One of many songs on comic/musician Margaret Cho‘s newest studio album, “Humorous Man,” is a tribute to the late comic Robin Williams — a tune she began writing on August eleventh, 2014, the day Williams handed away. “Having grown up in San Francisco, having recognized him since I used to be about eight years outdated, [his passing] was a shock,” she tells Consequence. “My relationship with him was private and parasocial. I wasn’t near him, actually, however I knew him in my work life and in comedy, and I knew him as a baby, and I knew him in fact as a fan.”
Williams’s loss of life hit the world exhausting, and whereas his legacy is simple, Cho feels that these days, “individuals are actually uncomfortable with speaking about him. Very hardly ever do you hear his identify talked about. Which is unlucky as a result of he’s one of the necessary comedic figures in movie and tv within the final century. I believe folks simply don’t need to speak about, you recognize, psychological well being and all these issues which will make it a troublesome dialog. However I would like him to be remembered.”
When Cho initially wrote “Humorous Man,” it was throughout a time when she felt that “lots of people have been spurred into motion: Like, what can we do about it? What can we are saying about this?” The reply for her and others was a mission referred to as #BeRobin, “an outreach for folks experiencing homelessness in San Francisco.”
#BeRobin, Cho says, “was a community of artists who would increase cash and go to encampments and steal electrical energy and play these enormous reveals out on the road. We might give out meals and provides and cash and all kinds of issues. It was virtually like we have been bringing a music pageant to those huge camps of people that have been experiencing homelessness.”
Additionally concerned have been native figures like Bob Mould and Boots Riley: “Simply a tremendous array of gifted folks. And we might play this tune with horns and strings and stolen electrical energy into amps. It was simply an unbelievable expertise.”
Cho says the inspiration for #BeRobin got here from Comedian Aid, the long-running comedy charity effort spearheaded by Billy Crystal, Whoopi Goldberg, and Williams. “It was a solution to kind of speak about [Williams’] activism and charity work as someone who was a consultant of people that have been experiencing homelessness very early on. And likewise to speak about grief.”
Whereas “Humorous Man” originated in 2014, it wasn’t till just lately that Cho recorded it to incorporate in her new album Fortunate Present — she hasn’t even performed it stay for the reason that days of #BeRobin. “So it’s nice to return to that,” she says. “I really like the tune. I believe it celebrates these humorous women and men, who’re simply attempting to do one of the best that they’ll.”
Cho notes that the laughter heard on the finish of “Humorous Man” got here from a present she did with Kyle MacLachlan in 2024, one which paid tribute to Twin Peaks and, naturally, the now-late David Lynch. “The tune may apply to him as nicely,” Cho says of Lynch. “He was a humorous man. To me it’s actually magical, the laughter on the finish.”
Roger Rocha (of 4 Non Blondes) co-wrote the tune with Cho, together with a number of different songs from Fortunate Present, which he additionally helped produce alongside Garrison Starr.
The story of how Cho met Williams on the age of eight is easy: Her mother and father owned a bookstore in San Francisco, and her father requested him for his autograph at some point (as a result of she was too scared to take action). “It was the primary autograph that I ever obtained,” she says. Later, as a 14-year-old beginning out in stand-up comedy, their paths would cross repeatedly as a result of he was a secret companion within the San Francisco comedy membership Holy Metropolis Zoo, the place Cho would carry out daily.
“He would experience his bicycle throughout the Golden Gate Bridge and are available to the membership, and he would bump me,” she says. “I’d at all times must go and carry out after him — which is just like the scariest factor, to must observe Robin Williams. However I ended up doing that on a regular basis as a child. I assume it made me a greater comic.”
Cho remembers how Williams, at the moment, was “such an enormous deal in standup comedy in San Francisco. And likewise a little bit of an unknowable determine as nicely. What a strong artist. I used to be so fortunate to have the ability to see him for a interval of my life, to get to see him carry out each single evening. He would go on stage and each bar and restaurant would empty on the road; they might all run into the membership to look at him. It was like this unbelievable expertise — we have been all so fortunate to have the ability to be in his presence.”
You’ll be able to hear “Humorous Man” on Cho’s new album Fortunate Present now, obtainable for streaming on Apple and Amazon Music. Additionally, take a look at her current Crate Digging, that includes her picks for the comedy albums everybody ought to personal.