“What if we do a deep cut of Deep Purple?”

David Wain was throwing out suggestions for Middle Aged Dad Jam Band, a revolving group of comedic actors, writers and professional musicians he’s been assembling since the Covid-19 pandemic. The group, based in Los Angeles, was in the midst of filming its latest session for YouTube. The actor Mather Zickel, 55, chimed in to offer “Smoke on the Water.”

“I don’t think that’s a deep cut,” said Ken Marino, 56, cuing the guitarist Clint Walsh, 52, to crank the song’s opening riff.

Middle Aged Dad Jam Band (MADJB) is a cover band whose core members comprise six actual middle-aged fathers and a teen. (Mr. Wain’s 17-year-old, Henry, plays sax.) The band also features guest-star vocalists (like “Weird Al” Yankovic, Uzo Aduba and Kristen Bell).

Though they have a versatile repertoire, MADJB is led by the filmmaker Mr. Wain (“Wet Hot American Summer”) and the comic actor Mr. Marino (“Party Down,” “The Other Two”), two veterans of the 1990s comedy troupe the State, along with the professional trumpeter and the band’s manager, Jordan Katz. Mr. Wain, who grew up in Ohio, is the band’s drummer and a self-described “’80s alt-music scene” guy. Mr. Marino, from Long Island, N.Y., skews more “singer-songwriter, R&B and New Orleans artists like Dr. John and Walter ‘Wolfman’ Washington.” As is the Gen X way, Mr. Wain and Mr. Marino found the sweet spot where their tastes intersected: Billy Joel.

“I’m fulfilling a fantasy that I’ve had since I can remember,” Mr. Marino said. Though comedy and music may pair well, Mr. Wain and Mr. Marino acknowledge that playing music, especially covers, feels a bit different.

Mr. Wain added: “With comedy, you’re constructing jokes, and you get a very specific response. With rock music onstage, the brain takes a back seat and you’re just in sync with other people onstage in a way that feels like you’re an animal working together.”

MADJB joins a tradition of professional nonmusical artists who are realizing their rock ’n’ roll dreams. In 1992, a group of best-selling authors that included the humorist Dave Barry and the novelists Amy Tan, Barbara Kingsolver and Stephen King formed the Rock-Bottom Remainders, which played covers. Actors perform for a living so, in theory, the shift from soundstage to music stage should be seamless, but it is not always. Because humor is part of the shtick, MADJB’s transition between the stages is more analogous to that of the Prince cover band Princess, an entertaining passion project that Maya Rudolph shares with her friend, the jazz singer and fellow Prince nerd Gretchen Lieberum.

While the comics in MADJB have no plans to quit their day jobs, they take music seriously.

“David’s determination to learn and to perfect a song, how he breaks it down — it’s impressive to watch that part of his brain work,” Mr. Marino said. “And the stamina. Our shows are sometimes three hours, and David is playing drums the whole time. For a 75-year-old man, that’s a lot,” he joked. (Mr. Wain is 56.)

“If the people know us,” Mr. Wain said, “they may expect it’ll be funny and silly, but when they see we’re actually playing these songs fairly well, they’re like, ‘Oh, that’s a surprise.’”

Many of the members of MADJB have been friends — and creative partners — since their youth. “People — men in particular — need to make excuses to hang out. We get to have adventures all surrounding this creative effort,” said Mr. Wain, who grew up with the MADJB vocalist and guitarist Craig Wedren, 56, perhaps better known as the frontman of the late-1980s punk band Shudder to Think. The two attended N.Y.U. together, where they befriended Mr. Marino, who appeared in “Wet Hot American Summer” and “Role Models” (Mr. Wedren did the music for both). Mr. Marino will also appear in an as-yet-untitled film that just wrapped, with Jon Hamm, John Slattery and Sabrina Impacciatore, directed by Mr. Wain. (Mr. Marino wrote the script with Mr. Wain.)

“The band, and the joy that emerges from it — for the performers and the audience — has been a most welcome distraction from the darkness,” said Meggan Lennon, Mr. Wedren’s wife.

When Life Gives You Quarantine, Make Jam Band

Darkness, indeed, played a part in birthing MADJB, which evolved from an experiment during the earliest days of the pandemic. Mr. Wain yearned for a creative outlet for his existential despair. He grew up surrounded by music: His mother taught piano, and his friend Mr. Wedren “was seriously into being a rock star and would rehearse in my basement.”

Mr. Wain invited his friends to record themselves singing covers over Zoom. He then filmed himself accompanying them, edited the footage and put it on Instagram. The first, posted on March 18, 2020, presented the actress Michaela Watkins belting Pat Benatar’s “Heartbreaker” while he played drums in one frame, piano in another. The likes came in, and with them, the dopamine hits. So he invited more friends to sing and play instruments — Paul Rudd, Bobby Cannavale, Adam Scott — and what had been a welcome, amusing diversion grew into a project Mr. Wain called #CCARS, or Collaborative Covers by Amateurs of Rock Songs.

He created 20 Instagram posts over an 18-month period, and while it helped him get through the worst of the shutdown, Mr. Wain was becoming “desperate for in-person contact.” So when the filmmaker moved into a new home with a garage in Los Feliz, he invited pals over for a recurring Sunday jam session. The set list evoked a generation’s collective memory of pop music, one encompassing eras and genres, from yacht, classic and “Schoolhouse Rock” to R&B and new wave.

“As soon as David told people to come over, I muscled my way in and didn’t leave until he kicked us all out,” said Mr. Marino, who has a karaoke room in his home. “I wouldn’t let anybody else go to the mic,” which is how he became MADJB’s lead singer.

The jam sessions began to cohere into something more substantial when their friend, the cinematographer Frank Barrera, invited the friends to a Halloween party in 2022 on his block in Pasadena.

“He said, ‘I got us our first gig!’” recalled Mr. Wain. Calling themselves the “Halloween Dad Driveway Band,” the guys played on Mr. Barrera’s driveway for four hours to throngs of trick-or-treaters and their families. The in-person response was overwhelming and eventually led to more gigs — Middle Aged Dad Jam Band officially premiered at SF Sketchfest in January 2023.

“We hadn’t intended to form a band in the first place.” Mr. Wain said.

But it was a good thing they did: Less than five months after their band’s live debut, in May 2023, the writers’ strike broke out. They got to work on creating videos for social media and eventually starting a MADJB YouTube channel, which went live a year ago and has amassed nearly 130,000 subscribers, drawing almost 15 million views. They also sold out live shows throughout the country for a majority of 2023.

Given the band members’ creative resources, it should come as little surprise that the Instagram Reels and YouTube clips now seem less like a jam session — the band is tighter, as are the playful camera shots and joke setups, with more costumes and props — and more like a good old-fashioned rock video. But MADJB has not shed its raw, silly energy, which was on display at a live show last month at the Rockaway Hotel in Queens, N.Y., a stop on its four-city East Coast tour.

“The live shows,” said Mr. Katz, “they’re a whole vibe.”

For Mr. Marino, that vibe comes partly from the audience. “There’s a real connection that you don’t get the same way from doing a play or comedy onstage — like, it’s something even more immediate and visceral,” he said.