Say the name “Hank Azaria,” and some people might cock their heads and look at you quizzically, like when you say the word “cheese” in front of a dog.
But say “Chief Wiggum” or “Moe the bartender” or “Superintendent Chalmers” (all characters from “The Simpsons” voiced by Azaria) or mention the Guatemalan houseboy Agador Spartacus from “The Birdcage,” or Phoebe’s boyfriend David the Scientist Guy from “Friends,” or the alcoholic baseball announcer Jim Brockmire from the brilliant IFC series “Brockmire” and that cheese/dog look turns into a big smile and a nod.
“Oh yeah,” they say. “I love that guy!”
That’s Hank Azaria for you, even though he’s won eight Emmys and been in front of the camera — and the microphone — for nearly four decades.
And “that guy” has a new gig — he’s touring with a Bruce Springsteen tribute band he formed called Hank Azaria and the EZ Street Band — and they kicked off their current tour at the Stephen Talkhouse in Amagansett.
Azaria is not a stranger to live theater — he was the original Sir Lancelot the Homicidally Brave in the Broadway production of “Spamalot” — but this is different.
“It started as just a way to cheer myself up for my 60th birthday,” said Azaria when we spoke pre-show at the Talkhouse on August 23, “and then it grew from there. And then I realized I had to tell everybody for my birthday, no gifts, but donate to the foundation if you want.”
The foundation in question is Azaria’s passion. “It’s called the Four Through Nine Foundation, and I started a few years ago. We give mostly to educational causes, recovery causes, and social justice. And then we raised like $30,000 the night on my birthday and we sounded pretty good. And I loved it, so I was like, ‘Why don’t we keep doing this and raise money for charity?’”
When Azaria takes the stage as Springsteen, he steps inside a Bruce suit. His clothing, singing voice, movements, and even his face all seem to embody The Boss. Looking around the standing-room-only crowd in Amagansett that night, it was clear that most of the fairly youngish crowd wanted to hear Springsteen songs delivered by a good rock group that sounded like Bruce and the E Street Band. And they got what they wanted.
Azaria and the EZ Street Band continue the tour in Philly on Halloween at the Brooklyn Bowl, with dates following on November 8 at the Brooklyn Bowl in New York and November 15 at the Stone Pony in Asbury Park, NJ — a pretty ballsy move for a Springsteen tribute band, setting up shop in The Boss’s backyard.
“Well, I know he’ll be in LA that weekend, so we’ll be safe,” said Azaria with a laugh.
He recounted the time he came face to face with Springsteen way before he started to talk and sing like him.
“It was during ‘Spamalot,’” Azaria recalled. “He was really sweet. He came in, and he gave me his review of the show. He said,” — and here Azaria almost eerily becomes Springsteen — “‘Man, I loved that show. It started out just kind of silly and funny, then became this like celebration of comedy itself, you know. And then the music was kind of silly but it became this celebration of musicals. And then, by the end, I was really moved, man. Like, it was a celebration of life and love.’”
“Now,” Azaria continued, “I heard that because I remembered it and just repeated it to you. But all that was going through my mind was, ‘Bruce is talking to me! Bruce is talking to me! Bruce is talking to me!’”
Azaria said that he got up the nerve to tell Bruce how he felt about him, about how his music was so important to him. “Especially when I was growing up. It encouraged me to be a creative person. I had some tough times in my teenage years when nobody else encouraged me. So, if not for you, I wouldn’t be standing here, backstage in this Shubert Theater, talking to you, really.”
Azaria paused. “That’s what I wanted to say, but it came out like this.” He starts panting and jumping up and down. “Bruce! Bruce! I love your music and I wouldn’t be here today and and and…”
“Bruce looked at me not unkindly, and he went, ‘Yeah, right. Thanks a lot, thanks a lot.’ Gave me a kind of fatherly pat on the shoulder, and within like 20 seconds, he was gone. And I don’t blame him. He walks the earth as a god. He doesn’t like that kind of fanboy energy. It embarrasses him.”
But that wasn’t the end of it.
“So, years later, I’m at Bruce’s Broadway show. It was amazing. At intermission, a guy comes up. ‘Hey, you want to come up and say hi to Bruce after the show?’ So, I’m with my wife Katie. I say to Kate, ‘Kate, I’m not going to blow it this time. I’m going to be calm, I’m going to be cool.’”
“So we go in down this receiving line and I’m holding Kate’s hand, I’m doing deep breathing exercises. And, it gets down to us, and before he can even say hello —” and here Azaria goes right back into extreme fanboy mode — “‘Bruce, Bruce! I love ‘Growin’ Up,’ I know all the lyrics to ‘Growin’ Up!’ My high school yearbook page! I swear to God! I swear to God!’” And he looked at me as if to say, ‘Aren’t you the nut that f*cked this up the last time?’ I got the same fatherly shoulder pat, and he was gone.”
Azaria’s interest in forming Four Through Nine is due to his own journey through sobriety, which began 18 years ago or so, but also stemmed, in part, from the controversy over Azaria providing the voice of Apu on “The Simpsons,” which he has since publicly apologized for. “When that Apu controversy hit almost 10 years ago now, I got much more educated in social justice and awareness of institutionalized racism in America. I decided I wanted to give back, so I formalized it by forming a foundation. I call it Four Through Nine because that’s the steps in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. Four is how you become accountable, and Nine is how you give back. Because it’s recovery-based, there’s a lot of health and wellness that we deal with, and education, that I’ve always been involved with, and social justice, because that’s lately what I’ve been focusing on.”
About his own road to recovery, Azaria offered this. “I was what they call a ‘high-bottom alcoholic.’ I was first in the Al-Anon program, which is friends and families and loved ones of alcoholics. And I think because I had so much experience in dealing with other people’s addiction issues, I came to recognize my own problem, kind of maybe earlier than others might have. And so I was able to pull out of it. The way it showed up for me was, ‘Well, do I want to wait a year or two until I’m really sure, and I have a DUI, or I get fired, or I have some kind of public meltdown, or whatever the horrible things that come along with using are? Or have I seen enough?’ And fortunately for me, I had felt like I had seen enough.”
Along with singing like Springsteen, Azaria offers up the same downhome showtime patter that makes The Boss a hero to the Everyman. During the show, Azaria, adopting Springsteen’s cadence and voice, offered up this story of how he met his wife at a party.
“So, in walks this woman, and to say that it was love at first sight for me would be a tremendous understatement, right? As Buddy Holly once said, ‘When Cupid shot his dart, he shot it at my heart.’”
He was standing with Paul Rudd when she walked by. “So I start gesturing wildly to Paul. ‘Oh my God, look at her. I’m freaking out,’ and he starts gesturing back. ‘She’s cute, but get a hold of yourself, right now!’ Normally, when I’m that love-struck, I know better than to actually try to talk to the girl because I’m going to make an idiot out of myself.”
“But then I realized, ‘Wait a second. That’s Paul Rudd over there. He played Mike on “Friends,” okay? I played David the Scientist Guy. I lost Phoebe to him. They kept sending me to Minsk. I couldn’t get with her. I was genuinely bummed about it. It’s like in a soap opera when they kill your character and don’t warn you. So I said to myself, ‘No way. No way, I’m not losing another cute blonde to Ant-Man over there. I mean, I’m Gargamel, God damn it. Smurf pride.’ Anyway, so I got up the nerve and I talked to the girl. She became my wife and the mother of my child.”
He gestured to his wife. And the Talkhouse crowd went wild. They didn’t care if it was Azaria, or Springsteen, or some lovechild of them both. They were hooked.
So, what’s in the works for Azaria these days? “I turn down a lot now, just because I have that luxury, thanks to my day job with ‘The Simpsons,’” he acknowledged. “Most things that come across my desk. I say, ‘Well, do I want to do this job that I’ve done some version of 10 times? Or would I like to keep raising money through this band and releasing this joy bomb in my life?’ And so far, the latter keeps winning out.”
For tour dates, visit ezstreetnyc.com. For more information about Azaria’s foundation, visit 4thru9.org.
