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No love songs, just quirky fun

Headliner: James Lee Reeves started with songwriting, turned to comedy

MOLLY GILMORE; For The Olympian | • Published October 15, 2009

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Being funny - especially writing funny songs - comes naturally to comedian James Lee Reeves.

“I’ve been writing goofy songs since I was a kid on Mercer Island,” said Reeves, who is best known in the entertainment business as Milo Tremley. “I just can’t help myself.

“I actually went to Nashville as a songwriter, and all of my lyrics came out goofy. I’m a good songwriter, but the stuff that I do is offbeat. I really don’t know how to write a love song.”

Maybe that’s why Reeves, who headlines Comedy in the Box tonight at The Washington Center for the Performing Arts, didn’t make it in the music world.

“I struggled for a long time in L.A. getting nowhere,” he recalls. “I finally moved to Nashville and got even nowherer. Then I auditioned in a comedy club in Nashville, and it just took off.

“I’ve been headlining now for 23 years.”

Reeves of Reno, Nev., performed at the Comedy Store in 1973 with the likes of Robin Williams and Billy Crystal.

A funny thing about the comedian – more funny-odd than funny-ha-ha – is that he talked a lot about regret when interviewed last week. He talked about his divorce and the deaths of his parents. But mostly, he talked about his regret that he changed his professional name from his birth name to Milo Tremley, for a hillbilly character he used to do.

“I don’t do that character anymore,” he said. “I got sick of ‘My name is Milo, and by the time I graduated high school, my cousin and I had been married for 13 years.’ When I do my show now, I’m just myself.”

And if the comedian can’t write a love song, he sure can write a love-gone-wrong song.

“In 1999, I recorded an album called ‘Professor Milo, Marriage Counselor,’” he said. “I’d gone through a divorce, and all I wanted to talk about or think about was how people screw up relationships. The gag is that I successfully completed three marriages.

“I dispense bad marital advice,” he added. “Basically, I advise people to do exactly that which screws up your life. That runs through my whole show.”

These days, Reeves sings about the economy. One of his new songs is called “Greed Is Good.”

“The Wall Street thing has just really gotten to me,” he said. “I obsess on things that are wrong and how to fix them.”