Comedian turns pain into laughs Mainer Bob Marley faces Sept. 11 in new routine

It was a tough year to be a comedian. After Sept. 11, nobody felt like laughing. And even the ones who did were a rough crowd.

But Bob Marley took it in stride. The Bangor native, who now lives in Los Angeles, had a gig the night after the terrorist attacks. He knew the bin Laden card was a risky one to play, but he took a chance and won.

“It was really weird getting on stage,” Marley said by phone from his home in California. “People still have natural human needs, though. If they come to a comedy club, they’re there because they want to laugh. … It was tough, but I got them with me.”

Both “Entertainment Tonight” and “Extra” took notice, and Marley found that laughter helped people deal with their anger. This weekend, during his annual visit to The Grand Auditorium in Ellsworth, Marley plans to incorporate “a big Osama theme” into his all-new routine. Marley will perform at 8 tonight and at 7 and 9 p.m. Saturday. George Hamm is the opening act.

“I love going up there,” Marley said. “It’s such a blast.”

High praise from a guy who has toured with Adam Sandler and Rodney Dangerfield, played gigs at the Laugh Factory and Caesar’s Palace, and appeared on “The Late Show” with David Letterman and “The Late Late Show” with Craig Kilborn. Two weeks ago he was on “The Tonight Show” with Jay Leno. Halle Berry was one of Leno’s other guests.

“I told my wife, ‘When you have someone that beautiful on the show you need someone to balance it out,'” Marley said, laughing.

Though he now lives in Los Angeles, Marley hasn’t forgotten his Maine roots. He lived in Bangor until he was 12, moved to Waterville and later Portland, and went to the University of Maine at Farmington, where he started doing stand-up.

“It was really weird being in college and going to another college to try to do a show,” Marley said.

Often, security figured he was just another student trying to get backstage, so they wouldn’t let him in.

“About 15 minutes after the show was supposed to start, they’d come up and say ‘You really are the comedian.'”

After college, Marley made a name for himself at The Comedy Connection in Portland and Boston, among other clubs. In 1995, he moved to Los Angeles, where he would have a better chance to further his career in stand-up. Since then, he’s appeared in several movies, including “The Boondock Saints” with Willem Dafoe, “Under the Bus,” and “Liar’s Club,” directed by fellow Mainer Bruce Cacho-Negrete. And CBS has recently optioned a script written for Marley for a sitcom set in Portland.

“It’s weird because the business takes you there,” Marley said. “If you just keep with it, these things happen. Preparation meets opportunity, with a little bit of luck.”

Marley, 34, has been preparing for 10 years, not including all the clowning around he did in high school and college. And he hasn’t had to look too far for inspiration.

“People ask me, ‘How do you get your material?'” he said. “There it is; that’s my life.”

Whether he’s talking about his wife, Tracy, his parents, his basset hound, or his baby daughter, Abigail, it’s always funny. And parenthood has given him a whole new batch of things to make fun of.

“When you go to give your kid a bath, they have a six-point harness for the bathtub,” Marley said. “When we were kids my mother washed me in the sink with the steak knives. My mother used to put me on a skateboard and push me down Essex Street.”

The steak knives and skateboards were nothing compared to the heckling of the crowds when Marley was getting his start in stand-up.

“I played every dump in Maine,” Marley said. “I really have to say that after doing that, nothing would rattle me.”

It definitely toughened him up. Now, he has no fear of making fun of the guy in the front row, even if it’s a well-known comedian or a network exec. At the HBO Comedy Festival in Aspen, Colo., he pulled out all the stops, figuring the crowd couldn’t be any rougher than the ones he played here.

“I went up there and just went nuts and some guy starts ripping me,” Marley said. “Thank God for Maine, I’ll tell you that much.”

Bob Marley will perform at 8 tonight and 7 and 9 p.m. Saturday at The Grand Auditorium in Ellsworth. Tickets cost $15 in advance, $17 at the door, and are available by calling 667-9500 or from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily at the box office on Main Street in Ellsworth.