Harry Shearer: Getting back to kidding around

Harry Shearer’s new album, “Can’t Take a Hint,” released worldwide today in digital form, came on the heels of the two years that the comedian, actor, radio show host, writer and satirist spent in his adopted home of New Orleans, working on “The Big Uneasy,” his own non-satiric documentary about Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, from which the city is still recovering.

It’s earned him awards at several film festivals where it has screened, and it’s now widely available on Netflix.

“For two years, I had to be totally serious because we were dealing with factual material and things that were literally matters of life and death,” he said. “So after that, which included six months of touring the country with the film, I was ready to get back to kidding around again.”

The result is 13 songs spanning a broad spectrum of topics, most of them handled with Shearer’s caustic sense of humor. One exception is “Autumn in New Orleans,” which features two of that city’s favorite-son musicians -- Dr. John and trumpeter Nicholas Payton -- on what essentially is a straightforward love song to the Crescent City.

The first video from the record is for the song “Celebrity Booze Endorser,” a phrase that Shearer told me caught his eye when he was leafing through People magazine a while back on a story about various stars with endorsement deals with alcohol-related products. Helping him out on the track, and in the video, are members of Fountains of Wayne.

When we spoke about the album last week at his home in Santa Monica, he was shortly to be jetting off again, this time back to London to delve into his starring role as Richard M. Nixon in a new TV comedy series, “Nixon’s the One,” which has been greenlighted for a handful of episodes by the British Sky Arts channel. Shearer is hoping to find a U.S. outlet for the show, which is based on transcripts of conversations and meetings recorded in the Nixon White House.

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