Louis C.K's career in photos

Dave Paulson | The Tennessean

If you’re caught with a pen while Louis C.K. is on stage in Nashville, you’d better be signing your bill.

Those who were quick enough to get tickets to his six sold-out shows at Zanies were hit with a legal notice from C.K. on the venue's website, and another verbal warning before he took the stage on Wednesday.

Not only are phones and cameras banned, but audience members aren't allowed to write anything down.

You'll be kicked out if you break the rules — and possibly sued.

It's not an ideal situation for, say, a reporter trying cover the controversial performer's return to Nashville. But it was an interesting challenge.

I'll get to what C.K. talked about on stage Wednesday — in terms that hopefully keep his lawyers at bay — but first, some context.

Cara Howe, Netflix

The last two years

C.K., 51, has been under the microscope since November 2017, after being accused of (and admitting to) multiple instances of sexual misconduct.

He stayed off stage for nearly a year, and then returned to comedy clubs, greeted by a mix of applause and protest.

He faced another wave of outrage in January, when leaked audio from a performance caught him joking about survivors of the Parkland shooting. This week, two shows in the U.K. were canceled hours after they were announced due to backlash.

What he said at Zanies

C.K.'s fall from grace was the very first thing the comedian addressed on stage.

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He pointed out how he used to play arenas, and how this audience was lucky that he'd had a bad year. He joked about eating alone in a restaurant while another diner gave him the middle finger, and not feeling welcome in New York City anymore.

And he felt he had had some unique advice to give his audience — referring to the sexual misconduct he'd admitted to in 2017.

His advice: If you ask someone to watch you do what he did, and they agree, ask if they're sure. And if they still say yes, don't do it anyway.

There were a few hints of introspection throughout the night — the other half of his advice was to ask yourself if you'd want to be a spectator — but he also appeared to chalk up his problems to the "skill" that women have to seem OK when they're not, eventually drawing a line to negro spirituals.

That last bit, for better or worse, is classic C.K., and precisely the kind of over-the-line material that he thrived with in the last decade. The rest of his set on Wednesday found him firmly in that territory again — and backpedaling a bit from recent divisive jokes that put him back in the headlines.

He made no jokes about school shooting victims — or even reference the backlash, as he's done in recent shows. Instead of angrily mocking non-binary people, he told his audience Wednesday that he hadn't learned the gender "expansion teams," poked fun at his cluelessness at his age, and ultimately declared that was all he was going to say on the subject.

From there, he settled into familiarly lewd territory. The shows were advertised as "XXX Adults Only," but C.K. reached the outer limits of graphic material years ago.

Still even his audience seemed to get a little timid with his last premise — they laughed when C.K. told them he was almost done, and that he was proud of them for making it through.

Just under an hour after he'd taken the stage, C.K. said thanks and exited, largely to a standing ovation. Unlike other performances around the country, there were no signs of protest either outside or inside the venue on Wednesday.