Stephen Lynch talks comedy before his gig at the Casino Ballroom

You heard it here first: Stephen Lynch has never killed a kitten. Or so he claims. When first asked if he had ever committed the heinous act, Lynch pleaded the fifth. Then, fearing that his words would be misconstrued and get him into trouble, he solemnly declared, “No, I have never killed a kitten.”

His cautious response was understandable. A comic musician and rising star in the comedy world, Lynch said a man offended by the lyrics to his song “Kill a Kitten” once tried to organize national protests against the song. Evidently, the irked listener took Lynch’s words a bit too literally, interpreting them as a cultish call to arms against cute little felines.

In a recent phone interview, Lynch said “Kill a Kitten” was initially written as a throw-away song, an attempt to see if he could “come up with a really beautiful melody and song, juxtaposed with the most horrific thing I could think of, because I figured those two would make it kind of funny.”

That approach is typical of Lynch’s brand of comedy. The entertainer tickled the hell out of a large audience at the Hampton Beach Casino Ballroom on June 26. He blends quality guitar-based songwriting with absurd and often obscene lyrics to create an irresistibly funny clash. Just as your toes start tapping, Lynch delivers a line that slaps you into an involuntary fit of chuckling. And it’s the earnestness with which he sings the words, as much as the black humor of the lyrics, that makes you laugh.

Of course, by modern standards, Lynch’s lyrics aren’t all that contentious. Phenomena like “South Park,” “Jackass” and “Borat” have raised the bar pretty high for crass comedy. But when Lynch first started performing in New York clubs 12 years ago, his songs raised some eyebrows—and dropped some jaws.

“People are expecting a comedian to stand against a brick wall and tell a few jokes about the difference between men and women or airplane food or something, and I would break out a song about a guy who’s explaining to his six-year-old daughter that her mommy is leaving him because he robs liquor stores,” Lynch said. “It was a little shocking to some people, I guess.”

Lynch said his interest in songwriting developed well before his fascination with comedy. Hailing from a musical family in Northern Michigan (his father still sings professionally), Lynch picked up a guitar and began crafting songs at an early age. He started writing funny songs to amuse his friends in college, and it became a popular routine at parties.

“We’d all be sitting around somebody’s $50-a-month apartment, drinking 40s of beer and getting high, and somebody would inevitably break out a guitar and I would play something that I had written and people would laugh,” Lynch said. “I never thought it would go beyond those people and that house.”

Equipped with his newfound form of entertainment, Lynch moved to New York in 1996 and began playing at a cabaret theater in midtown Manhattan. He didn’t know what to expect when he first performed in front of a public audience, but much to his surprise, it caught on. “I didn’t think anybody would laugh, but everybody did,” Lynch said. He started gigging around the city’s comedy circuit and appearing on radio shows, and before too long he was on the road, touring the nation’s nightclubs and colleges.

Lynch’s career got a boost in 2000, when his “Comedy Central Presents” special aired to exceptionally high ratings. He released his first CD, “A Little Bit Special,” that same year on What Are Records. He has now put out three full-length albums, as well as live recordings and DVDs. More recently, he starred in the Broadway musical version of “The Wedding Singer,” adopting the role Adam Sandler played in the 1998 movie of the same name. (Lynch’s original songs are much funnier than Sandler’s, by the way.)

Lynch has written songs about dead puppies, murdering his grandfather, shoving gerbils up his ass and yes, killing kittens, among other things. He has even written about Jesus’ lesser-known brother, a wild party animal named Craig—Craig Christ.

At the Casino Ballroom, Lynch opened with a new song that seemed to exemplify his hilarious and often taboo subject matter. Called “Waiting,” the song finds the singer anxiously awaiting the results of a test. “Waiting for my AIDS test to come back,” Lynch sings. “I never should have boned that tranny in my Cadillac.”

The show was almost equal parts scripted music and comic improvisation, with a couple of Lynch’s friends joining him for certain routines. When someone mockingly requested “Freebird” after Lynch’s first song, he responded by angrily cursing out the audience member, but then proceeded to play several verses of the song, along with pieces of “Stairway to Heaven,” “Bohemian Rhapsody” and other epic classics. He also took time to address his Hampton Beach audience, referring to the Ballroom as a “gay roller rink” and calling the $26 to $46 ticket price a rip-off.

Lynch said he often discovers his lyrics by playing the same guitar riff over and over again until words come to him. But he grabs snippets of material from everyday occurrences, things he hears in conversations with friends, reads in books or sees on TV. The key to his own success, he said, is making himself laugh.

“I can pull inspiration out of anything,” Lynch said. “Basically, I figure anything that is sort of funny to me or makes me laugh will make the people that I’m singing for laugh. If I play it and I don’t laugh myself, then I’m not gonna bother to continue writing it.”

Lynch tries to inject bits of social commentary into almost all his songs, but not with the direct, topical approach of someone like Lewis Black. Some of his songs, he explained, are straight dick jokes. Others are dick jokes with a subtle message. Still others are pure satire with nary a mention of dicks. But even his most satiric routines generally stay away from current news events. (At the Ballroom, adopting a Dana Carvey-Church Lady voice, Lynch did vow that Satan would prevent Barack Obama from being elected president.)

Lynch said he still gets nervous before every performance. Each audience is different, and he never knows what a crowd might latch on to. When he utters a line and the crowd cracks up, he is more relieved than elated.

“I would say it’s about 20 percent exultation and/or joy, and about 80 percent relief,” Lynch said. “When you get that big laugh on something that you hoped you would, it’s a great feeling, and I would say it’s mostly sort of a wiping of the brow and a ‘Whew!’ kind of moment.”

Lynch had several of those moments at the Casino Ballroom last week. Whether he was singing about Nazis, Satan or the infamous Dirty Sanchez, he rarely failed to get big laughs, even when threatening to smash his guitar over a persistent heckler’s head.