PLUME: Is being creative in that direction something that appeals to you, as far as writing a film, or…

KENNEY-SILVER: No, not in the least. In my head it does. The idea of it does. And Michael Black and Ken Marino and other State friends keep constantly bugging me, saying “Kerri, this is what you do, you’re good at it, sit down and write something.” I dread it. I hate it. I despise it.

PLUME: What do you despise about it?

KENNEY-SILVER: I think it’s lonely and creepy and scary, and not something that I enjoy. I just don’t. I don’t enjoy it. I’ll do it, and I do do it, and for Reno, it’s very collaborative, so it’s not me sitting alone in a room writing something.

PLUME: Could you envision writing with someone, with a partner, like Tom & Ben do?

KENNEY-SILVER: I would certainly have to. I just don’t… I just don’t feel inspired alone. I feel too self doubting, I think is the thing. So to me, Tom & Ben work together and their screenwriting is the perfect way, I think. They sort of go off and do their parts and then they come together and say, “What do you think of this?” And I would have to do it that way, I think. Because I would get lost in my own brain, I think.

PLUME: Have you come close to doing that with someone at any point?

KENNEY-SILVER: You know, honestly, it’s all about time. Tom and Ben can afford to do it because we’re together all the time doing Reno, and then after work on Reno they’ll stay later and do their thing together. So it works because they’re together all the time. I don’t have that working relationship with anybody else. So for me it would really have to be something I would have to make an effort to find, something to do while we’re on our breaks. And what I usually do and what I prefer to do when we’re not all working together on something is to go… I just like acting in other people’s stuff. That’s what I love to do. So as soon as we’re done with stuff I usually run off and go do someone else’s film or TV show, guest star or something. Because it’s just something I enjoy doing. I prefer to just show up and perform.

PLUME: So performing really is the thing that makes you the happiest.

KENNEY-SILVER: Yeah, it is. Especially now that I’m a mom, my time is limited, so it feels great to be able to just, you know, pop in and get a laugh and go home.

PLUME: Is the schedule you have right now optimal for where your life is at this point, both with work and family?

KENNEY-SILVER: Yes and no. You certainly don’t make as much money, so that’s a tough one. And I don’t know how long I could sustain a career this way. It seems the way my career has been best is creating my own work with my partner. So, you know, I really don’t ever have a path in my head. I never have. I just, you know, “So, what do you guys want to do now? Should we write a book? Should we make another show?” Or someone will come to us and say, “You know what we really need? We need one of these…” And we’ll go, “Okay, well, here you go.” It seems to be working so far. I have no idea what the next thing will be after Reno. I know we will always all work together in some form or another. Because for 20 years that’s been the case, so it seems to be a pattern.

PLUME: It was nice to see that little mini State reunion you did for iTunes…

KENNEY-SILVER: Yeah, that was fun.

PLUME: Which really wasn’t even a reunion, per se.

KENNEY-SILVER: Because no one was in the same room, or in the same state even.

PLUME: It’s amazing what can be accomplished today.

KENNEY-SILVER: Yeah, exactly.

PLUME: In fact, you should do all of your reunions that way.

KENNEY-SILVER: I agree.

PLUME: The MCI way of doing it.

KENNEY-SILVER: Yeah. I’m gonna work from home from now on. I’m just gonna shoot my Reno parts here at home…

PLUME: It’s all about editing.

KENNEY-SILVER: Yeah, exactly.

PLUME: They can piece anything together.

KENNEY-SILVER: It’s all about green screen.

PLUME: You do this, every once in a while your husband can get in the Dangle shorts…

KENNEY-SILVER: Well, see, I’m lucky, because my husband’s a DP – so he could shoot everything.

PLUME: And he knows how to make someone look like someone else from behind.

KENNEY-SILVER: Exactly, right. So my son could be Dangle. Let’s not go there.

PLUME: I was gonna try and move as quickly beyond it as possible. Have you ever entertained… because I know that you write short stories as well, right?

KENNEY-SILVER: You know, I have no idea where that came… you read that off of IMDB, right?

PLUME: Was it? Or Wikipedia or something.

KENNEY-SILVER: Who knows.

PLUME: Does that mean you don’t bake, too?

KENNEY-SILVER: No, actually, I do bake. It’s so funny, I have no idea… it cracked me up the first time I read it…

PLUME: Now we need to find something to put on there.

KENNEY-SILVER: It sounded like an 11-year-old’s blog. “I like to bake, I like to knit, and I like to write stories!” I don’t know where…

PLUME: I was wondering if that was a joke statement you said at some point.

KENNEY-SILVER: Because that’s what it sounds like!

PLUME: “She’s a keen falconer…”

KENNEY-SILVER: Who the hell… yeah. “Well, I wrote a short story about a guy who saw a ghost!” I mean I don’t know what… yes, I do love to bake, it’s true. I was a baker in college. That’s how I got through college. Still love it. Knitting, yes, I am an avid knitter. I do love to knit. I knit all the time. Writing stories part, I just don’t know… it sounds like I like to make little macaroni pictures.

PLUME: See, what’s weird is people would naturally assume that the story part of it was the correct part. And they go, “Oh, she’s joking about knitting and baking…”

KENNEY-SILVER: No no, no no. That’s the irony of my existence.

PLUME: You ever trade recipes with Amy Sedaris?

KENNEY-SILVER: Yeah, exactly. How do you know Amy? I think we probably met back in the day. Actually we did meet at the Aspen Comedy Festival, I think. I don’t know if I’d ever met her before, but she’s one of those people I feel like I know, because we are in the same world of comedy folks.

PLUME: Do you feel a sort of kinship to other performers, particularly those that have an improv background?

KENNEY-SILVER: I definitely do. I also know most of them, because we’ve all worked together in one way or another. Exit 57, and Upright Citizen’s Brigade.

PLUME: That New York scene always strikes me as incredibly – and I mean this in the best possible way – incredibly inbred.

KENNEY-SILVER: Oh it is, completely. Of course.

PLUME: Almost frighteningly so, in terms of who knows who.

KENNEY-SILVER: It’s a small world. We have the Uprights on our show all the time. Mary (Birdsong) was Exit 57. Yeah, it’s a very incestuous group.

PLUME: In fact, it almost seems like it’s an impermeable group.

KENNEY-SILVER: Yeah, well, I don’t know about that. Since we’ve come out here, at least Tom and Ben and I, we’ve discovered amazing people from The Groundlings that we use on Reno and lots of other people, so we’re not impermeable at all. We always have our arms open going, “Who’s next?” We just love being able to showcase people and play with new actors.

PLUME: Is there any guest that surprised you the most when they came on?

KENNEY-SILVER: Yeah. You know who surprised me the most, was Paul Reubens.

PLUME: I was just about to ask you about that appearance.

KENNEY-SILVER: He became a friend first. I met him at a table reading of a movie, and we confided in each other that we were fans. He was a big Viva Variety fan, which shocked me, and I was of course a big fan of his. So we talked and became friends, and then one time I said, “You know, if you ever want to do Reno,” and he said, “Oh my god, I would love to.” And I knew he was funny, of course, and talented, but I didn’t know how great it would be to work with him and how hard it would be to not laugh while working with him.

PLUME: I can only hope that there’s some kind of return in the offing, of him or his character…

KENNEY-SILVER: Oh, absolutely. Definitely. He’s one of those people… it’s the kind of show where even if someone’s dead, you can bring them back. Figure out a way. So… oh, for sure. It’s really more about who’s in town and who’s available on a Tuesday, or whatever it is.

PLUME: Is there anyone who was not a performer that just surprised the heck out of you?

KENNEY-SILVER: Oh, Kenny Rogers was incredible!

PLUME: Really?

KENNEY-SILVER: He’s absolutely incredible. He played ball like I couldn’t believe. He was so fun, and so fantastic.

PLUME: What’s it like, as a performer, to be in a scene with someone who you have trepidation that they’re actually going to be able to bring it, and then all of a sudden they’re there?

KENNEY-SILVER: He just knocked it out of the park. That’s exactly what happened with Kenny Rogers. It felt like, “Where did this come from?” Yeah.

PLUME: And why hasn’t he been back yet?

KENNEY-SILVER: I think that’s probably about scheduling, too. People call us and they say, “I’m in town,” we go “Great, come do the show.” It’s that simple.

PLUME: Well, Reno does need a new sheriff.

KENNEY-SILVER: We do. That’s right. Sheriff Chechekevitch is gone. Or is he?

PLUME: Oh! Maybe he took the baby someplace…

KENNEY-SILVER: Maybe he is the baby. We don’t know.

PLUME: He kinda looks like the baby.

KENNEY-SILVER: He really does. I agree.

PLUME: Now it’s getting frightening.

KENNEY-SILVER: Yeah.

PLUME: I don’t like where this is going. I do, before we’re done, want to talk to you about Cake Like, which is sort of a fascinating tangent in your career…

KENNEY-SILVER: Yeah.

PLUME: How exactly did that come about? Because it started more as a lark, right?

KENNEY-SILVER: It did start… yeah, all of my girlfriends and I, who were in the band together, we just decided one night that we would go down to a practice base and pick up instruments and just play for fun. Our boyfriends were all in bands at the time, and they were all away on tour. So we decided to just sort of do it as a joke. And, uh, we realized that we enjoyed it. I don’t know how good we were, but we enjoyed it and we kept going back, and after a few times, we realized that we actually had something, or at least some songs, and this guy poked his head into our practice base one night and said, “Hey, you guys sound really good. Do you want to play a party in Brooklyn?” And we were like, “I guess. We have five songs, is that enough?” He said, “Yeah.” So we went and played this party, and then we started playing shows from there, and eventually we had… I don’t know how many songs. Certainly not enough for an album. But we were playing at the Knitting Factory one night and someone approached us and said, “I have this label in Japan and I would love to put you guys on it.” So we quickly came up with enough songs for an album, and recorded an album and put it out and it did really well. We got three and a half stars in Rolling Stone, and had a bunch of good response from it.

PLUME: When you’re initially approached like that and you realize that you now have the potential to be big in Japan…

KENNEY-SILVER: Well, I don’t think we ever thought we would be big in Japan. I think we just thought we would get a record to show our friends. I don’t think we ever thought we would be big anywhere. But we just thought, “Oh this is an opportunity to put something down in CD form and have it put out there.” That was the farthest I think we really thought about it.

PLUME: Once you actually physically held that CD, did it surprise you even then that it existed?

KENNEY-SILVER: Yeah, completely. It still surprises me that it exists. The three of them exist, that several tours existed, that all kinds of things exist. Yeah, I’m totally shocked by all of it.

PLUME: What’s the current status of the catalogue of those three CDs?

KENNEY-SILVER: They’re under Vapor Records, a Warner Brothers label. Neil Young was the one who found us, and wanted to put us on Vapor, rather.

PLUME: That was his vanity label, right?

KENNEY-SILVER: Yeah, we met him through Ric Ocasek, who produced us, and Ric said, “You have to meet Neil, ’cause he’s really into this kinda music. I think he would love you guys.” And he came to a couple shows and really dug us and said, “I’m starting this new label, why don’t you guys be on it?” Elliott Roberts was there as well.

PLUME: What was the more surreal meeting for the first time: Ric Ocasek or Neil?

KENNEY-SILVER: It was all kind of surreal. But we were sort of in that world because our boyfriends were all in bands, so we would see these kinds of people around, so it wasn’t so weird that they were there, but it was definitely weird that they were…

PLUME: Expressing interest in you…

KENNEY-SILVER: In what we were doing, yeah. And yeah, I made a couple of records at Neil Young’s label, and actually we still owe them one more, and every time I see them they remind me, “You still owe me another record!” So maybe someday we will. It’s just a matter of location now, and obviously we’re geographically undesirable to one another. The girls live in New York and I live out in L.A., so it’s kinda difficult.

PLUME: So, really, it’s you who broke up the band.

KENNEY-SILVER: Well, I definitely had to break it up, in a way, because I moved out here with Viva Variety. So, in a sense, I did by having to leave, but we… our last album wasn’t called Goodbye So What for nothing.

PLUME: That’s not the best thing to call your penultimate album in a record deal.

KENNEY-SILVER: Yeah.

PLUME: You’re probably hoping the last one will be the greatest hits.

KENNEY-SILVER: Right, exactly. All four of them.

PLUME: Hey, that’s better than some bands.

KENNEY-SILVER: Yeah.

PLUME: Have you had ideas percolating in the past few years, or is it something that’s been so off the burner?

KENNEY-SILVER: Oh no, we talk about it. We played together one time at the drummer’s… the drummer got married and had this big outdoor sort of festival wedding and we played there and that was great. So yeah, we always talk about it. It’s just a matter of what’s realistic in our daily lives now. It’s a little more difficult than it was at the time.

PLUME: Creatively, where does music fit into your life?

KENNEY-SILVER: It doesn’t right now. Different things come and take the front burner for a while and then move away and come back. I wouldn’t be surprised if it did come back. But for right now, it just doesn’t really exist in my life, which is fine. I have moments where I’ll go see a live show, or I’ll listen to an album, and really miss it, but for right now other things are taking my brain space, and I’m sure that’ll move back in just as everything else has at some point.

PLUME: Would you every say it was your primary desire, at any point?

KENNEY-SILVER: No, I don’t think so. I don’t think it ever was. Certainly sometimes it took up most of our time, but I wonder if we would have been as successful as we were had we been only concerned with that. I think sometimes we were looking the other way and it started doing well despite us, almost.

PLUME: In a good way?

KENNEY-SILVER: Yeah, in a great way. Yeah. Certainly it was pleasantly surprising.

PLUME: Something else I definitely have to ask you about, just because I found a copy of it the other day online, would be The State’s Halloween special.

KENNEY-SILVER: Oh, yeah, that was so fun…

PLUME: It seems like such the wrong thing for CBS to put on when CBS was known mostly as a geriatric network…

KENNEY-SILVER: Oh, yeah. Well, we were saying while it was airing, our famous quote is that we felt as though we were the only people watching while it was being aired, and it turned out to be pretty much true. Because right after the first commercial break they cut to some heart attack medicine, and we were like, “Hmm, something tells me this isn’t really our audience.” So yeah, it didn’t go over very well, but we had a great time making it!

PLUME: Was there actually a thought at some point, by anyone in the group, that this would be a transition that would lead to more things on CBS?

KENNEY-SILVER: Oh yeah, we absolutely thought… the talk with CBS was that we basically have a deal there, we’re definitely gonna do a series, let’s just do a couple specials to see how we fit on the air, what time slot and when. We were so naïve to think that that would actually work, and I think they kinda were too, but this was, as far as we were concerned, just a formality of getting us onto the air. But we didn’t… they kept saying, “Don’t worry what your numbers are this night. It’s really not about numbers, it’s really just about seeing how you look on the air,” and blah blah blah. Finally, an hour before we were supposed to air, we’re talking to one of the studio heads who said, “If you don’t get…” I can’t remember what the number was… “If you don’t get a certain number, then you can kiss your jobs goodbye,” basically. And we were like, “Oh, well, that’s never gonna happen. Obviously we’re not gonna get those numbers,” and we obviously didn’t. So that was short lived. We had plans to do a New Year’s special as well, after that. It was supposed to be a Halloween special and then a New Year’s special.

PLUME: Was material already written for that New Year’s special?

KENNEY-SILVER: Oh yeah, we were in the process of coming up with stuff. It was well underway.

PLUME: So in no way, shape, fashion or form was that ever believed to be the end of The State.

KENNEY-SILVER: No, not as far as we were concerned. When it got cancelled we sort of realized, “Oh, now what do we do? We’ve made a record, we wrote a book, we did several pieces of MTV, tried our luck at network. We’ve written a movie that didn’t get off the ground. So now what do we do?” And then everyone started getting a little itchy to go try their hand at other things, and that’s kinda what happened.

PLUME: So it was sort of an organic breaking apart.

KENNEY-SILVER: For some. For others it was more difficult, but it seemed kind of obvious. It was just such a dark time. It was like, “Now what?”

PLUME: Who was the biggest proponent for trying to keep things together?

KENNEY-SILVER: You know, I honestly don’t remember any of that stuff. I always picture us as this eleven-headed monster, so I don’t remember specifically, specific people wanting specific things. I just remember the feeling of, “Ugh, this is too hard. It’s not gonna work.”

PLUME: I was noticing that the State By State with The State book was going for a couple hundred dollars on Amazon.

KENNEY-SILVER: That cracks me up. It’s a great book, I think. I don’t think I would pay a couple hundred dollars for it, but it’s a good book. Yeah, it’s fun. It’s a good toilet reader.

PLUME: Does it surprise you this sort of afterlife that The State has had?

KENNEY-SILVER: Yes and no. It was a great show, and I think it was… we were doing something unique at the time. And I was certainly aware of the cult following that was happening at the time, and people get excited about stuff like that. Little remnants of it sticking around. So I wasn’t… it surprises me that anyone would want to pay 200 dollars for that book, but… I think it’s great. I love that time in my life, still love all those people, and still am proud of all that work.

PLUME: So how does it feel to get that Monty Python question of “When are reunions gonna happen…”?

KENNEY-SILVER: Well, we have had reunions, in different ways. Not the, “Here comes The State, all together again…”

PLUME: But everyone’s in the Reno movie…

KENNEY-SILVER: Everyone’s in the Reno movie. Everyone, I believe, is in The Ten, which is David and Ken Marino’s movie. Yeah, I mean, we all do things together every day. We’re all gonna be together this coming weekend, just for fun. I think we’ll all work together always in one way or another, and I’m sure no one’s opposed to it taking the form of… everyone would love to all get together and do a show again. It’s just like a Cake Like thing. It’s like, “Well, how can this really work? Because your kids are in school at this time, and you’re doing this show, and you live here.” It’s a little more confusing than we all live in a big dorm and let’s get together and make a show.

PLUME: It’s really the direction you should have gone.

KENNEY-SILVER: I agree. I just love living in a dorm.

PLUME: Some sort of communal thing. You could have all gotten together.

KENNEY-SILVER: Well, that’s kinda how we lived for a long time. We really did live like that, and it was hard to have a life or relationships when you’re living with 10 men.

PLUME: I can certainly imagine that. Or you can have the most fascinatingly unique relationship of all.

KENNEY-SILVER: Yeah, I guess…

PLUME: So, how quickly after that did the idea of Viva Variety come about?

KENNEY-SILVER: Um… you know, I don’t know. Viva Variety was really Tom and Ben and Mike. It was really their idea, and I was kinda brought on. Because at the time I was also doing the band. There wasn’t much time off in between doing those two shows, for me. It moved pretty quickly.

PLUME: What is your reflection on that Viva Variety period, and that character in particular?

KENNEY-SILVER: I loved it. I completely loved it. It was such a fun show to do. And yeah, everybody just had a blast. It’s, like, really fun – having a musical number to learn each week is a fun way to live. Kinda hard to be at all a brooding artist when you have to learn little jazz dance steps and sing silly songs. It was great. We had a great time.

PLUME: Do you think, in some ways, the show was ahead of its time?

KENNEY-SILVER: I don’t know. I just think it was such a wonderfully weird idea. I don’t know if it was ahead of its time or it was so far behind its time. I don’t know what it was. It was different and I loved it.

PLUME: Seems like something that, if it had appeared in that sort of post-Austin Powers kind of throwback, I Love the 70s period would have really taken off…

KENNEY-SILVER: Right, exactly.

PLUME: People might have gotten the vibe a bit more.

KENNEY-SILVER: Yeah.

PLUME: And then, obviously, Reno was a bit of a surprise…

KENNEY-SILVER: What do you mean a bit of a surprise?

PLUME: The life that it took…

KENNEY-SILVER: Oh yeah, that it’s had a life… yeah, it’s surprising to me. It’s surprising to me only because… not because I don’t think it’s good, but just because… you just never know what the climate is gonna be for comedy. You think you know, and we’re so far off base, and with this one I just assumed it was gonna be like any other show that we did which is just – put it on the air, it quietly gets a little cult following and then we quietly go away. So I was surprised when it got any response.

PLUME: Are you keen on pursuing it for as far as it goes, or do you see a natural shelf life for it?

KENNEY-SILVER: I never thought it would last this long, to be honest with you. I think it will take other forms. I think certainly films are a fun direction to take these characters, because it’s a little bit… it has a beginning, a middle and an end, and it can live on its own in a season. But as far as the TV show goes, I don’t know how much farther we can or want to take it. We don’t really think about it that much, honestly. We just sort of do it… and contracts are coming up, so that will be more of an issue coming up soon. But for right now, we just keep going.

PLUME: Well, there’s always Broadway.

KENNEY-SILVER: There is always Broadway.

PLUME: I know that’s the dream.

KENNEY-SILVER: No one is more suited for Broadway than Trudy Wiegel.

PLUME: I can just imagine her solo now.

KENNEY-SILVER: Of course.

PLUME: It’d be the most touching piece in the entire thing, I think.

KENNEY-SILVER: If she can even figure out how to make it to the theater.

PLUME: Wouldn’t that be half the joke?

KENNEY-SILVER: Yeah…

PLUME: Personally, at this point in your life and career, when obviously you’re juggling quite a few things, where do you see the next five years taking you? Is there any direction that you want to move into?

KENNEY-SILVER: I don’t ever think that way. And I don’t know if it’s…I don’t think it’s possible in this business to really think that way. Yeah, there are directions I would like it to take. Directions that include millions and millions of dollars. There are lots of directions, but as far as really going out there and making something happen, for me, things present themselves, and I just sort of say yes to things and it either works or it doesn’t work. I don’t really feel like I’m gonna one day say, “Now, I’m all about movies. I’m just gonna do movies.” I’m not like that. There are people who are like that. There are actors who are like that. I don’t know if it’s that I don’t have enough confidence or what it is. But I can only say that the way I have conducted my career so far, I’ve been very, very happy with it. I wouldn’t want it to have been any other way. So I’m just gonna keep doing what I’m doing and hope that I continue to be happy doing it. And hope that there are outlets out there that will allow me to do it.

PLUME: Are there things that you won’t do?

KENNEY-SILVER: Oh, certainly, yeah. Not a lot. But there are things that I won’t do. Mostly the things I won’t do are things I know I won’t be good at. I don’t want to do something just because someone else thinks I can. If I don’t think I’m gonna be good at it, I’ll be the first to say, “You know what? I know you think you want me for this – you don’t want me for this.”

PLUME: What’s an example of that?

KENNEY-SILVER: Well, you know, I got a call from the people at Who’s Line Is It Anyway – Drew Carey’s show. And I just said, “Thank you very much, I’m flattered to even be thought of, that you would even think that I can do that. I can’t. Trust me. It’s a form of improv that I just know that I’m not good at. I tried it. I don’t feel comfortable doing it. Not good enough at it.” So those are more those kinds of things that I don’t think I could do justice to, I would rather not do, than try and talk myself into something, get there and go, “Oh, by the way, I’m not so good at this.” There are plenty of people who are good.

PLUME: Is that something you’ve done in the past?

KENNEY-SILVER: Yeah, we did it with The State and we were horrible at it. I mean, the worst improv-ers you’ve ever seen. We had a joke in our show of how bad we were at it. I’m fine if it’s an improv in character like we do in Reno, but when it comes to the games and things, oh my god we were horrible. We just sucked at it. It was embarrassing.

PLUME: So how long did the games period last within The State?

KENNEY-SILVER: Yeah, about an hour. It was horrible.

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