When Luke Null takes the stage with an acoustic guitar, it’s not to serenade a crowd. It’s for the punchlines.

“I’m a comedian first by a long shot and a musician later, and then I’m an all-right guitar player,” Null said in a Zoom interview. “I don’t get too fancy.”

The stand-up musician, whose style involves strumming through his jokes, said he studied chiefly traditional comedians for direction but has an affinity for performers who have incorporated music in their routines, such as Tenacious D, Flight of the Conchords, Stephen Lynch, Tim Minchin and Garfunkel and Oates.

Null is set to release his first stand-up special, “Pretty Songs, Dirty Words,” Tuesday on YouTube, where he’ll showcase the best of his musicianship and comedic writing with what he describes as an “all-out” production.

“I pulled out all the stops because I like a special to be special,” Null said. “It’s more than just me standing in front of a microphone and doing musical comedy for an hour. I turn the stage into a hellscape for a song. There’s a Tupac-size hologram of myself and Wayne Brady, who’s extremely talented, who improvises a song with me. I rented two industrial bubble machines, and I didn’t need that many bubbles, but we wanted to go all out because I wanted it to be different. I’m really proud of how it shook out, especially being fairly DIY.”

The comedy special was filmed at the Dynasty Typewriter in Los Angeles, one of Null’s favorite venues. He has lived in Los Angeles for seven years but still has a warm place in his heart for Chicago. Null said he always felt he wanted to do comedy, but in high school, most of his friends were in bands. He thought at some point, if he picked up the guitar, practiced hard enough, and got good at it, they’d invite him to join.

“The call never came, and they never kept me as backup,” Null jested. “I already knew how to play, so I just did my own thing. I was doing a lot of improv and some stand-up and sketch comedy in college. Then, one time, I incorporated a guitar, and it got a great response, and I never looked back.”

Null describes Chicago as a city whose comedy scene is more adventurous, receptive to the unusual, and willing to travel down the rabbit hole. One of the oldest comedy troupes, The Second City, has produced many acclaimed comedians, including Steve Carell, Jordan Peele, Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Keegan-Michael Key, Stephen Colbert and more.

The city also served as a good launching pad for Null, whose style isn’t always greeted with excitement. Null said there is some stigma that stand-up musicians experience more than traditional performers, but he doesn’t think it’s completely unfair.

“If you go to be improv or you’re going to see like six or seven comedians all do 15-minute sets, and you plop a musical comedian in an otherwise straight stand-up show, that can sometimes be jarring,” he said. “Music comedy operates on a binary in that it’s either good or bad. There’s not a lot of ‘okay’ musical acts. When it’s bad, oh boy, is it bad, but when it’s good, it’s so good. It’s one of my very favorite things.”

Null keeps his hand on the pulse of the crowd and feels validated when he delivers his routine and turns a skeptic into a believer. His style of comedy was enough to garner the attention of “Saturday Night Live” recruiters who came to see him at the iO in Chicago and had him audition in 2016.

He initially didn’t make the cut, but fellow Chicago comedian Alex Moffat got picked up and that gave him hope that it could happen to him, too.

Then, the following year, the recruiters came back, and Null shined this time around. He got the call, they flew him to New York and he auditioned on the iconic production stage. After making it through the grueling process, he scored a spot as a cast member for the 43rd season of “Saturday Night Live,” landing him his first job on television.

“It was truly an insane way to start a career at ‘Saturday Night Live,’ and it’s a hard place to be new, and nobody sugar coats that,” Null said. “I didn’t have any allies coming in. I didn’t go to Harvard or NYU or anything like that. I was just a state school kid from Cincinnati who was living in Chicago, and they came and scooped me up.”

In addition to starring in sketches, part of his responsibility was to write them. On the fly, he learned how to write comedy to fit the television format but in a voice for other stars like Kenan Thompson and Kate McKinnon. Another trick he picked up was structuring skits where he, as a writer, would have a few lines but mainly let the stars take the wheel. These strategies were the most effective way to get his skits to get some air time. Despite all his training and effort, Null was fired after starring in only one season, but he isn’t bitter about it.

“I’m thankful for the time,” Null said. “It was a tough pill to swallow when I first got fired, but I can look back now with rose-colored glasses and see it for the crazy opportunity that it was. It’s really been a blessing because it’s afforded me the runway to start a career in comedy, and I’ve been touring and doing stand-up ever since.”

He didn’t attend the recent three-hour telecast for Saturday Night Live’s 50th Anniversary, but he was invited to the SNL50: The Homecoming Concert where Bad Bunny, Cher, Post Malone, Miley Cyrus, Lady Gaga, Ms. Lauryn Hill, the Preservation Hall Jazz Band and The B-52s and others performed.

“I pretty much attended the event where they got everyone who got fired together for a once-in-a-lifetime concert to celebrate the man who fired every one of us,” Null said. ” It was very surreal, fun and cathartic. It was a good party and good vibes all around. I turned the page and moved on from my SNL days, but it was a nice period at the end of that sentence.”

Null is feeling good about the next chapter. He’s made peace for what he’s accomplished and is ready to share the release of his first comedy special, “Pretty Songs, Dirty Words,” with the world.

“I hope people enjoy it,” he said. “I hope you get a couple of giggles out, laugh and cry, even though there’s nothing really vulnerable or emotional about it. I hope that you feel like a phoenix rising from the ashes and that you feel fundamentally changed as a person and human being.”

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