Rich Hall: Off And Racing.

Rich Hall performs at the Powerhouse Theatre from Thursday to Sunday.

Adelaide has been far more than the hub of one of Australia’s great cultural and fringe festivals this past week. It’s also been the home of the Clipsal 500, the first round of the Australian V8 Supercars season. American comic Rich Hall was in town for the Fringe Festival before heading to Brisbane for shows this week. Hall, and alter ego redneck jailbird song man Otis Lee Crenshaw have felt the race’s impact first hand.

“It’s your basic kind of muscle head crowd,” he digs. “Unfortunately the Adelaide festival has collided with the Clipsal 500 race, so not only do you have to do the show, but you have to show people how to dismantle carburettors. It’s keeps the race fans occupied. If they start heckling you just give them a spark plug and let the figure out the proper gap.”

That would be kind of like performing at home in the States, wouldn’t it?

“Oh yeah, it’s surprising how similar it is. Cars are cars, you know. I grew up in North Carolina, so I’ve had years of observing these people. We don’t do the Otis show much in America. A few years ago we did a series of shows down the Mississippi, and the further south we got the closer the character got to home. By the time we got to Nashville he was like a living documentary. You could see some people in the audience are just thinking, why am I paying for this, he’s the guy who works on my car. You could just hear people going, ‘this is bullshit.’”

Do you think Australian audiences find a kinship with what you’re doing?

“I think it’s more up to me to find a kinship with the audience. They shouldn’t have to work at all. If you keep your eyes open and take notice of where you are you can pick up whatever prevailing topics are around. As soon as the audience believes you didn’t just breeze into town to spew out some old jokes… Otherwise you can just look arrogant. I’m an American; you people are entitled to see me… It’s wrong.”

“People don’t want to hear about the 7-11 down the street in my town, they want to hear about their own 7-11.

For those not familiar with the character of Otis Lee Crenshaw, he’s the dark side of Hall’s personality. Seven times married (all to women named Brenda) and a return guest to a swag of state institutions, Crenshaw headlines Hall’s show. It was for this act Hall picked up a Perrier award, the comedic equivalent of the Oscars.

“I was pretty shocked when I first started doing the Otis stuff about how easy it was for me to become that guy. I think Otis can get away with things I can’t get away with. He can do things that are far beneath me. I think it’s like when actors get to play criminals they really get into it.”

“There’s a lot of improv, particularly in the Otis part of the show. A lot of the songs are just made up. We’re actually doing a couple of songs about Adelaide while we’ve been here, but we won’t be doing them in Brisbane. We’ll do some Brisbane songs… Adelaide’s a very sexy town, so we do a song called If This Town Was A Woman Adelaide Her By Now.”

While Crenshaw represents years of stereotyping of America’s southern population, the true trailer trash gentleman, Hall’s yet to meet Australia’s current king of stereotyped hype, Steve Irwin, The Crocodile Hunter.

“Hey, maybe he’ll come to one of the shows,” he muses. “I wouldn’t use the word star as much as international annoyance. You’ve got this big snake that thinks it’s the kind of the animal kingdom, and some guy just grabs him and throttles him for a while and shows him off to the camera. It’s got to be traumatised. There’s no dignity in that for an animal, you know. And he’s always like, ‘be very quiet’. Why’s he telling me that? I’m in bed eating crisps. You be quiet, ya bastard.”

“The thing is, America’s perception of Australia has been predominated by people like Steve Irwin and Crocodile Dundee. They get the feeling that everyone in Australia is six inches away from being poisoned or eaten by some animal. Everyone lives in the outback. They don’t know there are any actual houses or buildings in Australia. The entire country is just gum trees and snake pits.”