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Comedian Dave Chappelle speaks to students of the Duke Ellington School of the Arts in Washington, DC, April 3, 2006

Will Dave Chappelle just move to the Bay Area already?

On Monday, in a surprise move, the comedian gave his first interview in five years to the Bay Area's Wild 94.9 radio station — touching on his career, his pot smoking and his continuing relationship with the Bay Area.

And then later that night, he did what has become a common event locally: Chappelle performed as part of spate of hastily announced, sold-out shows.

At Yoshi's in Oakland, perhaps inspired by an impromptu set at Outside Lands this weekend, Chappelle added songs to his repertoire.

He began by walking over to a grand piano, jokingly promising a night of musical numbers. After an hour and a half onstage that spanned prepared material, a good deal of vamping and five or so cigarettes — and being yelled at to wrap up so that the midnight show could begin — Chappelle pulled up the hood of his sweatshirt, sat down at the keyboard and began busting out Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata."

Of course, he stopped after a few measures. But it underscored the fact that Chappelle is an extraordinarily talented performer — albeit one whose relationship to the limelight has been scarred by his own erratic behavior.

But, for a guy with such a prickly persona, Chappelle created an extremely intimate relationship with the crowd. For much of the show, he peppered the audience members with questions, riffing off their answers and allowing them to do the same. Performing here, he said, “makes me feel good. You guys make me feel like a regular person.”

His routine included a good deal of Bay Area-specific material. He gave “a big shout-out to Yoshi — a Japanese pioneer brave enough to invest in Oakland,” which he called “the first officially gangster city” for its decision to tax marijuana sales.

He gave a longish bit about the hippies of Berkeley, identifiable by their dirty feet. “Do you think all these black people and white people would be sitting here together if Dr. Martin Luther King had dirty feet? ‘I have a dream’ — ‘Man, wash your feet!’” And he professed to have tried to open a business in Berkeley that the city wouldn’t support — it was a strip club, called Strippie, where all the dancers were hippies with dirty feet and “very long vagina hair.”

Inevitably, the questions veered toward the personal and toward Chappelle’s fraught relationship with show business. “Your fans are ready for you to come back!” a woman yelled. “Make another TV show,” a man called out. But Chappelle called himself “a bridge-burner” and said Hollywood didn’t trust him anymore. Production of the popular “Chappelle’s Show” was halted in 2005 after Chappelle left abruptly.

Chappelle and the audience seemed equally reluctant to part with one another.

“When are you coming back to Oakland?” someone asked. His response: “Probably tomorrow.”

Dave Chappelle is performing at Yoshi’s Oakland Tuesday at 10 p.m. and midnight. Details here.