Hey folks Sam Jones here.

Welcome to another edition of Off-camera, the show where I get to talk to iconic, creative, curious artists, and find out how they got that way and in this episode I sit down with comedian actor and punk rock drummer Fred Armison

Fred Armison is known as one of the funniest and most memorable Saturday Night Live cast members,

but surprisingly a career in comedy wasn't something he originally envisioned.

As a kid he was obsessed with becoming a musician.

Punk, his first love, was perfectly suited to his self-described weirdo sensibility.

He and his band Trenchmouth had some success, but it paled in comparison to the record deals and acclaim his peers were getting.

As he tells it, the hardest part about watching all the bands around us get famous was that

I wasn't able to enjoy music anymore because I was so jealous.

Fred's honesty and self-awareness led to more revelations.

He wasn't lighting the world on fire with his drumming,

but he knew he had a gift for making his friends laugh with impressions, a valuable skill for entertaining bandmates on long concert tours.

Fred started wondering if he was supposed to be on a different path.

He says, I worried for a moment that I was too late for a career change, but the rewards were so huge that I made up for lost time.

Within a few years I was on Saturday Night Live, I went through the side door entrance, and even though I wasn't a traditional comedian

I had impressions and characters. That side door proved to be the right one. Fred spent

11 years on Saturday Night Live he developed and starred in Portlandia with

Carrie Brownstein, did documentary now with Bill Hader, and forever with Meyer

Rudolph. And he's edited again with Los Espookies, an upcoming Spanish

language show on HBO about goth, entrepreneurship, and

chocolate.

He's keeping it weird, and that's just how he likes it.

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