Comedian Bob Marley: Sharing his ‘family’ with Rutland and Barre | CPT PPP Coverage

“I’ve been doing this since 1991, and I still just love it,” he said by phone. “I’m lucky that I have a good following.”

“A lot of younger guys that work with me (ask) what do you think is the most important thing?” he said. “And it’s not the jokes. It’s what’s in between.”

Anyone who’s seen him knows Marley’s act is like a sitcom with all the members of his family as characters. It’s inspired by his actual family so he has an endless supply of material.

“I just write stuff down,” he said. So the challenge hasn’t been finding material, but the process of shaping it into an act.

“When I first started I used to hide behind the material,” Marley said. “I would need a bit that was bulletproof funny — to the point where almost anybody could just go up there and read it and they would get a laugh.

“And now I’m to the point where my act would be hard to steal because if you read it on paper, you’d be like, what is this? It doesn’t make any sense at all. (You need) the characters and the voices. So that muscle really developed, finding who you are over the years.”

Marley keeps notes on every single show — he has more than 30 booked so far this year alone and that’s only until April — and that determines the shows to come. They will always have the cast of characters from his family, but it’s not the same show.

“It’s my style,” he said. “That would be like saying, ‘I saw Bill Burr again this year and he’s still angry.’ Well, that’s his act.”

“Years ago, comedians would travel around and do the same set for years,” Marley said. “And when I was living in Los Angeles, I would come back to New England to do shows a lot, and I had to change my act all the time — so I developed that muscle. Now I change the show every four months.”

So, after decades of touring the world and doing the late-night TV circuit, when young comedians ask him about the most important thing in standup, Marley tells them, “It’s not the jokes, it’s what’s in between. It’s the connective tissue. You need to Novocaine that in so they don’t even know you’re switching topics.”

“Audiences notice abrupt changes and subconsciously their mind says, ‘Oh, this is an act,’” he said. “So I like to make sure everything flows and connects so that when I move on to the next topic it feels like we’re just talking.”

Marley’s shows in Vermont are PG-13 with some language (“no f-bombs”) and innuendo, no politics. “I mostly make fun of myself and my family,” he said. “I always tell people, there’s no way you’re going to leave there and not feel better about your family.”