Steve Martin has been playing shows in Jacksonville for a long time and has one fond memory of the city.
Years ago, he was performing at the University of North Florida and walked past a golf course. His friend noted the odd placement of a sandtrap near one of the buildings. “Are you kidding?” Martin replied. “Look at all the sand it caught!”
On a phone interview earlier this year, Martin called it “one of the funniest ad-lib jokes I ever said.”
Martin will be back in Jacksonville Saturday for a show with Martin Short and the Steep Canyon Rangers. It’s billed as the “You Won’t Believe What They Look Like Today” Tour.
Martin called the show a “melange” of comedy and music, lots of laughs with a little banjo thrown in for good measure.
More to do in ’22: Biggest concerts, comedy shows in Jacksonville, St. Augustine now through March
More music: Florida music fests are back in a big way for 2022. Here’s a guide.
Martin and Short have been working together for years, going back to 1986’s “The Three Amigos.” They most recently teamed up on Hulu’s “Only Murders in the Building,” which introduced them to a whole new generation of fans.
“I do think that having Selena Gomez in the show was a brilliant decision and has made the show accessible to a much wider range of people,” Short said from his home in Palm Desert, Calif. “And I think the show’s strength is that many generations can sit and watch it together.”
Martin and Short don’t really do “tours.” Short explained that they go out for a couple of shows, then take a few months off and go out again. They last performed before a live audience in October.
“That was just prior to Omicron,” Martin said from his home in New York. “We only infected maybe 2,000 people. It wasn’t a big tour, where you’d get like 10,000 people.”
Martin said the pandemic hasn’t cut down on people’s appetite for laughs. “I thought the volume of laughter would be cut down but it wasn’t at all,” he said. “But since we never really have any volume…”
One thing you won’t find at a Martin and Short show is political humor, and that’s by choice, they said.
“I think that you don’t mention President Biden or you don’t mention the other guy and you let people have a respite from this endless division politically,” Short said. “We do a nonpolitical show and the audiences have a riot. And they’re Republican, Democrat and independent. Johnny Carson, you never knew where he stood politically because he was playing to all of America. You’d like to think that every president plays to all of America and it’s not a polarized country, so I don’t think our show should ever be polarizing.”
Martin said they found that politics can get in the way of their act.
“I think Marty and I made a decision that we’re essentially doing an apolitical show with a philosophy behind it that ‘here’s two hours, just for fun.’ And we haven’t always been apolitical,” Martin said. “But if we find something gets a boo or an excited yay, then we start thinking twice about it.”
“Although I’ll always accept an excited yay,” Short added.
Steve Martin and Martin Short
Featuring the Steep Canyon Rangers
8 p.m. Saturday, March 5, at the Times-Union Center
$91.50-$223.50
