Vanessa Bayer, the former Saturday Night Live cast member, and her brother Jonah Bayer, a music journalist turned therapist, are bringing their podcast home to Cleveland for a live taping at House of Blues on Friday, September 25 at 8 p.m. The siblings, who both grew up attending Orange High School, will be inducted into the school’s hall of fame the very next morning, tying the concert directly to their hometown homecoming weekend.
The live show is a stop for their podcast, How Did We Get Weird?, which the two have hosted together and which, as reported by Cleveland Scene, focuses on Cleveland and the pair’s shared childhood, complete with rotating segments and Cleveland-related material. Jonah Bayer told the outlet the podcast started about four years ago and grew out of the siblings’ earlier work together in music and comedy. JD Samson, known for performing with Le Tigre and MEN, is set to guest on the House of Blues taping.
From Sketch Comedy to Saturday Night Live
Vanessa Bayer’s path to national television ran through the University of Pennsylvania, where she was a member of Bloomers, described as the nation’s first collegiate all-female sketch comedy and musical parody group. She later auditioned for Lorne Michaels and joined Saturday Night Live, where according to Wikipedia, she served as a cast member from 2010 to 2017, earning a Primetime Emmy nomination in 2017 and setting the record at the time as the show’s longest-tenured female cast member.
One of her recurring SNL characters, Jacob the Bar Mitzvah Boy, was based on her own brother’s mannerisms, per Cleveland Scene’s reporting. Vanessa has gone on to appear in additional film and television roles, and drew on her own experience surviving acute lymphoblastic leukemia, diagnosed at age 15, to co-create, executive produce, and star in the 2022 Showtime comedy series I Love That for You, according to a release from Paramount Press Express.
Jonah Bayer’s Roots in Cleveland’s Punk Scene
While his sister was building a comedy career, Jonah Bayer was cutting his teeth in Cleveland’s punk and hardcore scene, an influence he traces to Coventry’s music culture growing up. He took guitar lessons at Academy Music in Solon and at Mayfield Music, and went on to play in bands including The Lovekill and United Nations, the experimental hardcore group he formed with Thursday frontman Geoff Rickly. That band, according to Wikipedia, performed in Ronald Reagan masks and made headlines for a 2008 debut album parodying the Beatles’ Abbey Road…