Hear Fred Armisen nail a different accent for nearly every state in the union

We know that Fred Armisen is a master of many voices and accents, thanks to his plethora of Saturday Night Live characters, his wide variety of Documentary Now! performances, his multitude of voiceover work in everything from Big Mouth to PBS Kids’ Nature Cat. But a new highlighted video on the Netflix Is A Joke YouTube channel, points out that Armisen can even do individual accents based on nearly every single state in the union, breaking down even further into individual New York boroughs, or the differences between Texas cities Dallas, Houston, and Austin.

In this fascinating five-minute clip from his 2018 Netflix special Standup For Drummers, Armisen uses a pointer and a U.S. map to display not only a firm knowledge of domestic geography, but the dozens of individual accents and dialects each state contains, starting with Maine and then working his way all across the country. He points out the way the southern accent tightens up between West Virginia and Kentucky, for example, or that the difference between the Brooklyn and Bronx accent is that Bronx is “in the lungs.” He also maintains that the Wisconsin accent is more Chicago than Chicago (or, as he puts it, more “Chicahgo than Chicahgo”) and as midwesterners, we have to agree. This five-minute clip will offer some insight into the kind of voices you may hear on your next (god willing) summer road trip, and will also give you even more appreciation for Armisen’s voice talent after this astonishing performance.