Welcome to Counter Culture, a talk show, normally in a diner.

- Your body temperature is normal.

- Tonight, we feature a very special theme - couples who share the same art form.

They include singers who perform with their AM radio tribute band, husband and wife Su and Kevin.

- It's tons of fun for us, tons of fun for the audience, because it just brings them back to a place in time where they were making lots of memories.

- And a married couple, and two very funny comics.

- People always ask us, Oh, you're together and you're both comics.

You must laugh all the time in your house.

- Right.

- You know, we're a married couple.

We've been married for years.

We hate each other just like everybody else.

- Plus, two talented stage performers.

- Making people laugh, you know, it's like, it's a great thing, especially right now.

- All right here on Counter Culture.

Welcome to Counter Culture, a talk show coming to you direct from our studio kitchen at PBS.39 in the Lehigh Valley.

Hi, folks.

I'm your host, Grover Silcox.

Tonight's show is all about couples who share their lives and their art forms.

My first guests are singers and musicians who also happen to be married to each other.

They wanted to spend more time together, so they got together with some fellow musicians and formed the AM Radio Tribute Band, which showers audiences with the music Sue and Kevin grew up with.

Please welcome Su Teears and Kevin Burk to Counter Culture.

Welcome.

This is great.

I'm so excited.

This is my first couples show and you're on our maiden voyage, so to speak.

- We're honored to see the show off.

- So why don't you describe your band for us?

The AM Radio Tribute Band.

- AM Radio Tribute Band does everything that you grew up listening to, including lots of the songs you probably forgot were out on the radio at the time.

Everything from the Mamas and the Papas to the Carpenters, to Deep Purple to Jefferson Airplane, and everything in between, including Tie A Yellow Ribbon, Tony Orlando.

- All the big ones.

- Yeah, lots of silly little things.

- Billy, Don't Be A Hero.

And one hit wonders, and it's tons of fun for us and tons of fun for the audience because it just brings them back to a place in time where they were making lots of memories.

- Right.

And I guess that is what led you to the title, AM Radio?

- Yes.

Yes.

It's funny.

Younger generation does not know what that means.

They say am radio, am radio.

- Kevin, you're a percussionist and singer, and Su, you're a singer.

So how did you meet?

Did you meet on a gig or what?

- Well, I was in a very active wedding band at the time and we got a last-minute call to do a private event and our female singer was out of town.

So a good friend of mine... All right.

I'm sorry.

I called a good friend of mine, said, who's a great female singer?

And he said, call Su Teears.

So I did.

And we chatted.

And Su knew absolutely none of the songs on our song list.

She did not do that gig with us.

We got someone else.

But then I invited Su to one of our shows and then we kind of went our separate ways.

And then a year or so later we connected and put this band together.

- Now, where is your base?

Where is your performing market, so to speak?

- I would say Montgomery County, but we're expanding out.

We do some Lehigh Valley stuff and we play on a regular basis at the Mauch Chunk Opera House.

- Your shows are also sort of themed, sort of developed it around the music.

You'll have costuming.

- We try to bring like a hippy vibe.

But more than that.

We go back further.

We do sneak into the late '50s and we do sneak into the early '70s, which is still the hippie vibe.

But it's the hippie era that we accentuate.

- Right.

And so do you play drums in the band, Kevin?

- I do not.

I started, as a kid, as a drummer.

Chops are long gone.

I am probably like a fifth string drummer.

If four other people aren't available, then call me and I'll do it, but don't expect any more than that.

I do play the kazumpet.

- You do?

- This is his newest.

- This is my newest instrument.

This is a kazumpet.

I got the idea from an episode of Sanford and Son.

- Right.

And I saw it had a Kazoo hooked up to a trumpet and I thought, that is me.

And... - So when you're on stage, are you both singing to one another, singing to the audience?

Do you work off each other's rhythm?

A lot of personal banter that goes between both Kevin and I.

We tease each other on stage, in front of everybody, with everybody, and they get a big kick out of it.

- Yeah, I point out all her sour notes.

- Do you have like a favorite song or favorite group?

We do an awful lot of Three Dog Night.

- White Rabbit is probably our most requested song, and nine times out of ten will we'll end our show with it because it's very theatrical.

- Do you have favorites though?

- Are you like, did you grow up with the Beatles?

- Beatles.

- I think every member of our band will probably say Beatles.

- Yeah, do you get younger people to come out?

- You know, I think there are a lot of young people who are into classic rock.

Right?

- Surprisingly so.

Surprisingly so.

Yeah.

And they've, you know, heard this music in their great-great-great grandfather's car.

And that's what it reminds them of.

But I am always shocked at how the younger generations not only knows the music, but they know a lot of the words to the songs.

It's amazing.

- You ever switch over to Motown?

Because that sort of ran in the same parallel to classic rock.

- Yeah.

- We do some Marvin Gaye.

A little bit of Supremes.

- Temptations.

- If people are yelling out songs, we, you know, we huddle a little bit, yeah, yeah, we could do this.

We could do that.

So sometimes, a lot of times it's the first time we're playing the song.

So it's fun.

- We dip into the Philly sound stuff too from the 70s.

- Yeah.

Right, right.

- Yeah.

We're pretty well rounded.

- The venues you play, all the way from a theater like that in Jim Thorpe, to a smaller place to maybe even a bigger venue.

Are they, like all across the board?

- Yeah, we were, just before the pandemic hit, we were just working our way out of the club scene and into the theater scene.

And, of course, the pandemic put the brakes on that.

- The gigs are starting to come back, which is nice, as the restrictions are lifted and we're starting to get back into... - Do you sit down at the table over coffee in the morning and then work out your playlist?

- We're normally going over up and coming things.

Right now, Su runs our schedule.

She's just inundated with requests, now things are loosening up.

So the phone is really ringing and some of our musicians are available.

Some aren't.

So we're trying to fill the gaps, and this poor girl's pulling her hair out with some of this.

- People will obviously need to be, need the entertainment, the music, the interaction more than ever.

So coming back, actually, I would think it will be gangbusters.

- Yeah.

And, you know, we have two CDs out as well, that were both recorded live in bunches of different theaters.

- Just happen to have them right here.

- So we tell people, you know, if you like what you heard, you can take a little bit of us home with you.

And, you know, because it's recorded live, it's everything that your you're hearing when you come out to a show.

- Well, good luck.

And people should look for you.

Keep singing.

- Thank you so much for that.

- Su Teears and Kevin Burk of the AM Radio Tribute Band.

Singing and music is their life, which they happen to share together.

Understanding the mind of a comedian might baffle folks not in the trade.

A spouse or partner, say, in another line of work, and that's precisely what makes my next couple so fascinating.

They are both standup comics.

- Marriage is about give and take.

- That's true because she gives me crap and I have to take it.

Those are the rules.

- Each of them has a long list of credits.

She was a finalist on NBC's Last Comic Standing and he was a runner-up on America's Got Talent.

Please welcome Tom Cotter and Kerri Louise.

Hello.

- Hi.

Thank you for having us.

- Oh, my pleasure.

- Is this going to be a version of Too Funny, which I know is a show that you did on the Women's Entertainment Network?

- Yes, that was amazing.

That was unbelievably emasculating for me because we were literally brought to you by feminine products.

So it was very hurtful.

- Yeah.

How did this happen?

I mean, I think you were both working in the Boston comedy club scene, right?

I got that right?

- Correct.

We used to bump into each other at comedy clubs and I always found her attractive.

But she had a rule that she wasn't going to date any other comics.

And then we both got invited to do a ski resort gig up in the mountains of New Hampshire.

- Back then they would pay us in ski tickets.

So we had to go skiing.

- Right.

Right.

Whether you liked it or not.

- Right.

So we were skiing together and I started flirting with them.

And I can't believe I was flirting with him.

My New Year's resolution was no more comics.

And every time we went on the chairlift, I said, Tom, put your tongue on the side of the chairlift just to see what happens.

I'm not doing it!

And every, time we must have went up like 50 times.

And every time I would say it and every time he would say no, and we enjoyed each other's company so much, we decided not to go home and go to the movies, and that movie that night, which we have never seen before, was called Dumb and Dumber.

- Peter Farrelly film.

- Oh, yeah.

- And during the film they went on a ski date, this couple, and he put his tongue exactly on the side of the chairlift when I was telling Tom to put his tongue there, and it got stuck, and we're laughing.

Everyone's dying in the theater.

But Tom and I were totally laughing because we had just done that all day.

And I'm thinking, oh, my God, it's a sign.

I have to date this guy.

Plus, he paid for my gas to get home.

- Wow.

Are you sure you're a comedian?

- Very, very debonair of me to buy her gas.

- It is.

And yet you share comedy, but you are interestingly different.

Like Kerri, you're kind of like every woman.

- The love hate thing because you get that cash.

Have you ever had that expire in your wallet?

Oh, my God.

You hate yourself for a month,.

- That's how I would quote, every woman.

And Tom, you're not.

- Thank God.

- I mean, you're absolutely right.

- No, You're kind of a conglomeration of like a Johnny Carson, Steven Wright and Don Adams.

Yeah, I don't know if that makes sense, but yeah.

Three fabulous comedians.

- Fan of all three of them, so thank you very much.

I'm honored that you made that comparison.

Yeah, well, you know what?

We're both different styles too.

Her style of comedy is story form, and it's very engaging from start to finish.

And I'm more of an ADD, so I'm a one liner guy.

And so when we mix it together to do a comedy team thing, it's really mixing two styles and it's a challenge for us.

But we love doing it.

- But we never go to bed angry.

- That's true.

We would much rather stay awake and plot our revenge.

That's how we handle it.

- I was telling someone else, I said, I wonder if they like, when they have an argument, which I would think inevitably that happens.

Is it like, do you stop in the middle and say, you know, we could, I could use that?

No, wait a minute.

I could use that!

How does it work?

- We do that during arguments and even sometimes we'll be intimate and he'll think of a joke and then that ends it.

- Yeah.

- What?!

We do it all the time.

- We do that.

Like, if we're out to dinner with another couple and they say something that we think could be, you know, the premise of a bit, I'll say, that's mine.

Or she'll say, no, I get it because they're closer friends to mine.

And that gets an argument over who gets to the bit, but sometimes that bit becomes part of our team thing.

So it works out wonderfully.

- People always ask us, oh, you're together and you're both comics, you must laugh all the time in your house.

- Right.

- I say, you know, we're a married couple.

We've been married for years.

We hate each other just like everybody else.

- There is laughter.

Usually in the bedroom, it's her pointing and I don't like it.

So we have some laughter.

- Tom, when I saw your performance on America's Got Talent, when you challenged Howie Mandel to give you a subject and tell jokes.

I mean, it's pretty, pretty gutsy.

- Are you serious?

- I am serious.

- Oh, my gosh.

College.

I never went.

Tell me about it.

- College for me was the best 28 semesters of my entire life.

I don't want to brag.

I went to Columbia.

I worked for a drug cartel then I went to community college.

I had the whole summer to rehearse that.

Howard Stern smelled something fishy.

So he picked another topic.

And I got a couple extra minutes, which on that show is everything because you only get 90 seconds.

So it actually worked out in my favor and I was lucky I did it.

It was a gamble, but it worked out pretty well.

- And then, Kerri, you went to Vegas for Last Comic Standing.

- We're new parents of twin baby boys.

Yes, I'm trying to be a good mom.

Really I'm getting all the books and they're sleeping through the night.

Well, I don't know if they are, but I am.

My twins were two at the time, and so I had to bring my mom to babysit so Tom could go to the show.

- And now talking about working together, you know, is it like the Burns and Allen of the 21st century?

Is that, you know, the famous...?

- We'd never put ourselves in that category.

But I will tell you that there is a need for it because there was Nichols and May, Burns and Allen, you know, even Desi and Lucy.

So people do get nostalgic for that.

Like your last guests, people got nostalgic for their music, they get nostalgic for that kind of comedy.

So in the Catskills, for example, or the Florida condo circuit, they yearn for it.

They really want to see a married couple.

So we get asked to do it all the time.

- So your boys are probably, like opening an accounting firm or something, right?

- Well, they'll be in counseling clearly, because mom and dad are comics.

But no, they seem to be pretty straight laced.

One of them says he may go into comedy, he may dabble in it.

The other two haven't committed.

And we're going to support them in whatever they do, in whatever field they want.

- Sort of.

I mean, our retirement plan is for them to have real jobs so whenever they're funny, which they are a lot, especially at the dinner table, they are so funny.

I'm trying not to laugh and encourage it because, you know, we want them to be doctors and lawyers.

- Right.

- Can we do our shameless plug as well?

- Oh, sure.

Sure.

Yes.

- We have books out.

- I read them both, they're hilarious.

- So you can find this on Amazon as well.

- There you go.

Hey, couple, comedy couple.

Thank you so much, Tom and Kerri, and good luck.

And now that, you know, things are opening up a bit, hey, people can enjoy you live and in person.

- Thank God.. Yeah, we've been waiting a long time, so, yeah, we're very, very happy to have live audiences again.

And it's such a thrill to be here with you.

We've been fans of yours for a while, so thank you so much.

- Thank you.

Thank you.

- Tom Cotter and Kerri Louise, comedy's quirky and crowd-pleasing couple, either together or solo, laughter is their calling card.

My next guests met as actors, they performed together and were cast opposite each other in Sugar Babies, and it all led to opposite roles in real life as husband and wife.

They act, they sing, they dance, been on Broadway and off Broadway, touring in productions including Monty Python's Spamalot.

Their roles expanded as parents.

Their love for the theater is only surpassed by their love for each other and their family.

It's a pleasure to welcome Lyn Philistine and Christopher Sutton to Counter Culture.

- Thank you.

What a great intro.

- You did some research there.

- Yes.

Well, it was it's always enjoyable to sort of open the book and travel with the guests and see where they've been.

It's a privilege, really.

- Well, it's an honor to be here.

- Thanks for having us.

- Thank you.

- So you actually did meet.

It was Sugar Babies.

I got that right.

Is that correct?

- Yeah, that was the first, that's when we, that's when we kind of started falling in love.

We actually met before that.

I was playing Buddy Holly in The Buddy Holly Story.

I had played Buddy Holly at Walnut Street Theater in Philly, back in '99, I believe.

And this was the second time I was ever doing it.

We were rehearsing in New York City to do a multi-theater tour, but that's when we first met, actually.

- Right.

- And then you just kind of... Oh, and then when we did Sugar Babies, which I think was months later or something, and I remember getting cast in that show and I looked at the cast and went, that's that girl.

And it ended up that we played the secondary leads.

I played the juvenile, the production tenor.

Yeah.

And then we were covering the two lead roles, the Mickey Rooney and Ann Miller roles.

And so because we were understudies for the main leads, we were rehearsing.

Yeah.

Together, the two of us.

- And slowly built and yeah.

- Known each other for, what, 20, about 20 years now, and we've done over 20 shows together.

So it's roughly one a year.

- And a few with our son.

We have a seven-and-a-half-year-old..

So he's now doing shows with us too.

- Oh, my goodness, It's going to be a whole family business.

- Yeah, well, I've got to show you this, Grover.

We were actually showing some of your previous guests.

But yeah, if you can see this.

- Yeah.

Is this a production of Elf?

- Yes.

And that is him at three and a half months.

- Oh, my.

- I was playing the big elf.

He was the baby elf, and that was, yeah, he was three and a half months old.

And then we did Matilda together.

He'd just turned five.

We feel like Philly has been a second home because we've been working down at Walnut.

I'd been there.

I've lived in New York for 30 years, but for the last 22 worked at Walnut quite a bit in Philly.

- Yeah.

- So I think we spent three to four years of our lives actually in Philly.

- We love hte Walnut Street.

Great theater.

- Yeah.

It's the, I think it's the oldest theater in America actually.

- Sure is - Lot of history.

- Right.

So where are you both... ..both from?

Different locations I take it, born and raised?

- I'm from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

- Yeah.

- And I went to Cincinnati Conservatory of Music and when I graduated I moved to New York.

But I had been, I mean, performing since I was eight years old.

I got my equity card with a tour of Annie starring Martha Raye.

So that was kind of how I started.

Yeah.

And then, you know, and my mom kind of figured it out.

My sister did it and then just sort of kept going and got a great training in Pittsburgh and then Cincinnati.

And it was just natural to move to New York.

And I've been here over 20 years, so...

I love it.

- And you, Christopher?

- I grew up the oldest of seven, so that gives you a lot of comedy just right there.

When you have older siblings, you know, when you're babysitting, you have to tell stories that will hold the attention of people.

You know, there's 15 years between myself and little Emily Jane, the youngest.

- Do you do mostly comedies or musical, you know, comedy musicals, musical comedy?

- We do both.

I mean, we've done really serious pieces, plays and musicals.

We've done comedy.

I mean, yeah, we kind of do both.

We do it all, which has been, is wonderful because it fulfills you in different ways or it does something.

Making people laugh, you know, it's like, it's a great thing, especially right now.

But also taking people to an emotional place is another type of experience for us as actors, and also for the audience.

I think it really is nice.

I mean, we've been able to do both of those things, which has been really, really nice.

- That's what's exciting about it, is because, if you can be a chameleon... Our favorite actors, our favorite actors we've known over the years and our inspirations are just that, you know, you see them in a really dastardly, completely, you know, terrible person, kind of a role, a villain.

To go back and forth through the human condition, you know, in different ways.

And, you know, our craft is the study of people and in general the study of people that in the case of Buddy Holly, of course, that's great.

You had the histrionics and you can really dig into the history of Buddy and his family, where he grew up.

But then you have characters that we created over the years in new shows that have never walked the face of the Earth before, that have their own gait, their own way of speaking, their own, their own manner and dialect.

And so that makes you a chameleon already.

And we're both also trained.

Both have degrees in opera.

So it helps you when you're doing the rock stuff because you can do eight or ten shows a week without losing it.

Helps you in Shakespeare because you have to orate with no mic.

So we've always found that as dancers and singers and actors, they feed into each other.

And we did Spamalot.

It was such a great time for us.

We did that show together for four years almost.

And the thing about that show, here we have this comedy.

It's Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

But it's serious.

It's absolute sincerity in absurd situations.

And so I think there's so much drama and gravity in comedy.

In the same way, it happens in reverse, too.

So it's interesting, isn't it?

You know, like Robin Williams is so funny.

He was so funny, but also was in The Fisher King.

- Right.

- And Awakenings.

- Yeah.

And movies like that where, you know, it's just the whole entire range of emotions.

- Right.

- To do it together a lot is pretty amazing.

We're very thankful for that.

- Christopher, you won a Barrymore Award?

Is that right?

- I did, yeah.

For The Buddy Holly Story, actually.

So I won the award the first time for it.

Yeah.

12 years later, Bernard Havard, who's a dear friend, had said he wanted to do Buddy Holly again at some point.

And I said, I remember saying, well, you know, hurry up.

No, but, you know, I mean, because after all, he was 22 when the plane went down.

- Yes.

- But he always wanted to do that again.

And I said, yeah, that would be fantastic.

And so that was the time I got to do it opposite my wife, Lyn played Maria Elena.

And that was a year before our son was born.

That was 2012.

We had people show up at Buddy Holly with their actual album from 1959 and they want you to sign it.

- Right.

- You know.

And I'm like, I don't want to desecrate your record.

I have my own 1959 albums.

- Yeah.

It tells you how well you conveyed not only the music but the persona.

Everything you do is about storytelling and making it come to life for folks, and there's nothing better.

And I want to thank you for joining us on Counter Culture.

- Thank you.

- And go back out there when things open up and, you know, entertain those folks and... - Oh, absolutely.

We've done, I don't know, 50 or 60 Zooms.

I did one last night.

- I'm doing one tonight.

- Are you?

What are you going to be doing?

- Tonight I'm doing, our friends who wrote, a lot of Jersey Boys guys, one I know from when I did Bronx Tale.

Another one from school, Cincinnati, actually, they wrote, like, a funny Christmas Carol, but with at Italian mobster.

So I got to be Italian, I have to do that thing.

But it's a comedy.

It's funny.

- That's great.

- It's good.

As things open up, good luck, guys.

- Thank you.

- Thank you so much.

Yeah.

We'll come back and visit from New York.

- We'll come and see you, OK?

- Terrific.

Lyn Philistine and Christopher Sutton.

To paraphrase Stephen Sondheim, wherever they go, whatever they do, they're going to go through it together.

Well, that's all for this episode.

I want to thank my guest couples, the singers and musicians of AM Radio, Su Teears and Kevin Burk.

Comedy's comic couple, Tom Cotter and Kerri Louise.

And the multitalented actors and performers, Lyn Philistine and Christopher Sutton.

And thank you for spending time with us.

Don't forget to stop by next week for more fascinating guests and great conversation right here on Counter Culture.