Musician Jonathan Coulton has some unique channels for reaching the public; he's the resident troubadour (and podcaster) for Popular Science, and is the musical director for his friend, author/Daily Show contributor John Hodgman. But his most successful avenue has been simple Internet word-of-mouth. His quirky tune "Code Monkey", about a lovelorn programmer, has been downloaded over a million times, not to mention his other pieces of 'Net buzz such as "Re Your Brains" or his folksy take on a campy classic. I had the opportunity to meet up with him at his recent Boston show, where he was affable and approachable, seeming rather humbled by the passion of his newfound fans. He was kind enough to let me interview him.

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You recently wrapped up "Thing a Week", a year-long experiment where you, well, wrote and published a new song each week. Was it hard meeting that weekly deadline, especially toward the end?

It got hard about week five, and mostly stayed that way till the end. I think every song writer has a store of ideas for a rainy day, fragments that never became full songs. Once I worked my way through those it got interesting, because I was working with a totally blank slate every week. It was exhausting, but very gratifying to find out that most of the time I could still produce good stuff, even under those conditions. There were definitely some weeks where I was lucky enough to be struck with an idea that almost wrote itself, but that old saying about the ratio of inspiration to perspiration was pretty spot on.

You're also a one-man band, so you're laying down each track yourself. Did the recording take more of the time than the writing? Or do you record as you write?

I always tried to finish writing the whole song before I recorded a note, somehow that always feels more comfortable to me. But there were some weeks when I just ran out of time and had to do both at once. The writing part was always more time consuming for me, especially since it's hard to tell when you're writing and when you're just resting. Does riding your bike around and waiting for ideas count as writing?

You're an advocate of the Creative Commons license, and have released your original material under that license, meaning anyone can copy it, legally – the idea being that this encourages people to spread it around and act as publicity. Do you feel the model's been working? Did the income pick up once songs like "Code Monkey" built up buzz?

Definitely. I loved Creative Commons first in the abstract, for the way it suggests this world of cross-pollination and unexpected collaboration. I admit I was a little worried about the legal copying and passing around of stuff that was for sale, and I still think it's very counterintuitive to say that it benefits an artist. But I really think it does. Everything that's happened this year has come from word of mouth, blogs, podcasts, etc. – I really didn't play that many live shows in 2006, and I didn't directly pursue any press or publicity. I was too busy riding my bike around waiting for ideas.

Your material covers both humorous subject matter, as well as more serious material like "A Talk With George", and even stuff that's quirky but not necessarily funny, like "Seahorse", a song about how seahorses mate. Do people tend to respond to one more than the other? It seems like your funnier material has gotten more press, but the non-funny stuff has depth that I hope fans have discovered.

The funny ones are certainly the hits. But I've been working on bringing the serious stuff a little closer to the front lately, and people seem to respond to that too. When I did the NPR interview, most of the emails I got were about Code Monkey, the quirky one. But I did get a small number of really touching emails from people were moved by "You Ruined Everything," the sweet and not-so-funny one I sang about becoming a parent. In a way that's more satisfying to me, because it's all honest and straightforward emotions, both in terms of what I'm putting out there, and how it's making people feel.

Certainly at your Boston show, the crowd (who admitted they were mostly non-parents) really responded to that. I think a lot of them were there for the funny stuff, but by the time you finished "You Ruined Everything" the applause was really warm and the crowd was really touched. I think it says something that they could get something out of it even if (unlike, say, "Code Monkey") they couldn't personally relate.

Yes, I suppose I got away with it after all that night. It's always a bit of a puzzle to know when to deploy that kind of stuff – sometimes it works well, and other times it kills the momentum. One of these days I'm going to do a whole night of depressing slow songs, and everyone will realize that I've gotten way to big for my britches. And then I'll do a record of jazz standards with an orchestra.

And why is it, anyway, that geeks seem especially drawn to comedy in music? Dr. Demento and Weird Al have practically built their careers around the goofy-nerd base.

I don't think it's just geeks – everybody wants to hear songs about themselves. And the truth is, most of the details of our lives are kind of ridiculous anyway – I think that something like Weird Al's "White and Nerdy" is far more likely to speak directly to someone's situation than say, the love theme from Titanic.

Before you started recording your solo material, you sang in collegiate a cappella groups. Did that influence your current style? (You seem to favor vocal harmonies, and certainly a cappella groups are no strangers to humorous material.)

I'm sure it did – I've always loved vocal-heavy music, Beach Boys, Beatles. And singing a cappella was a lot of fun and musically very satisfying. And yes, a cappella can be a little goofy, but also, they mean it. I think the best example is the Whiffenpoof Song "Gentlemen songsters off on a spree, Damned from here to eternity, God have mercy on such as we, Baa, baa, baa." Those are ridiculous lines, and I'm pretty sure they're meant to be ironic, or at least overly dramatic. But they make Whiffenpoofs cry.

Without a label's backing or an agent, it can be hard for musicians to get airtime or gigs. Since "Code Monkey" made its splash, has it been easier to get booked or otherwise publicized? You just appeared on NPR, for instance.

Yes – like anything else, more stuff leads to more stuff. Analogies about fires catching and snowballs rolling downhill really do seem to apply. Part of what people are interested in is the story of how I'm doing what I'm doing, and that story only gets more interesting the more attention I get. So you should all book me on your shows right away.

You're the official "Contributing Troubadour" for Popular Science. How did that come about?

It was the result of a late-night poker game at a futurist conference in Maine – you know how these things go. I was playing cards with some editors from the magazine who had heard me play at the conference, and they suggested I start writing music for the magazine. They were particularly tickled by the title "Contributing Troubadour," and put me on the masthead almost immediately. At that point I had little choice. I've written a few songs and snippets for various PopSci-related purposes, and of course I do the PopSci Podcast from the Moon. It's very glamorous work...

You're currently on tour with Paul & Storm. Their comedic styling is more direct than yours; your humor is often more understated. Are the Paul & Storm fans receptive to your stuff?

I think that's true about our song writing styles, but I also think that they're pretty talented song writers. And heaven knows, I'm not always that subtle myself. We generally find that our audiences cross over pretty well – theirs like to meet me and mine like to meet them. It's been a lot of fun traveling and playing with them, and they were very nice to ask me along and show me how this working musician thing is done.

When I saw the double bill, I know my first thought was that the two acts were an excellent pairing. You both have a similar sense of pop harmony but complementary song styles, and inject humor into your work but without being a novelty act. You're a lot closer to, say, Barenaked Ladies than Mark Russell. (That's a compliment.)

I can't think of anything funny or interesting to say in response that isn't just a random, meanlingless, lashing out at Mark Russell, which somehow doesn't feel right.

You are indeed a better man than I. Lastly, now that your collaborator John Hodgman's all over my TV, when is Apple going to put you in an ad? You should be the personified iPod.

No kidding. Tell Steve Jobs to give me a call, would you?