Now, these three guys are $&*@ing funny | John Moore

%@$&*!

That string of typographical symbols is known as a “grawlix,” a noun coined in the 1960s by Mort Walker, creator of the beloved comic strip “Beetle Bailey.” Think of a grawlix as “symbol swearing” – in print, it indicates that a character is saying a censored curse word. 

It’s also the ironic name of a longtime powerhouse Denver comedy supertrio that is now furthering Denver’s growing reputation as a comedy capital with their signature podcast, “The Grawlix Saves the World.” Ironic because Adam Cayton-Holland, Andrew Orvedahl and Ben Roy have never once shied away from indulging in a little blue balderdash.

First, an introduction. The Grawlix’s CVs will tell you Cayton-Holland and Orvedahl were born in Colorado and graduated from Denver East and Heritage high schools, respectively. The heavily tattooed Roy is from Maine, moved to Colorado in 2002 and has fronted the punk band SPELLS for more than a decade.

More fun is this introduction to their very different individual comedy stylings, provided here by Producer Ron Doyle exactly as it was conjured in a group conversation for this column:      

• Doyle: “Adam is known for these incredibly absurd, fictional conversations and … articulate ennui.”

• Cayton-Holland: “‘Articulate ennui’? I'll take that.”

• Roy: “That should be the name of your next comedy album. But it should be ‘on wheat.’ As in, ‘I'll have the articulate … on wheat.’”

• Doyle: “Ben’s style is meticulously memorized, very long sermons from a cult leader.”

• Overdahl: “Oh, Ron is really good at this!”

• Doyle: “And Andrew’s style is very approachable stories about dogs and spiders.”

• Cayton-Holland: “Don't forget transportation.”

• Doyle: “Sorry. And transportation, yes.”

• Cayton-Holland: “Well, Ron nailed it.”

• Roy: “That was pretty great. I mean, if I could start a cult, I would want to be a cult leader.”

That kind of easygoing banter is just one reason “The Grawlix Saves the World” has become the podcast equivalent of weekly appointment comfort food.

The Grawlix were literally born out of fire. After five years hosting a monthly comedy showcase as a larger collective, their host venue, Orange Cat Studios, burned to the ground in 2009. “We were fishing around for a new thing at the time, and I read that term ‘grawlix’ in a magazine,” said Cayton-Holland. It's hard to spell. No one knows what it means. It's obscure and pretentious – just like us. I was like, 'This is perfect.' And the dudes agreed.”

Then, with deadpan timing, he added: “I do occasionally wonder how perfect it really is … but, at this point, we've made this bed. ”

The Grawlix have made a name for themselves both individually and collectively by gutting it out on stages and small screens for more than 20 years. They host an always-packed monthly comedy showcase spotlighting rising Denver talent every last Saturday at the historic Bug Theatre. They broke nationally in 2015, when TruTV green-lit their three-year series “Those Who Can't,” a sitcom about three inept Denver high-school teachers.

The national exposure placed all three indelibly on the comedy map, and in search of the next big thing. But whatever that was, they wanted to do it together. And do it in Denver. 

“This is June of 2019,” Doyle said. “They are back from being on television in L.A. Trump is still president. The election cycle is underway. The world is a dumpster fire. So, why don't we try and make things better?”

The first episode of “The Grawlix Saves the World” dropped in January 2020, and they bravely pattered on through the pandemic. Last month, they celebrated the elusive 100-episode mark by ramping up the show to weekly, while also mixing up the format.

At its heart, the podcast remains a rare combination of blistering badinage between buddies while using their platform to sincerely (if ridiculously) try to better the world by bettering themselves. As the title infers, the signature hook has been taking on widely ranging self-improvement challenges.

How widely? In a show of support for the trans community – and to demonstrate allyship – the trio attempted to go a full week without assuming the gender of anyone they encountered, which led to an illuminating and at times emotional conversation with trans comic River Butcher. And yes, they did once accept the challenge to try out a trendy wellness practice known as “perineum sunning.” Which I will just say involves spreading eagle and exposing the taint to sunlight.  

Talk about “wide ranging”!

Now into their 40s and all at varying stages of the fatherhood journey, the threesome often produce unexpectedly vulnerable conversations about what it means to be a decent human being at one of the most divisive and acrimonious times in our history. They even engage an “earnestness horn” that briefly forbids all retaliatory snark.

Not quite completely gone are the danger boys Westword once referred to as “The Avengers of *ss Humor” and “The Justice League of (Penis) Jokes.” But they have aged into happier and significantly more settled best friends who gather once a week to check in and jest with one another like only brothers can do.

Doyle calls it “friendship porn.”

Those who can … just do it

While Overdahl, Roy and Cayton-Holland have forged very different standup identities, fate threw them a bone in 2004 by putting them all together in the same city at the same time.

“We like to say we were all in the same quarterback class,” said Orvedahl. “We were all part of this same micro-generation of comics in the Denver scene at a time when independent comedy shows that were run by comedians themselves were really blowing up. That felt really novel and new. I think we just kind of glommed together as newish comedians who thought each other were funny. But more important than anything is that we had similar work ethics.”

“The Grawlix” took on a number of personnel iterations in the early years, but they crystallized into this final lineup in 2012 when The Nix Bros. asked the trio to write a pilot that started as a web series that eventually turned into Those Who Can’t. “That was when it was like, OK, now it's really real,” Cayton-Holland said.

• Roy: “I think the biggest part of it is that we're all obviously very much alike. We're very similar people, with the same interests and the same way of dealing with problems. And we're all equally stable.”

• Cayton-Holland: “Hmmm …”

• Roy: “No, Adam, shut up just for a second. Yes, we are different. But we weren't just sitting around celebrating because we were popular in the Denver scene. I think we all had aspirations of doing something on a much bigger scale. I think we wanted to get the (bleep) out of here and be known nationally.”

And yet, The Grawlix have done more to amplify Denver than just about anyone who has come before them. Cayton-Holland founded the now huge High Plains Comedy Festival 11 years ago in Baker. The fictional TV show, while filmed in L.A., was set in Denver. The podcast constantly references Denver and gives airtime to rising Denver comedians.

That, Roy said, has all been Cayton-Holland’s doing. He’s now married, the father of two young boys and synonymous with his hometown. “Promoting Denver is definitely an ethos that I have,” Cayton-Holland said. “This is the town I'm from. And I think it's more interesting this way. I always think of music as a model. There can be music scenes anywhere, so why can't there be comedy scenes anywhere? And that all starts with Comedy Works, which is such a good club to start all that around.”

Perhaps the only good thing to come out of the pandemic is that the world has so radically changed in the past four years that there is no longer a need for a comic to be based out of L.A. or New York in order to pursue success at the highest levels.

“I feel like the pandemic cemented everything I’ve been  trying to do this whole time,” said Cayton-Holland, “which is that you can be from (bleeping) anywhere and have a career – if you're willing to fly a lot.”

But having a comedy career and producing a podcast are different things. When you commit to gathering with your best friends once a week, you are exposing real lives that can be much more easily guarded when crafting a standup set.

For example, the trio recently checked in with Overdahl, who last year faced a major life change when he decided to move his daughter out of the only house she has ever known. “Sometimes when I am just sitting around talking to my friends, I forget that Ron is recording the conversation,” he said. “And then when someone comes up to you at a show and says, ‘How is your new house?’ it triggers a stalker sense in you. And then you are like, ‘Oh, OK, yes, I did say that thing on my show.”

But that kind of openness is also the connective tissue that has forged an uncommon bond between the Grawlix and their many Patreon followers.

“These guys have been through a lot since the podcast started,” Doyle said. “We've been through a global pandemic. Ben's gotten a divorce. Adam's had two kids. Two of our teenagers have hit puberty. There have been deaths in everybody's families. Andrew let two dogs ruin his life.”

• Roy: “Andrew turned 70, and that was such a milestone birthday for him.” 

• Cayton-Holland: “Yeah, he was on the beach in Normandy.”

• Andrew: “Guys, John's not going to waste any print on these old jokes.”

Sure, he will. But in all seriousness, Roy said, “all of us have been through some incredibly terrible dark times together. So there is definitely a family-like quality to all of this.”

Cayton-Holland, notably, wrote an award-winning, darkly funny memoir called “Tragedy Plus Time,” which addresses his sister’s suicide. The book was hailed as “an unforgettable work of genius” by Booklist, and Cayton-Holland has since adapted it into a one-man play called “Happy Place” that will next be performed April 4 at the Comedy Fort in Fort Collins.

By leaving his standup comfort zone, Cayton-Holland has brought comfort to tens of thousands affected by suicide. Roy, in turn, has been incredibly transparent about his sobriety journey. All of which gives the audience an unearned familiarity with their hosts.

“As the person who has cried the most on this podcast for sure, I'm winning at crying,” Roy said. “And I think that is definitely a double-edged sword. I get a lot of messages from people wanting to get sober and asking me for my advice and it's like, ‘Hey, I'm not a lighthouse here. I don't know how to do this.’ But on the other hand, a lot of people tell us how much it makes them feel better. So I mean, we started all of this.”

Stand-up comedy became cool again in the 2000s, The Denver Post’s John Wenzel wrote at the time, in large part because of breakout comics like Josh Blue, T.J. Miller and the trio who eventually became The Grawlix. It’s still cool, in large part because of Denver-based standups like Sam Tallent, Derrick Stroup, Hannah Jones and the trio who remain The Grawlix. Even at only 43, Cayton-Holland says he feels like something of an elder statesman in the local comedy scene. Reaching 100 podcast episodes, he said, feels like not much more than a three-digit number. 

“Truthfully, I've always been, ‘What's the next thing?’” he said. “The podcast is doing fine, but we all want it to be bigger. We’re not thinking about, ‘My God, what a cool community we've built.’ We love that, but we're always hustling. That’s just the comedian in us. To us it’s always, ‘more jokes, more episodes.’”

It’s as if they don’t even track their most remarkable achievement in creating the podcast, which is the positive example they set by simply presenting as three straight, side-splittingly funny fathers who are willing to share their vulnerabilities and talk openly about what maleness should be in 2024.

“We never set out for that to be the goal, but if that is what people are taking away from the podcast, that’s awesome,” Cayton-Holland said. “We don’t shy away from our politics – and they definitely skew toward inclusivity at a time when there is a lot of comedy out there right now where it’s just angry white guys screaming, ‘You can’t tell me what to say’ – and that disgusts us.

“So if we are seen as the opposite of that, then … great.”

Online Bonus: Meet the comics’ comedy 

I once described Ben Roy’s comedy this way: “Just imagine a laughing hyena tearing into a sacred cow.” In that spirit, I asked each of The Grawlix to describe the comedy of another. It went a little something like this: 

• John Moore: “Ben, how would you describe Andrew’s comedy stylings?” 

• Ben Roy: “Very funny observational humor. I think Andrew is amazing because he doesn't like dark material. He has a way of writing stories that are very relatable and crazy funny. I have always said I think Andrew is the funniest out of all three of us. He makes me laugh the most out of the three of us – and I laugh a lot at myself, so that's saying something. Andrew also has impeccable word choice."

• Andrew Orvedahl: “Well, that's very kind, thank you. I don't agree with it, but that’s not the point.”

• Roy: “No rebuttals allowed."

• Moore: “And Andrew, what would you say about Adam?”

• Orvedahl: “Well, first I would say: I think that we are all the funniest. That said, Adam does very smart comedy with the perfect amount of absurd ingredients tossed in, which I think is pretty hard to pull off. There are absurdist comedians and you're either going to love it or hate it, and that’s OK. But Adam is perfect at it. He’s like a chef using just the right amount of seasoning. You’re walking down one road and then you get this out-of-nowhere left turn. I have an example, but you can’t print it in your article.” 

• Roy: “I have a perfect example. It’s the one where Adam is having a conversation with his son, and it trails into a very meta-like thing where his son is giving Adam an appraisal of his comedy career and where he is going. It ends up being Adam having this deep heart to-heart talk with a 4-year-old child. It's a perfect blend of making a point while being absolutely absurd. And it's really funny.”

• Orvedahl: “That is a really meaty bit. It's both touching and absurd – but it starts at a true place. Ten years ago, I would call Adam "a "likeable (bleep)hole." But I think his comedy has definitely changed over that time, and now I would describe him as the most clever guy in the room who brings you along for the joke. I think since Adam became a father his comedy has naturally transitioned into the perspective of a dad and it's made him more relatable although he's retained that level of writing that is at the highest bar."

• Roy: “Yeah, I think Adam is the least approachable out of all three. And people like him for it. But I think the podcast has given people a chance to see who we really are, which in Adam’s case is that he’s an arrogant (bleep)hole and a (bleep).”

• Moore: “Well, that just tees it right up there for Adam to talk about Ben.” 

• Roy: “(Bleep) you. I don't like this because Adam knows me the best, and I don't like when he says things about me because they hurt.” 

• Adam Cayton-Holland: “This doesn’t have to hurt, Ben. I think we're all fans of each other's comedy. That's why we hang out and do stuff together. I genuinely like seeing what Andrew and Ben bring every month to the Grawlix. I think Ben's comedy is the most emotionally honest of the three of us. Ben will let you know something he's thinking and feeling – something that's very true. But he will cloak that honesty until the very end. He will start with a really interesting take on something. He's a very good writer, so his language is very poetic and well thought-out – but you don't know why he's going down this road. And then suddenly the emotional honesty comes through where you're like, ‘(Bleep), this actually means something real to him.’ And now the listener is invested and feeling it on a gut level. They're almost touched and affected. And then he will throw all of that away with an absurd (penis)-joke ending to puncture that bubble. It’s like Ben will draw you in for a really, really, really close hug. He’ll tell you everything is OK. Whatever you are feeling, he’s feeling it too. And then he will give you a quick shove away and you're like, ‘What the (bleep)?’ And that's how the joke ends. And I love that. I think that's why people really feel like they know Ben at the end of his set.” 

• Orvedahl: "And Ben has such a strong point of view. He's not afraid to make a whole bit about a stance that a lot of people might not share. And he’ll pretty fearlessly cannonball into that stance and either kind of explode it from the inside or make you say, ‘Well, that's reprehensible.’ But either way it’s–” 

• Roy: “I just heard the word ‘reprehensible.’” 

• Cayton-Holland: “I describe it as Ben saying something like: ‘I'm going to say some indefensible thing.’ And you're going to say, ‘You cannot defend that.’ And then not only am I going to defend that, I'm going to sway you over to my point of view, and you're going to be like, ‘Wait. How did I ever think anything but that?’”