Nick Offerman talks Gordon Lightfoot, Ron Swanson and coney dogs

Nick Offerman is a Gordon Lightfoot man.

The actor, comedian, author, part-time farmer and occasional singer has his Thursday show at the Colosseum at Caesars Windsor circled on his calendar because he's excited to regale fans with tales of the Canadian folk singer, who died in May and has deep ties to the Great Lakes area.

"I've got a bunch of material in my show that I came upon accidentally about the late, great Gordon Lightfoot, who is a sort of foundational artist to my voice and my milieu," says Offerman, who says he discovered some surprising information about the singer when prepping a show he played in Lightfoot's hometown of Orillia, Ontario, earlier this year. When this reporter misstates a reference to the number of church bells that chime in "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald," Lightfoot's epic about the 1975 sinking of the freighter on Lake Superior, Offerman chimes in. "I believe it's 29," he says correctly, "and my chest is puffing out that I know that."

Go ahead and add Gordon Lightfoot expert to the resume of the 51-year-old, who got his big break as Ron Swanson, the mustached malcontent he played on NBC's "Parks and Recreation." It's the kind of role that would threaten to swallow many an actor whole, but Offerman has been zagging from it ever since, playing parts in films like "Heart Beats Loud" and on TV's "Fargo" and "Devs" that are far removed from Swanson's bone-dry, deadpan style. He's nominated for an Emmy for his memorable guest turn as a survivalist living out a love affair against the backdrop of a zombie apocalypse on "The Last of Us."

On his current tour, which is taking place during Hollywood's actor's strike, Offerman is telling stories and singing songs. "I say that I'm a humorist and not a comedian," he says on the phone last week from Savannah, Georgia. "It's similar, I just talk too slowly to be considered funny."

A late break

Offerman's "Parks and Rec" break didn't come until he was 38 years old, and he's thankful for the timing.

"When 'Parks and Recreation' happened, I was already happy, and it allowed me to just to really handle it in a much more adult way than if it had happened to me 10 or 15 years earlier," says Offerman, who starred on "Parks & Rec" for seven seasons from 2009-15. "If it would have happened to me when I was younger, there's a good chance that it would have had a very bad influence on me. I would have run the risk of getting a big head and probably riding a motorcycle too dangerously, thinking I was indestructible."

Offerman was raised in Minooka, Illinois, a "cultural vacuum" — Offerman's words — that he describes as "50 minutes and 50 years" from Chicago. Mom was a nurse, dad was a social studies teacher, and Offerman was the second of four kids. (He has an older sister, a younger sister and a younger brother.)

He couldn't see a clear path to the entertainment industry but he knew from an early age that he loved to entertain people. "I just had this jackass panache where any opportunity I was like, 'Hey you guys, check me out!'" he says.

That eventually led him to school plays and he studied theater acting in college, at the University of Illinois. After school he moved to Chicago, where he started a theater company, Defiant Theatre, and was involved in the city's improv community, where he met his future "Parks" co-star, Amy Poehler.

A man of many tastes

Offerman moved to Los Angeles in the late '90s to pursue acting, and he scored small roles on "ER" and in the Nic Cage-Meg Ryan romance "City of Angels." He met "Will & Grace's" Megan Mullally in 2000 when the pair was in a play together, and when they started dating — he was living in a basement in Silver Lake at the time — getting introduced to the sitcom star's world "was like being thrown into the deep end" of showbiz, he says.

Suddenly, there were offers: One night while out at dinner, an agent complimented him on his smooth, baritone voice, and said they needed to get him involved in voiceover work. "It was incredibly dreamy," Offerman says. "It was like any kid's dream that you're gonna show up in L.A. and somebody's gonna pull over on the side of the road and be like, 'Hey kid, you got the goods? Get over here!'" (Offerman and Mullally married in 2003, and last month they celebrated 20 years of marriage.)

These days, Offerman does his share of voice work — he's voiced characters in the "Lego Movie," "Sing" "Ice Age" and "Hotel Transylvania" franchises, as well as in the bananas animated series "Axe Cop" — and he's written several books, including 2021's "Where the Deer and the Antelope Play: The Pastoral Observations of One Ignorant American Who Loves to Walk Outside." (He's also narrated several books, some his own, some for hire.) He's into woodworking as a hobby, and he's part owner of a herd of Belted Galloway cows in England's Lake District, just below the Scottish border.

He's a man who appreciates culture in all forms, which is why during a 2013 stop at the Royal Oak Music Theatre he partook in a local delicacy. "I was educated in the school of what I believe is called the carney dog?" says Offerman, to which this reporter tells him it's a coney dog. "Yes! The coney dog. This is back when I wasn't worried about fitting into my jeans, so I think I had three of those before my show."

Offerman says it's his favorite memory of playing in Metro Detroit, scarfing down those three coneys before going on stage with his shirt off and making an audience laugh for 90 minutes. It's a vivid, poetic detail, so much so that even the master himself, Gordon Lightfoot, would be proud.

Nick Offerman: Live

8 p.m. Thursday

The Colosseum at Caesars Windsor, 377 Riverside Dr. East, Windsor

Tickets $68.89 CA and up

Ticketmaster.ca

agraham@detroitnews.com