Sun. July 11

  “Dude,” I said to Tommy Chong, the elder half of Cheech & Chong, after he picked up the phone at his L.A. home.
   The comedy duo is playing the Cape Cod Melody Tent Sunday July 11, after a Boston date Frida. I asked, “Will Dave be there”
   “Oh, Dave’s still not there,” Chong said.
   “How many years has Dave not been there? Forty?”
   “Yeah, he just hasn’t appeared,” Chong answered. “We just recorded something for ‘The Simpsons’ and Dave didn’t show up there either. It’s a whole bit on Cheech and I breaking up. We break up because I just got tired of doing ‘Dave’s not here.’ They wrote it. It’s very funny.”
   “Dave” is one of the classic stoner routines Cheech Marin and his once-again partner will uncork when their “Get It Legal” tour hits the Tent.
   Truth is, said Chong, when they broke up in 1985, they both really were tired of the stoner persona and the Dave joke, where pot does a number on clarity and impedes communication.
  “Cheech was feeling confined by that one character,” Chong said, “and with me it was basically the same. It was just so one-dimensional. The thing is when Cheech and I did the albums [in the early ‘70s], which really put us on the map, we played over 100 characters. But when we went onto the movie screen, we got trapped into the stoner characters.”
    Yet, Chong said, if they were called “the godfathers of stoner comedy,” he would accept the nod. “Proudly,” he said. “With honor.”
    So, Cheech, 63, & Chong, 72, will get back on that old horse  - and a few others – on this tour. They reunited in 2009, made a live DVD “Cheech & Chong’s Hey, Watch This,” and continue to do their mix of standup, sketch comedy and satirical music.
   “This is the last gasp of the career,” Chong said. “Cheech’s leading man roles diminished and my standup gigs faded into iconicism. We ended up just with each with other.”
    Regrets?
    “We had a great run,” Chong said, of their ride of the 1970s and 1980s. “Neither one of us are dead or strung out on junk. The fact that we can come back is like, ‘Wow, I think we’re the first comedy team to ever do what we did. Be together for 17 years, break up and then come back together again.’”
   Chong did spend nine months in federal prison in 2003-2004. His company was making pot paraphernalia – legal in California, but not in Pittsburgh, where a “customer” bought some of the product. The Feds came calling. Chong landed behind bars.
    “You know what they do when you get out?” Chong asked, rhetorically. “You have to write an essay the last month you’re in there. It’s part of the getting-out-process, ‘What did jail teach you?’
  “Well, it taught me a lot. I became humble. I became very thankful for what I had. And I became very aware of the injustice of the pot laws. So, that’s what I took out of it. I became a Get It Legal activist. They put me in jail because they thought I was the character I portrayed on screen.”
  What’s Chong’s current weed intake?
   “It’s down to almost zero,” he said. “I’m an avid one-hitter. When you’re young you can do everything in excess. When you get older. it’s the opposite: moderation.”
    But, say this: As comics, Cheech & Chong know their fan base. The day after Barack Obama was elected, they posted a “Get out and vote” video on www.funnyordie.com. 
  “It was such a pothead move, wasn’t it?” Chong said.

(This is an expanded version of a story that was in the Boston Herald, www.bostonherald.com. )

Tickets; $63.50-$46.50

21 W. Main St., Hyannis, 508-775-5630 www.melodytent.org