Comedy musician to present

hilarious new show at

Melbourne Festival

COMEDY MUSICIAN Grant Busé is ready to ‘have the talk’ with audiences at his forthcoming run at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival with his new show The Birds and The Beats.

A sex-education class for grown-ups, his hilarious tongue-in-cheek performances will be a romp through the things we should’ve learned in sex-ed class in high school, all set to a lively hip-hop soundtrack.

With some interesting musical educational parameters, The Birds and The Beats will certainly garner attention as it makes its debut this March. With a history of selling out his performances throughout the UK, comedy and music fans are encouraged to get in quick so they don’t miss out on their ‘re-education’.

As someone with a teaching background – and having sat through a sex-ed class as a student – Grant feels sex education is an important issue that rarely gets the time of day that it deserves in school.

“I personally went to an all-boys Catholic school so my formal sex-education was very minimal,” he says. “I had to ‘learn on the job’ so to speak. Sex is fun, yet sex-ed is often bland, scientific and uncomfortable for everyone involved. People, not just kids, want to know more about sex and I wanted to create a fun and non-judgmental environment where that can happen.

"I like to think The Birds and The Beats is a frank, but funny look into all the things we wish we were taught about in sex-ed – it’s a joyous, fast-paced, taboo-tackling, hip-hop inspired sex-ed sing-along!”

One of the things that stands Grant’s comedy shows apart is the music element; you could easily be forgiven for thinking you had stepped out to see a live gig.

“Live music and stand-up are my favourite performance mediums and I try to make shows that I would want to see,” he says.

“It’s that energy and intimacy in live performance that I crave and I think is appealing to audiences. I love what I do and I want my audiences to go away with a smile, a new insight and a feeling like they got more than they expected.

"In my previous shows I used to just play guitar and sing a bit, but in The Birds and The Beats I’ve added beatboxing, a few more instruments and the elements of looping. This way I can still have complete control over the flow, but produce a much more full sound and experience for the crowd.”

Grant Busé is a prolific performer. A state finalist in the coveted Melbourne International Comedy Festival Raw Comedy competition, he has toured both nationally and internationally, drawing acclaim for his shows The Shuffle Show and The Late Night Show, which saw him do sell-out runs at Edinburgh Fringe. He was nominated for Best Comedy at Perth’s Fringe World Festival in 2015 and also has a plethora of appearances on film, TV, musicals and radio.

In what was a career goal, Grant performed his comedy work on TEDx and was a familiar face for his returning guest role on Neighbours.

With such a versatile career, the pun enthusiast found he had plenty of fodder for inspiration. The Birds and The Beats explores topics from condoms to commitment, and everything in between, in an effortlessly light-hearted manner. Sharing these messages through music not only helps convey the story, but also get the audience involved.

“Comedy music writing is a really interesting beast and crafting music around a joke can be really challenging at times,” says Grant.

“The music should never be a distraction but rather punctuation for the gag. When I compose, I do it specifically with live performance in mind. It’s little things, musical accents and creating space between lyrics to account for audience reaction are really important to the flow of the piece.

"Unlike other mainstream songs I’ve written, comedy songs are constantly changing. The lyrics and music are always getting refined to be funnier for the next audience. It’s that constant creation process that I love. A comedy song is never done.”

Tickets for Grant Busé’s show The Birds and The Beat at Melbourne International Comedy Festival from March 29 to April 23 are on sale now.

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