Ravinia 2025 Issue 2

SAMJONES(YANKOVIC);ANDREWWOODMAN(PUDDLES) PAVILION 7:00 PM SUNDAY, JUNE 29, 2025 BIGGER & WEIRDER TOUR “WEIRD AL” YANKOVIC with special guest PUDDLES PITY PARTY † Puddles Pity Party –Intermission– “Weird Al” Yankovic † Ravinia debut PUDDLES PITY PARTY Puddles Pity Party, the 7-foot sad clown whose golden voice is comparable to rock legends like Tom Jones and Freddie Mercury, has amassed over 900,000 YouTube subscribers and per- formed sold out shows all over the globe, in- cluding at The Kennedy Center, San Francisco’s Palace of Fine Arts, London’s Soho Theatre, and a residency at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. Puddles recently wrapped a summer tour with Primus and Coheed & Cambria, enjoying stage time with Primus singing surprise covers of Ron- nie James Dio’s “Holy Diver” and Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song.” Early in 2024, Puddles sang with Maynard James Keenan on the Sessanta tour and was a featured performer at the Netflix is a Joke comedy festival. Later, Neil Gaiman invited Puddles to sing at his specially curated gala for The Art of Elysium in Los Angeles. During 2023, Puddles spent much of the year touring, which included appearances at Seattle’s Bumbershoot Festival and multiple performances on the JoCo Cruise. In 2022, Puddles performed a duet with the iconic Eric Idle in Homeward Bound: A Grammy Salute to the Songs of Paul Simon filmed for CBS and was a surprise guest on the Season 4 finale of ABC’s The Conners . He also landed the coveted John Lewis Holiday advert in the UK with a cover of “All the Small Things” that he recorded with Postmodern Jukebox. Puddles was a quarterfinalist on Season 12 of America’s Got Talent and appeared on the 2020 season of AGT The Champions . Deftly combining melancholy with the absurd, Puddles has received endorsements and accolades from musical comedy legends like Jack Black, Michael McKean, “Weird Al” Yankovic, Drew Carey, Nick Offerman, and Paul Reubens. Puddles Pity Party is making his Ravinia debut. “WEIRD AL” YANKOVIC Few would have guessed that “Weird Al” Yan- kovic—who as a shy, accordion-playing teenag- er got his start sending in homemade tapes to the Dr. Demento Radio Show —would go on to become a pop culture icon and the biggest-sell- ing comedy recording artist of all time, with classic song and music video parodies such as “Eat It,” “Like a Surgeon,” “Smells Like Nirvana,” “Amish Paradise,” “White & Nerdy,” and “Word Crimes.” Now in his fourth decade as America’s foremost song parodist, he has been the recipi- ent of numerous awards, including five Gram- mys (out of 16 total nominations) and a string of gold and platinum albums totaling over 12 million in career sales. Yankovic’s 2014 album, the Grammy-winning Mandatory Fun , became the first comedy album in history to debut at number one on Billboard ’s Top 200 chart, and the first to reach the top of the chart since 1963. He set the US record on Spotify for having the most tracks from one album in the viral top 10 at one time, taking the top four spots. In addi- tion, the single “Word Crimes” debuted in the Billboard Top 40, making Weird Al one of only three artists (alongside Michael Jackson and Madonna) to have had Top 40 singles in each of the last four decades. Yankovic’s recording career was commemorated in 2017 by the Leg- acy Recordings release of Squeeze Box , a 15-disc box set (including remasters and a rarities al- bum) with a 120-page book of archival photos, all housed in a replica of his trademark accor- dion, which earned Yankovic his fifth Grammy Award. In March 2018, he recorded “The Ham- ilton Polka,” a frantic tour-de-force mash-up of 14 songs from the Broadway smash, commis- sioned by Lin-Manuel Miranda and released as part of his “Hamildrops” series. In 1989, Orion released Yankovic’s now cult classic film UHF , and 2022 saw the release of the biopic WEIRD: The Al Yankovic Story , which earned two Critic’s Choice Awards and eight Emmy nominations. His TV and movie credits also include voice acting on Bojack Horseman , Gravity Falls , Ad- venture Time , and My Little Pony , plus numer- ous guest appearances on camera. “Weird Al” Yankovic made his Ravinia debut in 2019 and is returning to the festival for the first time. RAVINIA.ORG  • RAVINIAMAGAZINE 77