A 12 O’CLOCK GUY COMES TO TOWN

“My parents never said, ‘Don’t go into show business,’ ” Dale Gonyea said, “but they did worry, until my first appearance on the ‘Merv Griffin Show.’ Merv said, “Here’s a very talented guy’--and if Merv said it, well, it had to be true. So after that, they left me alone.”

But Gonyea, whose “A 12 O’Clock Guy in a 9 O’Clock Town” opens Tuesday at the Canon Theatre, hasn’t quite left his parents alone. They’re featured heavily in his new comedy/music act: from “Nobody Knows Shirley Gonyea” (“just a regular housewife in Michigan with nine children”), to “My Dad Can Beat Up Your Dad, But He Wouldn’t” and “Help, I’m Turning Into My Parents,” inspired by real-life purchases of Tupperware and a station wagon.

“I talk a little about how I got started, my family,” Gonyea said. “My grandfather was in vaudeville--as a violinist, tap dancer, tenor soloist and boxer. He passed away when I was nine, but was a major influence on my life. Sometimes I’d go over to his house after school and we’d write poetry together. Or he’d play the violin and I’d accompany him on the piano. He had these parakeets he’d let fly loose around the house. And he used to make popcorn with no lid. I’d have to catch it to eat it. It was a wonderful introduction to show business.”

Nevertheless, Gonyea (who studied classical piano from the age of five), submerged his more outrageous impulses and set off for the University of Michigan as a music major.

“I was a terrible conductor,” he mused. “But at the time, they didn’t have a major for what I was going to become. Being in theater wasn’t musical enough. And being a piano major . . . I didn’t want to spend five hours a day in the practice room. Jessye Norman used to be in the room next to me wailing through the walls. The truth is, there were many people who were better than me, but they always needed music--and I didn’t.”

After years of clandestine improvising and songwriting, Gonyea finally went public, essaying the title role in a college staging of “George M.”--”and you wouldn’t believe the flak I got from the music school muckety-mucks: ‘We don’t do that sort of thing. It’s not Scriabin.’ But I was hooked, and there was no turning back.”

Following a post-college period when he toured hotels as part of “a white Fifth Dimension” lounge act, Gonyea graduated to local piano bars.

“People don’t realize how hard it is to sit there and play for five hours,” he said. “They see the piano as a leisure item--because if you’re doing it right, it looks easy. But I soon found out that I wanted to be noticed, I was desperate to get people’s attention. So while they were chatting, clinking glasses, I’d do funny things.

“Like I’d play ‘Misty.’ Then I’d put a tablecloth over my head and sing ‘All by Myself.’ One time I handed everyone maracas that had no seeds--because I didn’t want them to interfere with my number, but I wanted them to feel they could participate.”

A career change followed with his move to the Mayfair Music Hall. Suddenly, Gonyea was no longer a pianist but (according to a Times reviewer) a comedian--”and I thought, ‘What have I done?’ ” Since then, he’s become more at ease with the label, playing universities, making regular return visits to the Improv, and--last year--touring the country with Dorothy Hamill’s “Fantasy on Ice” show.

That was great,” he said. “They’d do a half-hour, then I’d be wheeled onto the ice (with his piano), and by that time, the crowd was really ready to be spoken to. In a bar, you have a couple of people here, another group there--but in a stadium, it’s a block of six thousand people, all listening to you. And even if only ten percent of them respond, that’s 600 people .”

At any number, the message is positive: “The show’s title is about feeling that you don’t fit in. It says it’s OK to be who you are, OK to be a nine o’clock guy in a four o’clock town. Ultimately, it’s about self-acceptance.”