Comedian Kathleen Madigan takes her love of Wisconsin eats seriously and has the Usinger’s Braunschweiger in her refrigerator to prove it.
The spreadable German-style liver sausage isn’t for everybody — if you didn’t grow up on it, you might be inclined not togo near it — but Madigan loves it on white bread with Miracle Whip to give it “an extra little tangy flair.”
She made sure to pick some up when she was in Milwaukee earlier this month for a stop on her “Do You Have Any Ranch?” Tour, which will bring her to the Meyer Theatre in Green Bay on Thursday.
Madigan’s relatable stand-up about mid-America, her parents and, yes, ranch dressing takes her to both cities with regularity, and while that’s great for fans, it can sometimes feel like too much of a good thing when it comes to indulging in all the food and drink the state has to offer.
“Between Milwaukee and you guys, I can't get on a scale for at least another month,” Madigan said. “I hoarded cheese back from Milwaukee from their public market and ate bratwurst. I am not my best self in Wisconsin. I am a bad version of me in the most fun way possible, but I can’t wait to go back.”
She sometimes thinks she should’ve been born in Wisconsin.
She’s gone on record as saying St. Brendan’s Inn, just across Washington Street from the Meyer Theatre, has the best Guinness outside of Ireland. She gives everybody at Christmas one of those “kringle things” from O&H Danish Bakery in Racine. Sure, she can get a brat at a St. Louis Cardinals game, “but it’s not a thing.”
And all the cheese at the Milwaukee Public Market?“Holy crap,” she says. She also points out the bloody marys there start at 10 a.m. — with a beer chaser.
“I was like, 'OK, there’s a whole new level of heaven,’” she said. “And there was a line!”
She has heard about the$60 bus shuttles from Milwaukee-area bars to Lambeau Field on Green Bay Packers game days with the bathroom on board and the Jameson Irish Whiskey and no parking worries. Count her in.
"That sounds like fun, too."
She could hardly believe her eyes on the way out of town when she spotted the “Future Home of Haribo” sign, touting the candy company’s manufacturing facility under construction in Pleasant Prairie. Haribo are the only gummi bears she’ll eat.
“I’m like, ‘God dang, Wisconsin just keeps topping itself.’”
RELATED: Kathleen Madigan loves the Guinness at St. Brendan's and Packers tailgaters, too
RELATED: Comedian Bert Kreischer embraces Green Bay by hanging with Aaron Rodgers, squeezing into very small Packers jersey
Her 'Pubcast' comes with extra ranch
Madigan is back out on the road after the COVID-19 pandemic put an abrupt halt to touring in March 2020, just days before she was to play the Meyer Theatre on her 8 O’Clock Happy Hour Tour. A performer used to living on the road, doing 250 shows a year and never taking more than a couple of weeks off at one time in 33 years, she suddenly found herself at home for the long haul.
Guess what? She liked it.
“Oh, I just slid right into retirement right now. Just loved every minute of it,” Madigan said. “Me and Ron White. He was here for a while and he goes, ‘Isn’t it easy how seamlessly we slipped right into retirement?’ I said, ‘Yeah, I haven’t missed a beat.’”
She took the opportunity to launch her own podcast, something she always said she would never do because it was too hard to fit in around all hertraveling. Without her regular bar pals to talk to, she decided to just start talking to people “out in the ether world” about a wide range of light fare, everything from taste testing Scorchin' BBQ Pringlesto sharingmail from her fans (aka Termites), and see if anybody waslistening.
Her “Madigan’s Pubcast"finds her surrounded each week by cardboard cutouts of Cher, Stevie Nicks, Dolly Parton and others as part of her Queens Court,a rotating lineup of snacks and beverages, assorted bobbleheads and a vintage Anheuser-Busch clock. She just hit the 60-episode milestone.
It’s more personal than her stand-up act, although what you see with Madigan is what you get there, too, but the podcast gives fans a different kind of access.
“They feel like they’re in your world rather than just watching your world,” she said.
That might explain some of the funny and strange gifts that are showing up backstage for her at some of her performances, usually things she has talked about on the podcast, particularly ranch dressing.
The whole ranch dressing thing came out of a joke from her live shows, but people began sending her ranch dressings from all over the country after she started talking about it on the "Pubcast."Her siblings gave her a pair of custom Hidden Valley Ranch Crocsaccessorized with Jibbitz burgers, fries and veggies for her birthday last month.
Midwesterners do like their ranch, she says.
“I think we eat more, because we eat it as our go-to dip. You don’t even have to make a dip. You just dump it in a bowl and that counts," Madigan said. "I think there might be some West Coast people that would be appalled at what we would seem to define as an appetizer.”
She'll film her next special in Denver
Even when comedy clubs first began opening back this year, Madigan waited it out and let the younger comics go in first.
“The younger comedians to me are like the Marines,” she said. “Send the Marines in first and then let me know how the situation is.”
Madigan, who will film her next one-hour comedy special in February in Denver for Amazon, has since ramped up to her usual hectic schedule. It's hard not to notice how “super duper duper excited” the audiences are that greet her. She jokes that the crowd at one of her first gigs back at a casino in Reno, Nevada, was so rabid she was almost afraid of them.
She doesmaybe 5 minutes of pandemic-related material in her act, but none of it goesanywhere near the politics of it or stances on vaccines. She broaches it from the family side. Scenarios like her own parents being mostly good about staying put, only to have word get out that they went to the casino.
“I told my brother we should put LoJack on their car like they do in those cop movies. Put it by the tire underneath the thing so we know where they’re going,” she said.
Adult children scolding elderlyparents out of concern for their well-being during a pandemic results in a speech that sounds something like this, Madigan said(in her best dad voice):
“Well, what are we supposed to do? This is the end of our life. Are we just supposed to sit in this house and stare at each other? I mean I’d rather be dead than just sit here for a year.”
Let's go
Who: Kathleen Madigan: "Do You Have Any Ranch?" Tour
When: 7 p.m. Oct. 21
Where: Meyer Theatre, 117 S. Washington St., Green Bay
Tickets: $35; ticketstaronline.com, 800-895-0071 and Resch Center box office
ContactKendra Meinertat 920-431-8347 or kmeinert@greenbay.gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter @KendraMeinert.
