Last year, I was sad to see one of my favorite festivals, the Women In Comedy Festival, take a hiatus. “Hiatus” can mean bad things for a festival. But in the case of the WICF, it meant that they were expanding, building a podcast network, presenting more live shows year round, and creating a news and humor portal. And this year, they came back with a bigger festival than they’d ever attempted, 89 shows and workshops over five days.

I bounced around the festival with my trusty Zoom recorder and interviewed people I’d just seen for the first time like Femmedy Trio and Caitlin Gill, acts I’d spoken with for the podcast like the Reformed Whores, and people I’d covered for the Boston Globe before like Erin Judge and Kaytlin Bailey of the CAKE Comedy Tour, plus festival founders Michelle Barbera and Elyse Schuerman.

It was an amazing smorgasbord of comedy, and I got to see about seven shows over the four nights I was able to go. And there will be two more podcasts coming from this year’s WICF — an interview with stand-up and improvisor Petey Gibson and a phone interview with Rita Rudner. Those will both post sometime in May.

At the end of the podcast, hear a great, gritty new tune “TrainWrecker” from Scott H. Biram‘s new album The Bad Testament. If you enjoyed the podcast, you can subscribe and review on iTunes, Stitcher, and wherever quality podcasts are downloaded. You can also listen and download this episode in the play below.

A sampling of the comedians featured in this podcast:

Femmedy Trio

Caitlin Gill

Reformed Whores

CAKE Comedy