If you have seen Josh Johnson’s name on a San Francisco ticket listing this weekend, there is a reasonable follow-up question.
What, exactly, is Comedy Band Camp?
It is not simply the name of Johnson’s latest stand-up tour.
The touring description calls it a stand-up and live-music experience designed around the feeling of being part of one big band, mixed with the nostalgia of summer camp — effectively a comedy show built with a musical component rather than a conventional comedian-walks-onstage format. UtahPresents, which hosted Johnson immediately before San Francisco, gives one of the clearest official descriptions.
San Francisco is getting quite a lot of it. Live Nation currently lists six performances at The Masonic between Friday, Aug. 28 and Sunday, Aug. 30.
All six Josh Johnson San Francisco show times
| Day | Performance times |
|---|---|
| Friday, Aug. 28 | 7 p.m. and 10 p.m. |
| Saturday, Aug. 29 | 5 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. |
| Sunday, Aug. 30 | 5 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. |
All six are scheduled for The Masonic, 1111 California Street, on Nob Hill.
So what happens at Comedy Band Camp?
The clearest touring description says Comedy Band Camp combines stand-up and live music, intended to recreate some of the community of playing in a big band and some of the nostalgia associated with summer camp.
That is useful to know because the title by itself can sound like either a comedy workshop or a music event with a comedian attached.
It is neither.
The show is still centered on Johnson, but the format adds live music and a broader staged concept around the comedy.
The shows immediately before San Francisco sold out
There is also some evidence that the multi-show schedule is not simply a case of a promoter scattering dates across a calendar.
Johnson’s preceding Comedy Band Camp stop at Kingsbury Hall in Salt Lake City had three performances on Aug. 21 and Aug. 22. UtahPresents lists all three as sold out.
That does not tell us how many San Francisco tickets have been sold, and it would be wrong to assume all six Masonic shows will sell out merely because Utah did.
It does, however, provide some context for why San Francisco has six separate performances over three days rather than one conventional Saturday-night booking.
Check the time on your own ticket
With six performances packed into one weekend, it is worth looking at the actual ticket rather than remembering only the day.
Friday has both a 7 p.m. and 10 p.m. performance. Saturday and Sunday each have a 5 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. performance.
That sounds obvious, but it is exactly the kind of weekend where a person can remember “Josh Johnson, Saturday night” and discover there were two Saturday shows.
Live Nation’s current event pages should be treated as the source of truth for a particular ticket if anything changes.
The Masonic is in the middle of a busy San Francisco weekend
The Masonic is at 1111 California Street on Nob Hill.
The Johnson run also lands on one of the busier San Francisco weekends of late August. Pokémon Worlds will be underway at Moscone Center Friday through Sunday. The Giants have a Friday home game and a Saturday doubleheader. BART has weekend rail work affecting some riders approaching San Francisco from the south, and Muni changes on 12 routes begin Saturday.
None of that means concertgoers should expect chaos around The Masonic. The events are distributed across different parts of the city.
But it does mean giving yourself a little extra travel time is sensible, particularly if your route crosses downtown. Our San Francisco weekend impact guide has the larger picture.
A comedy show with a deliberately strange name
Johnson’s touring description says Comedy Band Camp is the camp experience he never had, so he made one himself.
That is probably the cleanest explanation for the title.
If you bought a ticket expecting a normal stand-up set, the important distinction is not that Johnson has stopped doing stand-up.
It is that this particular tour wraps the comedy in a larger live-music concept.
And in San Francisco, he is doing it six times before the weekend is over.