Courtesy The stuffed-shirt nature of most piano performances are sharply at odds with what one expects from a stage comedian, yet Dale Gonyea revels in skewering the serious. He will bring his unique brand of comedy and songs to Caldwell Auditorium on Tuesday.

Most musicians don’t want their audience to laugh at their performances. Dale Gonyea, however, thrives on it.

Of course, it helps that he gets up on stage to deliver his unique brand of musical comedy (delivered from behind the keyboard of a piano), but still. Clad in a spiffy tuxedo and yet shod in chartreuse-colored Chuck Taylor sneakers, the visual contrasts in his stage appearance are a very visible representation of his approach to performance.

The stuffed-shirt nature of most piano performances are sharply at odds with what one normally expects from a stage comedian, and yet Gonyea revels in skewering the serious.

“The funniest thing to me is when the opera singer falls off the tower and bounces back,” Gonyea said. “To me, anytime you can have something that is supposed to be serious and then gets twisted. The basis for a lot of comedy is surprise. So if you’re being very serious and then something funny happens, that’s part of the surprise.”

Gonyea showed an aptitude for piano at the early age of five, even when his family didn’t own a piano. He was a hardline musician, studying music at the University of Michigan until he found himself moving out to California and eventually playing comedy clubs where he realized he could both follow his musical passions while also making people laugh.

There’s a certain thrill, he said, that comes from doing comedy, knowing that your audience could be lost with one flubbed bit.

“Steve Martin used to say the hardest thing about doing comedy is that you are always two minutes away from losing them completely and Tom Waits used to say that when it’s going well there’s nothing more exhilarating, but when it’s not, it’s like trying to pick up a house,” Gonyea said.

Treading in satire, songwriting and wordplay, he takes inspiration from the likes of Woody Allen and even Allan Sherman. Coming up with both songs and jokes (and songs with jokes) can be difficult as audiences are never predictable in their response. Sometimes the most unexpected things get the biggest laughs.

“Sometimes I will have something planned and it’ll get a response, then halfway through a show I’ll come up with an ad-lib and it’ll get the biggest laugh of the show and you think, ‘Oh my god’ because it was just spontaneous,” he said. “But sometimes I’ll do my show out loud and those moments will come to me. But like you said, there are things that I will think are just hilarious but don’t work at all. You just never know.”

Gonyea has written songs for Disney, Ray Stevens, Rich Little and Bette Midler and earned an Emmy Award. He will bring his unique brand of comedy and songs to Caldwell Auditorium on Tuesday as part of the Tyler Community Concert Association’s 2013-14 Live On Stage season.

Gonyea’s performance will begin at 7:30 p.m. Individual tickets are $30 per person with season passes available for $70, granting access to this and the season’s remaining four shows. For more information or for tickets, call 903-592-6266 or visit www.tcca.biz.