For more than 30 years, the comedian and actor Paul F. Tompkins has improvised a wildly varied career in show business. You’ve seen him on TV, maybe as far back as “Mr. Show,” the absurdist sketch comedy program that starred Bob Odenkirk and David Cross, where Tompkins was a regular. He hosted VH1’s “Best Week Ever,” had a role in Paul Thomas Anderson’s “There Will Be Blood” (2007), and has appeared on hundreds of podcasts.
He has also hosted an alternative-comedy variety show in Los Angeles since the early 2000s. Now he’s taking a version of that show, currently called “Varietopia,” on the road. True to the comedian’s appreciation for the fussier side of the English language, the tour is called the “Varietourpia.”
“The idea is to present something that’s as varied as we can make it, with great entertainers from all different places, and a terrific house band,” Tompkins said in a recent phone interview. “It’s a way for me to do all the things I love to do – standup, sketch stuff, singing with the musical guests. It’s just entertainment – 90 minutes of entertainment.”
Tompkins, who is 56, grew up during the heyday of broadcast television, when the Big Three networks green-lit a steady stream of variety show programming.
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“I was always a comedy kid, any kind of comedy,” he said. “The thing I loved was this mix of all these different people doing things together. To me, it was the encapsulation of show biz.”
He recalls being entranced, for instance, by Donny and Marie’s “Star Wars” sketch, with the Osmonds playing Luke and Leia, Kris Kristofferson as Han Solo, and the actual R2-D2 and C-3PO robots on hand.
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“It was insane,” Tompkins said. “That stuff to me was incredible.”
After producing a monthly variety show at Largo, the Los Angeles music and comedy nightclub, for years, Tompkins took a break around 2014. Following the pandemic, he had an urge to revive his show. For the past few years he’s had a bi-monthly residency at the Lodge Room, a converted former Masonic Lodge in LA’s Highland Park neighborhood.
He’s been collaborating with the musical director Jordan Katz for years, going back to the beginnings of the old-time-radio style “The Thrilling Adventure Hour.” That show expanded beyond the stage to become a podcast in 2011. Katz, who plays trumpet and banjo, has written music for “Bob’s Burgers” and has toured with Father John Misty, among others.
The “Varietorchestra” touring band is a pocket version of the big band that assembles for the LA residencies. Besides Katz, it includes drummer Darla Hawn, guitarist Adam Zimmon, and sousaphonist India Anderson.
“They have an amazing sound,” said Tompkins. “They’re always up for the challenge.”
Tompkins has been a steady presence in the podcasting world for years. He hosted “The Pod F. Tompkast” in the early years of the medium (2010-’12), created 200 episodes of the improv comedy podcast “SPONTANEANATION” through 2019, and has been a regular guest and occasional guest host on Scott Aukerman’s “Comedy Bang! Bang!”
Tompkins embraced podcasting long before some of his peers were convinced of its value.
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“I think a lot of people looked down on it because anyone could do it,” he said. “To me, that was the beauty of the medium. It was completely democratic. You could do whatever you wanted. There was nobody giving you a paycheck that was telling you ‘This is how it has to be.’”
Similarly, he became a familiar presence slinging jokes on Twitter while other comedians were still resisting it. For a time, the prevailing sentiment among comedians who were against joining Twitter was “why should I give my jokes away for free?”
In making that argument, “you’re essentially saying ‘I don’t have that many jokes in me,’” Tompkins said with a laugh.
Despite the fact that he amassed more than 400,000 followers on the platform, Tompkins quit it a couple of years ago, after a certain car salesman bought it.
“It stopped being fun,” he said. “For a while there, it really was enjoyable and a valuable source of information.”
He has since migrated over to the competing social media platform Bluesky.
“A lot of the people I used to follow on Twitter are on there,” he said. “But whether or not it has the same ability to reach people the way Twitter did at its height, I doubt it.”
Tompkins blamed the algorithm. “Everything is like the Tower of Babel now – it’s all scattered all over the place, and you have no idea if you’re being seen or heard.” Which may help explain why he’s taking his show out on the road.
Tompkins’s career epitomizes the “gig economy” model. Appearing in such a wide variety of media, it sometimes seems as though he says yes to everything.
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What’s the most money he’s made from any of the hundreds of projects he’s been involved with?
After a pause to think, he replies that the answer has to be “Mr. Show,” which ran for four seasons on HBO beginning in 1995. That was the show that introduced him to a national audience.
“Every few years, I get a big batch of checks” for his residuals from acting and writing on the series, he said. “Sometimes it’s a decent amount, and sometimes it adds up to, like, $14. But it is the most consistent thing.
“That, and probably that episode of ‘Frasier’ that I did.”
VARIETOPIA WITH PAUL F. TOMPKINS
$30-45. May 3, 7 p.m. at the Wilbur, 246 Tremont St., Boston. thewilbur.com
James Sullivan can be reached at jamesgsullivan@gmail.com.
