It’s not restaurants, music, or even comedy that Kyle Kinane misses most: it’s the chatter of a crowded bar. “Eavesdropping is my entertainment,” the comedian says. “When I’d get off the road and be back in LA, I would go to whatever bar by myself just to eavesdrop and listen to somebody else tell a story to their friend. If somebody’s telling a funny story, they don’t care if someone is eavesdropping and laughing, that gives them more fuel to tell the story even more flamboyantly.”
That joke is one of a few illustrated in an animated short by Meister released in tandem with the album. In the animation, a sentient Powerball with a Kenny Dennis-esque mustache bellows Kinane’s material and pounds on a diner table as a TV blares “It’s free money, stupid” in the background. Like a music video in the early days of MTV, the short is a creative visual partner to Kinane’s voice, and an effective hook for the rest of the special. Kinane first performed music before comedy, navigating the DIY punk scenes in Chicago and the suburbs as a teenager pre-Internet. “The bands were all comedians already,” he says. While some bands mimicked the self-serious attitude of hardcore godfathers Fugazi, “the Meshuggenehs always made me laugh,” he says. “If he was struggling tuning his guitar, he would just be like, ‘I got your money already, I don’t care.’ And just play a whole set out of tune.”
Trampoline in a Ditch captures a Kinane who has changed for the better in his early 40s, even as his storytelling style has stayed consistent. He earnestly talks about finding stability in his relationship and drinking in moderation. “My earlier material was like, ‘Yeah, my life is not put together,’ and that resonated with people,” he explains, “and that’s the catch-22 of complaining about your life being in pieces: you get success because of how successfully you complained, and then you wanna keep your life together.”
