Steve Wildsmith

Rhonda Vincent is a pretty big deal in the world of bluegrass music.

How big, you might wonder? Well, she received the International Bluegrass Music Association’s “Female Vocalist of the Year” Award in 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005 and 2006. Her 2010 album “Taken” peaked at No. 1 on the Billboard Bluegrass Albums chart, No. 3 on the Heatseekers chart and No. 21 on the Top Country Albums chart — no mean feat, considering the pop-country competition.

Now, she’s got a new CD and a DVD project in the works. The former, “Sunday Mornin’ Singin’,” will be out July 10; the latter is a gospel concert filmed at a church in her hometown of Greentop, Mo. (no word on its release details). Both will include a song co-written by a feller whose name most local music fans will recognize: Jeff Barbra.

The song, “Silent Partner,” was co-written by Barbra and Sevierville-based singer-songwriter and bluegrass guy Darrell Webb. And you can hear it this weekend, when Jeff and his fiddling/singing partner and wife Sarah Pirkle spin it on their Sunday morning radio show, “In the Spirit.” The spiritually oriented program airs from 8-11 a.m. Sundays on WFIV-FM, 105.3 on your radio dial. You can tune in and listen live via the station’s website.

Back in March, we told you about how the boys in death metal band Whitechapel — three of whom are from Blount County (singer Phil Bozeman and guitarist Ben Savage are Knox County boys) — were working on a new album at guitarist Alex Wade’s house out in Louisville.

Today, the band’s label Metal Blade revealed details, including the cover art: It’s self-titled and slated for release on June 19; the first single, “Hate Creation,” is streaming here and the track listing is as follows:

1. Make it Bleed
2. Hate Creation
3. (Cult)uralist
4. I, Dementia
5. Section 8
6. Faces
7. Dead Silence
8. The Night Remains
9. Devoid
10. Possibilities of an Impossible Existence

The band continues its “ReCorruptour” with Miss May I, After the Burial, The Plot In You and Within the Ruins on Thursday in Louisville, Ky. On June 30, the band will join the Rockstar Energy Drink Mayhem Festival with Slipknot, Slayer and As I Lay Dying.

“Leaving the black heart of Bearden for the warm bosom of Happy Holler” reads the flyer on the Raven Records and Rarities Facebook page.

For now, Raven is still open at its current location, 5710 Kingston Pike, but owners Jay Nations and Jack Stiles hope to be up and running at the new location — 1200 N. Central St. in the Downtown North neighborhood of Knoxville, an area also known as “Happy Holler” — the first week of June.

The decision was made a couple of months ago, and personally I think it’s a good one. Raven, which we profiled back when it first opened, has the sort of scruffy, colorful and weird-in-a-good-way vibe of places like Time Warp Tea Room and Toot’s Little Honky Tonk than the tony neighbors of its current location.

Either way, we encourage you to support. If you’re a comic book/sci-fi fan, Stiles has some stuff that’ll blow your mind, and Nations has been the master of vinyl around these parts for a couple of decades. Stop by before they move; you might find something to tickle your fancy. And definitely support the guys in their new location come June; locally owned businesses, especially those that deal in music and oddities you can’t find anywhere else, give East Tennessee some of its character and history

Yes, this matter deserves that sort of language.

Because in this digital day and age, brick-and-mortar merchants are either dying off or being swallowed up by corporate whales. Record stores have been hit especially hard. It’s becoming more and more difficult for places to make a go of it when you can log onto iTunes or Amazon, download a favorite album and never get off the couch. But there’s something inspiring about owning a physical copy of a record, be it on CD or vinyl, and Saturday is one day you’ll want to head to your local record store and do so.

As part of a national campaign known as Record Store Day, an annual event that celebrates music and independently owned record stores, hundreds of independently owned record stores across the country will sell a series of special releases commissioned for the event. Locally, you can find three fine establishments we wholeheartedly endorse: Raven Records and Rarities, 5710 Kingston Pike in Knoxville, opening at 10 a.m. on Saturday; Lost and Found Records, 3710 N. Broadway Ave. in Knoxville, which opens at 11 a.m.; and The Disc Exchange, 2615 Chapman Highway in Knoxville, which opens at 9 a.m. The latter two will feature in-store performances by a number of local bands, and all of them will have special releases put out especially for Record Store Day, as well as prizes, giveaways, free food and a whole lot more. It’s a great way to support music and a locally owned business, so get out and make it part of your Saturday.

If you’re looking for specifics, here they are:

• At Disc Exchange: Remedy Coffee and Eagle Distributing will offer beverages, Sweet and Savory Truck will have edibles and a whole lotta bands will perform: Lera Lynn at noon, The French at 1 p.m., Angel Snow at 2 p.m., Hoots and Hellmouth at 3 p.m., The Shaky Show at 4 p.m. and The Hotshot Freight Train at 7 p.m.
• At Lost and Found: The big draw is barbecue made by local rocker Tim Lee, who will be camping out and firing it up tonight. At lunch, all of the bands performing on Saturday at Lost and Found will serve up their own ‘cue sauces, and the crowd can determine whose is best. The live music lineup: From 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., deejay sets by Nostradamus, Kingo Gordo and Nijoli; Pegasi 51 at 2 p.m.; Itchy and the Hater Tots at 3 p.m.; The Vaygues at 4 p.m.; Tim Lee 3 at 5 p.m.; Mutations at 6 p.m.
• At Raven: Lots of specials, including two-for-$1 LPs, 10 percent off of all used merch, BOGO goodies from the “Rarities” side of the store and unadvertised specials for RSD patrons. As well as some free swag.
• And while we can’t find whether they’re doing anything special for RSD, we have to give a shout-out to Hot Horse Records, 108 E. Jackson Ave. in Knoxville’s Old City, a funky-cool place beside The Pilot Light that (usually) opens around noon.

And in case you’re wondering about all of the special releases artists who support independent retailers have put together for this year, there’s a complete list to be found here.

The Drunk Uncles: (From left) Jeff Barbra, Mike McGill, Eric Keeble, Gordy Gilbertson and Aram Takvoryan

Jeff Barbra and The Drunk Uncles have parted ways, but both parties are reporting the split is amicable, mutual and in no way reflects any sort of bad feelings or bad blood.

Barbra, a Blount County resident who’s been working as a singer-songwriter, most often with his wife, Sarah Pirkle, for years, formed the Uncles with another local tunesmith (Mike McGill, who’s also doing the solo thing and playing as part of the Barstool Romeos with Barbra’s brother-in-law, Andy Pirkle), told us he simply feels led in another direction.

“It’s something I’ve thought about a lot, and it wasn’t an easy decision,” Barbra said. “But it’s like my pappaw used to say: If you can’t do something 100 percent, you shouldn’t do it at all. I’m just going where my heart leads me and trying to do what feels right.”

According to Barbra, the increase in church performances and house concerts with Pirkle has fanned the flames of his desire to have a conversation with fans. He and Pirkle were saved and joined a local church a couple of years ago, which led to the creation of last year’s gospel album, “Family Singing.”

“When we play in someone’s basement or in a church, you get to talk to people; really talk to them,” Barbra said. “A lot of times, that leads them to wanting me and Sarah to tell our story, which is as rewarding as anything I’ve ever done.”

In addition, the Sunday morning radio program “In the Spirit,” which he and Pirkle co-host for WFIV-FM i105, has brought the couple additional opportunities and is taking up more time, something he’s not complaining about at all.

According to McGill, the Uncles will soldier on, although the loss of Barbra will be a heavy one. At this time, there are no plans to mothball the retro-c0untry outfit, although carrying on will mean reconfiguring how the band — which includes bassist Aram Takvoryan, drummer Eric Keeble and fiddler/vocalist/songwriter Gordy Gilbertson — does so.

“We will fulfill all of our obligations, which includes a May date at Toot’s (Little Honky Tonk in Downtown North Knoxville) and another show in June,” McGill said. “Eric will probably play some electric (guitar), and I may, too. And Eric and Aram will both be singing, at least on harmony, to fill in that hole. We’re not sure how it’s going to work — we may have a couple of different drummers filling in — but the Uncles will go on.”

The band’s new album, which began last year at Music Row Studios, is still on deck as well, McGill said, but there’s no timetable for its completion — or whether it’ll be re-cut to reflect the band’s new lineup. Barbra’s songs, as well as his studio contributions before he left the band, are still planned for inclusion.

Both men say their friendship is intact, and neither rules out a return to the stage with the Uncles by Barbra, either as a guest or at some point down the road. For now, however, they’re focused on doing what’s best for them as individuals, and while it won’t be the same for them — or for the rest of us, for that matter — whenever the Uncles play “On Tap, In the Can or In the Bottle” or “Drunk Talkin’,” it’s with relief and admiration that we wish both parties the best on their new journeys.

“It’s a little sad, no doubt,” McGill said. “Going back to when Jeff joined White Oak Flats (the Sevier County-based show band that was a predecessor of the Uncles) and us playing together through the Uncles, we’ve had a lot of fun, and we’ve become more than friends; we’ve become brothers. We wish him nothing but the best, and we respect that he feels led to do something else.”

“No band is bigger than friendship,” added Barbra, who said that his resignation is effective immediately. “Those guys are still my best buddies in the world. We’ll still see each other, and we’ll still hang out and pick a little bit. But this is what I feel called to do now. I have no regrets, because playing with the Uncles and watching people get up and dance and have a good time was a whole lot of fun. But I’m looking forward to seeing where this new calling takes me.”

The Rockwells

In perusing the calendar for that fine Old City indie-rock club The Pilot Light, I stumbled across a lovely little nugget slated for May 3: A performance by the Rockwells, that quartet of rockers who have been sorely missed in the local scene over the past few years as the boys have taken on various adult responsibilities.

A quick call to Tommy Bateman, general manager of the Maryville Tomato Head, reveals that it is, in fact, true — he’s getting married that week, and the guys are getting back together as sort of a celebratory reunion show. And while the band hasn’t committed to future performances, they’ve been practicing regularly, Bateman said, and there’s talk of perhaps some new recordings.

“We’ve kicked the idea around as we’ve rehearsed some of the songs we’re preparing for the show, especially one or two that never got recorded or were recorded early on and have changed shape,” he said.

The Rockwells — Bateman and his brother Trace, and brothers Fred and Jonathan Kelly (who have been busy of late running Famous London Recording Studio) — hail from Memphis, and they’ve played together in some form or fashion for most of their lives. Tommy Bateman and Kelly were best friends through high school and college, while their younger brothers, Trace and Jonathan, shared a similar close friendship. After the Batemans moved away, the Kelly brothers formed the Rockwells in 1999. The Batemans returned to Tennessee, the Rockwells moved to Knoxville and the rest is quickly becoming part of the city’s local music history.

The guys have released several albums — the full-lengths “Star Smile Strong” and “Little Symphonies for Kids,” as well as a number of EPs and the most recent full-length, “Place and Time,” the latter of which contains one of my favorite songs ever: the melancholy, looking-back-on-life gem “The Quarterback.”

The May 3 show also features Marina Orchestra and will start at 9 p.m. (real time, not Pilot Light time). Admission is $5.

“We’re really glad we’re doing it at The Pilot Light, given our history with that place and what it means to so many people around here,” Bateman said. “We’re really excited.”

The Great Great Pines: James Maples (left) and Laura Bost

The tiny town of Martin, Tenn., is about to undergo something of a folk music Renaissance.

James Maples and Laura Bost, the Blount County duo who perform as The Great Great Pines, will be headed west to Martin on May 1, taking with them their 1-year-old daughter Josie, hopes for a blissful future and some East Tennessee memories that will no doubt keep them coming back from time to time. Maples is on the cusp of obtaining his doctorate, and this fall Dr. Maples will officially be a professor of sociology at the University of Tennessee, Martin. Bost is finishing her accounting degree, and while the two thought they might wait until mid-summer to move, they decided to make the jump early, Maples told us today.

And with light at the end of the tunnel as far as his own education goes, it feels a bit surreal, he said.

“We decided to go ahead and move down and learn the community, take summer courses, finish my dissertation — and then I’ll be done with school for the first time in a decade,” he said with a chuckle. “It’s weird, because getting a job after all of that is something you don’t think about. You’re so busy and involved and thinking about the learning process in graduate school that there’s just thing after thing to do, and then halfway through your dissertation they tell you, ‘You need to apply for jobs this year.’ And that’s exactly what happened. Last July, my boss said, ‘Have you sent out applications?’”

He hadn’t but he got on it, and while one peer found a position at Carson-Newman College that allows him to stay in East Tennessee, the six hours between Blount County and Martin would make for a mighty strenuous commute. (Although not as exhausting as other peers, who will be relocating to Washington, D.C., and Montana, he added.)

And while Blount County isn’t exactly cosmopolitan, the rural environment of Martin should make for a perfect base of operations for The Great Great Pines. A 1996 graduate of William Blount High School, Maples is a veteran of the folk-rock band the Postmodern Tourists, and Bost was a member of the piano-pop band Hudson K. They met at The Pilot Light, the indie-rock club in Knoxville’s Old City. Capitalizing on the chemistry evident in an impromptu jam together, they first formed The Centralia Massacre with Bost on guitar, ukulele and vocals and Maples on banjo and vocals. That was in 2007; the next year, they released the album “Right at Home,” an album that struck the perfect balance of Old Time and contemporary, sometimes within the span of a single song.

Over the course of the next year, the music drew on additional influences, becoming more elaborate until Bost and Maples decided to get back to basics. The feel of the songs was so different they rechristened themselves as the Pines, released an EP of rough demos and went into Elkgang Studios in Knoxville to put together a proper debut with engineer Scott Minor of Sparklehorse, who’s worked on local projects by Royal Bangs and The Black Lillies. It was going to be a 6-song EP, but after completion, Bost and Maples pulled the plug on it.

“In the end, we listened to it, and it was great, and the production was great. We loved working with Scott,” Maples said. “But it just wasn’t us. It didn’t feel like it was our best, or that it captured our essence. And knowing what was coming with the doctorate and getting a job somewhere else, we decided to hold off to give ourselves a chance to find the time and money to do what we want.

“We’ve joked about how when we become big and famous, we’ll release it as a secret rarities album. We think it’s going to be a good thing. We’ve got a couple of albums’ worth of songs in the pipeline, and for the first time since we started playing together, we don’t have to worry about making ends meet. We can concentrate on the artistic end of things instead of saying, ‘We have to play a Barley’s show next month, or we can’t pay the electric bill.’”

For fans who might have missed it, the last Great Great Pines show was back in February at The Well in Bearden. Come May 1, they’ll pack up and depart the Louisville community of Arline (”Population 12, I like to joke,” Maples said) and head out. It’s time; they’re creative souls with an urge to explore, and now that their daughter has taken her first steps — last weekend, in fact (”She’s walking and auditioning for the band — standup ukulele,” Maples added with a chuckle) — the whole family is feeling the itch of exploring new places.

They’ll be back to visit, and once they get a 12-song full-length album to sound like they want, they’ll no doubt come back and celebrate its release here in East Tennesse. But for now, the town of Martin best prepare itself.

“They don’t realize they’re about to have a folk  explosion,” Maples said.

FREE MUSIC! The Great Great Pines, “Right at Home”: right-click here (choose “Save Link As” or “Save Target As”)
The Great Great Pines online: click here

Confession: I’m an idiot.

The lovely Zoe Ruth-Erwin, Knoxville expatriate now living on the West Coast and bandleader of the indie-rock project Little Red Lung, reached out to me several months ago. She was in the middle of recording “Little Red Lung,” a self-titled EP that follows up “Get on the Boat,” which she recorded before she left East Tennessee in the fall of 2010. She was excited about the new material, and while I fell in love with her gossamer voice back then, I never managed to find time to give it a listen.

Now, I have. And I’m a moron for not doing it before now, for it is a thing of beauty, filled with magic and labyrinthine twists and turns that defy expectations.

Ruth-Erwin first came to East Tennessee from Los Angeles after striking up a friendship with Senryu genius Wil Wright. Wright was on tour at the time with Physics of Meaning; the two stayed in touch, and Ruth-Erwin, who also works as a photographer, stopped through Knoxville to see Wright during a photo tour of the South. She liked it so much she stayed, joining forces with Wright’s merry band of artists and scenesters (Senryu drummer Steven Rodgers and band friend/collaborator Cecilia Miller both provide their skills to the latest Little Red Lung release) and she quickly established her photography business on a local level, and she took up music again.

Upon moving to Knoxville, she hadn’t tried writing a song in several years. Even then, the thought of performing them in public was terrifying — crippling stage fright had, in her past, led to bouts of nausea both before and after a show. But in Knoxville, she built up her confidence at Senryu performances — singing at many of them, accepting Wright’s encouragement and bonding with the other musicians in his circle. And after a couple of Little Red Lung releases in East Tennessee, she went back to Los Angeles, and the fruits of her labor are wondrous to behold.

The new EP opens with “50 Fingers,” a shuffling march that seems to draw inspiration from Rasputina or My Brightest Diamond or any number of other female-fronted projects that rely on a quirky combination of cabaret and vaudeville to craft a mood as much as a song. A sense of unease rests just below the surface, and the listener gets the impression that Ruth-Erwin is hiding something sinister behind her crocodile smile.

That unease transforms into urgency on the plaintive “Ink Blot,” the EP’s high point, in my opinion. “Your better half is on parade / internal organ pop display / stars just as deadly as the day …” — I’m still wrapping my head around the song, but I close my eyes upon listening and get the sense that Erwin is trying to tell me something VERY. IMPORTANT. And she’s getting frantic about making me understand. Things slow down on the languid “Rare Bird,” and “Fangs” drifts ethereal before transitioning “Into a Landfill,” the next song. Again with that beautiful urgency, and by “Strangling Tree,” the album’s closer, that sense of unease so prescient from the beginning has grown into a complex tapestry of shadows. Ruth-Erwin offers you her hand, but you’re almost afraid to take it.

Throughout endless listens, I kept coming back to a number of comparisons — the aforementioned Rasputina and My Brightest Diamond … Tori Amos … Wye Oak … but nothing fits, exactly. Trying to determine a point of reference for Little Red Lung is like searching for that elusive fit in a 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzle: You can find dozens that almostbutnotquite line up the way you want it to, but not the one you need.

And perhaps that’s a good thing, because it means Ruth-Erwin stands alone, on her own. She’s part of a full band these days, but it’s still her baby, and it paints her as complex and emotional and artistic a woman as ever. She’s the mysterious beauty who intimidates and captivates, the girl you don’t quite understand but can’t stop thinking about. Hopefully, she’ll find an audience on the West Coast that feels the same way, because those of us who know her and love what she does back here in East Tennessee would accept her back into our fold immediately and with great joy.

Sundown in the City circa 2010, courtesy of the Knoxville Tourism and Sports Corporation’s website

I can’t remember the last time I attended a Sundown in the City concert.

It may have been the summer of 2007, when local favorites (mine, at least) Dixie Dirt opened for the Drive-By Truckers. DD wasn’t long for the scene, and they were pulling double duty that night — first at Sundown, later at Barley’s Taproom in the Old City.

I remember it was hot and crowded and intense — so much so that we cut out a few songs in the DBT set. Good as they were, it just felt wrong. I believe a great band that’s playing its heart out should have the attention of those in attendance, and even five years ago, it was obvious that Sundown had become a destination as much as a concert.

It didn’t used to be that way. When it started as a single concert in 1997, the free concert series drew large but respectful audiences, and it’s fair to say the series had something to do with the revitalization of downtown Knoxville. 15 years ago, downtown after dark wasn’t exactly a desirable date destination, to say nothing of bringing your young kids down there.

Now, it’s a hub of activity at all hours of the day and night. Restaurants, venues, retail spaces, residential buildings have come together to give Knoxville a sort of urban sophistication that’s still quaint, given the city’s size, but also incredibly cool. And that coolness began with the music.

As a music writer, it’s been an incredible experience to document. I’ve interviewed dozens of artists who came to play Sundown, from Steve Winwood and Gillian Welch in 2004 to Sleater-Kinney in 2005 to Little Feat in 2006 to George Thorogood, Ozomatli and the Avett Brothers in 2007 to Jamey Johnson, Grace Potter and Arrested Development in 2009. Looking back on those names, all I can think about is how blessed we were to get such diversity — and such up-and-coming artists before they exploded.

Perfect example — The Avetts. They’d only started playing Knoxville a couple of years prior, doing occasional free shows at Preservation Pub, but they’re such genuinely good dudes and burn with such passion for music that they’re undeniable. The folks at AC Entertainment saw that early on, and this year, they’re one of the headliners for Bonnaroo. They’re getting ready to put out their second major-label release produced by the iconic Rick Rubin, and the last time they came to East Tennessee, they filled up Smokies Stadium.

Is it any wonder, then, that as the schedule grew from a few concerts early on to more than two dozen at the height of the series that people started coming? They came for the music, and they helped make downtown a destination, and then everybody was coming to downtown just to be downtown. Market Square turned into a sea of people on Thursday nights, and while many businesses didn’t mind, a few did — along with the people who had moved to the area and had to contend with traffic, drunks and throngs of people milling around in what amounted to their backyards.

I remember looking around at everyone on that particular evening. Hundreds were paying rapt attention to the bands … but hundreds more were wandering around, poking their heads in various shops, talking on cell phones, looking for their children, who seemed to be turn loose like crazed ferrets to roam the downtown landscape at will. “Too big,” I thought. “This thing is too big.”

Maybe it was … but it was good for Knoxville. And even though I never made another Sundown show, there was something reassuring about the idea that, if I so choose, I could head over on a fine Thursday evening, see some great live music and still be home in time to watch the 11 p.m. news.

This morning, AC announced that Sundown’s time had come to an end.

“… after having initially scaled back to five bi-weekly events two years ago, it has become clear to us that Sundown in the City simply no longer fits its Market Square home,” company founder Ashley Capps says in a press release. “With that in mind, AC Entertainment is electing to look towards the future. We will, of course, continue to book and produce the great shows and programs at the Tennessee Theatre and the U.S. Cellular Stage at the Bijou Theatre. We are also looking forward to putting our time, energy, and resources into bringing new festival concepts to life in downtown Knoxville in the near future. And…who knows? We may ultimately find a way to reinvent Sundown at some point.”

Facebook, et. al. was abuzz with word of the cancellation, and it was almost as if a collective “Awwwww …” went up from everyone. No doubt, many people who loved Sundown during its early years found themselves turned off by the event’s growth into a social hangout more than a concert, and others, I’m sure, hated that their favorite off-the-beaten-path restaurant or bar turned into a subway station on Thursday nights in the spring and summer. But aside from a vocal few, we loved Sundown — the music, certainly, but also the fact that the music was happening in the middle of downtown Knoxville.

What a town. And even though the city center is a big boy that can walk on its own these days, I’m sure many people will find themselves with a lot of time on their hands on Thursday nights this spring, and more than a few who happen to be on Market Square will stare wistfully toward the stage and wonder when the music might start up again.

Brent Thompson (left) and Lauren Lazarus, cutting up on the set of “11 O’Clock Rock”

Major bummer: After News-Sentinel business reporter Carly Harrington broke the news today that Internet broadcasting company Knox ivi has ceased operations (its offices at 17 Market Square have already been cleaned out, apparently), condolences are pouring forth for the two hosts of the show “11 O’Clock Rock.”

Brent Thompson and Lauren Lazarus anchored the company’s flagship show for almost 600 episodes, no mean feat when you consider they were on the air for an hour each day, five days a week. It was a laid-back, conversational format, and it introduced many web-browsing individuals to some great regional, local and national bands.

“I’m grateful for the opportunity to put a spotlight on our local music and arts scene here in Knoxville, to represent it to the rest of the world and also be a welcoming ambassador for this city to folks who came and played here,” Thompson told me this afternoon. “I love the role of representing Knoxville and East Tennessee as a whole. Music and arts are what I live for, and in the next life I’ll be doing the same thing.”

Thompson declined to go into specifics, but he pointed to the long-suffering economy as the main cause of the company’s decision to fold.

“Look at TV, print and radio — the media industry has taken a hit, and we were the newest kid on the block,” he said. “In different times, or in a different town, we might have succeeded. As it is, we put in a lot of hard work, and we thought we were close to turning a corner, but we just couldn’t get there. We had a super incredibly talented team who did a lot of good work. A lot of heart went into that show.”

One of Thompson’s fondest memories is the April Fool’s Day episode where everyone involved with the company — and along Market Square, it seemed — was in on the joke. Pranksters called Thompson the night before and informed him the next day’s musical guests had canceled, and thus the plan was set in motion.

“I came in, and the replacement band was just awful,” Thompson said with a chuckle. “They were couldn’t play, they couldn’t pull it together, they acted like a couple of crackheads. Then, I happened to go over to Latitude 35 — we were doing some work with them at the time — and a big fight broke out, and they started accusing us of stuff. It was just crazy.”

Once the cameras started rolling, the “band” sounded even worse than it had during soundcheck. Thompson instructed producers to cut to commercial and went to confront the guys … but the cameras were still rolling. Finally, they let him off the hook.

“It was just hysterical,” Thompson said.

Cheers, good sir. You were a good sport and an even better host, and you and your partner-in-crime, Ms. Lazarus, will be missed.

The show’s website will remain online for the time being, and there are plenty of clips on the show’s YouTube channel as well. In the meantime, Thompson and Lazarus are both looking for additional acting opportunities, and Thompson continues to pursue his music career. He plays next at The Well, 4620 Kingston Pike, on March 22.