of a few Shaskeen comics — Barry’s another — to still be around many years later.
“I definitely knew I’d still be doing it at this point,” he said. “I mean, the first time I did stand-up, I was 12 years old. It was something I’d been in love with since I was about 6 or 7. I always wanted to be the funny friend, I was always cracking jokes and trying them out on different groups of friends.”
By the time he stopped playing in punk bands and walked on stage at Shaskeen for the first time, he was more than ready.
“I was already in that writing process. I was already doing it, and turns out part of it was just that I was an undiagnosed autistic kid, and I was trying to kind of formulate this practiced personality.” When he was diagnosed in 2024, it was more confirmation than revelation, and his doctor said he might not want to make it official. Nope, Chanoine replied. “I’m going to need there to be a piece of paper for me to talk about this on stage as much as I plan to,” he told her. “I’m going to need us to be 100% sure before I make fun of this disability.”
Even with that medical stamp, his new special is consistent with Chanoine’s 17 years as a standup.
“It’s always been, just take this,” he said, with a smile stuck between amused and incredulous, waving at his oversized glasses, worn-in Misfits T-shirt and red plaid pants, “and put it into a microphone. And it’s definitely more of that.”
Jay Chanoine, Matt Barry & Brienna Woodward
When: Saturday, Sept. 19, 6:30 p.m.
Where: Queen City Center, 215 Canal St., Manchester
Tickets: $20 at wickedjoyful.com
Featured photo: Jay Chanoine. Courtesy photo.