Jim Gaffigan coming to Chastain Park Amphitheatre August 16

By RODNEY HO/rho@ajc.com, originally filed Wednesday, March 4, 2015

Jim Gaffigan is bringing his trenchant observational humor to an unusual stage: Chastain Park Amphitheatre August 16.

Tickets go on sale here starting at 10 a.m. Friday with plenty of pre-sale opportunities for Ticketmaster, American Express, Live Nation and artist fan club types. Prices range from $39.25 to $86.25.

Stand-up artists rarely do Chastain. Usually, it's home to the likes of James Taylor and Hall & Oates because these types of venues work well for music and tend to not blow out aging people's eardrums.

In general, comics prefer indoor settings where the laughter won't float up into the the open air but reverberate inside a theater or club. Humor is infectious and a rumbling space can often energize a comic. (That's why so many stand ups are lamenting the loss of the current space of the Punchline in a month. The acoustics worked well for comics.)

Comics occasionally venture outside. Last fall, Lakewood Amphitheatre hosted a bunch of comics including Aziz Ansari and Louis CK for the Oddball Comedy Festival. And I recall Rickey Smiley did Chastain a decade ago.

Gaffigan, a New Yorker with five kids, has a sitcom set to debut later this year on TV Land called "The Jim Gaffigan Show." He does TV commercials galore and the occasional comedy specials, his last on Comedy Central. He loves to talk about food. He manages to merge religion and food here: