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We are the Venues: An Interview with Comedian Dana Jay Bein

Comedian Dana Jay Bein, author of “Coronavirus Rhapsody,” Talks Humor, Hope, and the Highlights of Being a Viral Sensation

By Emilie Rohrbach

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Photo Credit: Jaime Scala


Is this a sore throat, is this allergies?

Caught in a lockdown, no escape from reality

Don’t touch your eyes, just hand sanitize quickly

I’m just a poor boy, no job security

Because it’s easy spread, even though

Washed your hands, laying low

I look out the window, curve doesn’t look flatter to me

To me

In the beginning of May, Dana Jay Bein said good-bye to Inman Oasis. Located in Bein’s residence of Cambridge, Massachusetts and founded in 2005, Inman Oasis was a wellness spa that offered massage therapy, hot tubs, and, most important, community. A quick glance at their website shows an abundance of accolades, including more than twenty awards. However, like many small American businesses during this global pandemic, Inman Oasis was faced with 6 to 7 months of lost wages and an uncertain future after reopening. It was forced to close.

Bein, Assistant Operations Manager and an employee for three years, helped gut the space, part of a socially distanced crew that over a few days took apart the tubs, the reception desk, and the sign over the front door, all wood that will be repurposed, all through a torrent of tears. Inman Oasis felt like home, and he was distraught at the idea of losing it.

However, while an important part of his world is ending, Bein is also faced with a whole new world that’s most likely just beginning. You see, Dana Jay Bein is the parody writer who penned “Coronavirus Rhapsody.” It’s probable you know of the “Coronavirus Rhapsody” phenomenon: his initial tweet has 40 million views. His Facebook post has been shared hundreds and hundreds of thousands of times. Singer Adrian Grimes’ YouTube video has 10 million views. Paramind, a band based in California, has a version that also has millions of views, in large part because that’s the version Jamie Lee Curtis and Whoopi Goldberg promoted.

That’s right – Jamie Lee Curtis, Whoopi Goldberg, Bradley Whitford, Khloe Kardashian, and Elizabeth Banks (who tweeted that her kids loved it), have all shared the lyrics or some version of the song. Bein has been interviewed by WGBH, CBS Boston, and NPR. His lyrics were featured in Billboard Magazine and co-billed a NBC headline with Tom Hanks. All in all, his lyrics have easily been shared, retweeted, and reposted over 100 million times. Someone from the Library of Congress reached out with a desire to preserve a version of the song in its pandemic art history collection.

Most people don’t know 41-year-old Bein has spent his life in comedy. (“To go that far back is going to take awhile because I have to use a VCR,” jokes Bein.) Raised in West Springfield, Massachusetts, “I was a very scared kid,” admits Bein. “I was afraid of everything: adults, authority, the dark, the Mob, ghosts, thunderstorms, everything.” He was small and athletic, so he used humor and sports as a way to connect with people.

In high school, Bein got a part-time job working at an Irish pub. One of the other people working in the kitchen was doing standup, thought Bein was funny, and asked Bein if he wanted to do some shows together. “My comedy back then was punching down, making fun of the vulnerable, shock comedy, which is very easy to do, and not technically good comedy, as it lacks in self-awareness.”

This led him to performing in college with an audience interactive murder mystery troupe in shows that were half scripted and half improvised, which opened up the world of improvisation. After graduating, he auditioned for and was accepted into ImprovBoston in 2001 and performed with them for the next 15 years, including their national touring company. He started teaching stand-up workshops though IB around 2005, which led to more teaching and weekly stand up shows. In 2015, he recorded an album at The Majestic Theater in his hometown called “Western Masochist.” He was the comic-in-residence at The Comedy Studio in Somerville in November 2018 and was awarded by the city of Cambridge for his two-decade service to the comedy arts. He’s taught a few thousand students. In 2018 alone, he delivered almost 300 shows.

When I ask him about his biggest success before “Coronavirus Rhapsody,” Bein responds, “I think my biggest measure of success is that I’m still doing this – I still create, I still enjoy it.” But it’s true that to Google Bein now means perusing through 45 pages of “Coronavirus Rhapsody” references. “People don’t know that before March 18th, I was a comedian. Since March 18th, I’ve become ‘parody guy.’ I love writing, but it’s strange to be pigeon holed. I’m not going to become ‘Weirder Al.’ I’m still going to focus on stand up comedy projects.”

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Photo Credit: Ilya Mirman


With 20 years of comedy under his belt, Bein still claims “Coronavirus Rhapsody” was a fluke. “On the 18th of March, I was in my room, not feeling too great. I had cold symptoms and I’m a goof so I deal with things in a strange way. I sang, ‘Is this a sore throat or is this just allergies?’ out loud and I said to myself, ‘Wait a minute.’ I wrote that down and then the song just fell out of my head. It happened in about ten minutes.”

Bein laughed out loud a few times while writing it, then posted it to social media.

People started demanding that Bein sing it, and he claims, “I sing like an ingrown toenail even when I’m not sick.” He challenged people with a hashtag and said, “ You do it.” And then a thousand versions appeared all over social media. “Five or six versions of my song went viral as well. My lyrics kept getting elevated by these other artists. It became this incredible socially distant collaboration. It went worldwide. I have credits I can’t even pronounce. Where is this place? Oh, Croatia. Oh, wow, now it’s in South Africa. Now people from Wuhan are thanking me. The possibility of it going viral again is big. It’s been seen on every platform probably a hundred million times.”

Bein knew when he shared it some of his friends would find it funny, but he never expected the parody to explode the way it did. “I put a lot of things on Facebook and Twitter. I throw a lot at the wall. My most recent parody took me 25 times as long to write and no one is sharing it or tweeting it. I shared it two days ago and no one cared. But when I posted this, for the next three days I couldn’t take my eyes off the screen.”

Fortunately, Bein has a lighthearted view of the inconsistent response of the Internet. “You never know what connects to people and what doesn’t. It depends on when you share it, how you share it, how emotional people are feeling.”

In my opinion, it’s a combination of Bein’s talent and timing that made “Coronavirus Rhapsody” take off. Most of America received shelter-in-place orders around March 13th, and Bein’s parody came out five days later. He was one of the first people to offer brevity in a new normal of fear and uncertainty.

“People are hard on artists and what they do, but what’s been shown in the last two months, even in the face of watching our beloved venues close and not knowing if they’ll reopen, is that artists are going to create. And you start to realize art doesn’t live at the venues, it lives in the souls of the artists. The venues will find us – we are the venues. The spaces wouldn’t be meaningful without the artists to begin with.”

Bein has done his best to keep track of what’s happened with his lyrics. He’s curated his 50 favorite recorded versions on his website, and he lists the press as it comes in. “I’ve learned there’s a difference between journalism and content sharing. It starts to look like the same thing – people want to be a part of this wave but they don’t necessarily care about truth or integrity. It’s representative of what’s wrong with our media. Some people wrote I was a girl. Some people wrote I was from Cambridge in the UK.”

You’d think with all this attention, Bein would be raking in the monetary rewards, but he admits he’s doing a terrible job capitalizing on the experience. “I’m not really interested – besides, any money made would be ours, not mine.” By “ours,” Bein is referring to the many charities he’s supported in the past. All Dana Jay Bein (DJB) merchandise is linked to different causes he cares about, including ImprovBoston, The Comedy Studio, 1369 Coffeehouse, Inman Oasis, Boston Health Care for the Homeless, The Majestic Theater, Planned Parenthood, the National Center for Trans Equality and RAICES Texas (ever the comedian, Bein’s quick to spell it out: “RAICES – not RACIST – Texas”).

“What I’d really like is for someone to offer to create a cover of the song for money, and then I could flip that to help the people in my communities who are struggling. This is bigger than me.”

The same week “Coronavirus Rhapsody” went viral, Bein found out Inman Oasis would be closing indefinitely, permanently in that location. “All over the world my song was taking off, but I was secretly sobbing because the job that saved my life was crumbling.”

As he talks about what it feels like to lose this community, I ask him if it’s possible for him to find hope right now.

“I find a lot of hope everywhere,” says Bein. “It’s always the darkest before the dawn, and it’s dark right now. This country’s found its bottom. We are not a great country right now. We are not taking care of our vulnerable. Our systems are couched in white supremacy and patriarchy.”

But Bein sees hope in art, in artists, in small acts of kindness, “I see hope in people trying to motivate each other and being there for each other. People are survivors. You see people making adjustments. Things aren’t going to be the same but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they’ll be bad. You have to be the hope. Don’t let it go. Show up for people. That is hope. We are all that we need. Just like we are the venues, we are the hope. We’ve got this.”

Link to original tweet and full lyrics:

Adrian Grimes’ cover: https://youtu.be/8KPbJ0-DxTc

Paramind’s cover: https://youtu.be/x06ot9hNE80

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Photo Credit: Amanda Macchia Photography



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