So you thought you’d heard them all

Leila Navidi

Classically trained opera singers, from left, Matthew Lord, Alex Bumpas and John Wilkerson perform as Billy Joe, Billy Bob and Billy Billee in “3 Redneck Tenors: A New Musical Adventure” at the Luxor. The show uses hillbilly humor to parody the host of knockoffs spawned by the Three Tenors.

By Jerry Fink (contact)

Tuesday, Jan. 29, 2008 | 2 a.m.

The “3 Redneck Tenors” could have been a punch line, a gimmick — if it didn’t have so much talent.

“When you say ‘3 Redneck Tenors,’ it elicits a response. Everybody laughs,” says Matthew Lord, the show’s founder and one of its stars. “I think initially (the act) sold on the name.”

Lord, who was born in Napa, Calif., but lives in Dallas, is a fan of the original Three Tenors — Placido Domingo, Jose Carreras and the late Luciano Pavarotti, — who first sang together in 1990 and spawned a host of knockoffs. It’s the copycat tenors Lord disdains.

“Which is weird because I’m a tenor,” he says. “I loved the original guys but it got a little ridiculous after a while, with Three Irish Tenors, Three Mexican Tenors, Three Everything Tenors. The reason I’m not a big fan of the tenor thing is it’s three vocal types singing together at the same time in unison and I find it extremely uninteresting.”

So Lord’s “3 Redneck Tenors” includes a tenor, a high tenor, a baritone and, for good measure, a bass.

“With that you can actually make textured music,” says Lord, who studied at the Juilliard School and has performed with the San Francisco and Metropolitan opera companies.

If you have a hankering for opera — and pop, rock and country — “3 Redneck Tenors: A New Musical Adventure” will be at the Luxor for at least one week a month for the rest of the year. The group fills in for Carrot Top when the outrageous prop comic is off.

“This is where I wanted the show to be all along,” Lord says. “It really is built for Las Vegas. It brings in the NASCAR fans. It brings in the opera fans. It brings in everybody. You can bring your kid or go with your wife. Husbands love it because it’s not ‘Phantom.’ It’s a little bit old-school Vegas.”

The “3 Redneck Tenors” show isn’t a concert. It has a plot, albeit a thin one, that juxtaposes hillbilly humor and costumes — including mullet wigs — with rich vocals.

The story follows three singing cousins from Paris, Texas, to New York’s famed Carnegie Hall. Billy Bob, Billy Joe and Billy Billee mix Elvis and Puccini, the Village People and Beethoven. They are accompanied by their manager, The Colonel (who sings bass).

“It’s like a Broadway show,” Lord says. “Billy Ray dies in a wood chipper and leaves his poor grieving widow — his beautiful cousin Edna Mae — without any money. They were in the middle of building their brand-new dream trailer but she doesn’t have money to finish it. So we help raise the money.”

Although the show parodies the three-tenor concept — with the Village People Tenors and the Saturday Night Fever Tenors, among others — the performers are serious about the music. When they sing, all joking stops.

“We don’t parody the singing,” Lord says. “The singing is straight up through the whole show. We sing everything from the Village People doing ‘YMCA’ to ‘Nessun Dorma’ from Puccini’s ‘Turandot.’ It’s been a lot of fun.”

Lord wrote and directed the show. The music was arranged by Craig Bohmler, who composed such musicals as “Enter the Guardsman” and “Gunmetal Blues.” Lord, John Wilkerson and Alex Bumpas portray the Billys, and Dinny McGuire plays The Colonel.

McGuire and Lord go back to the Great American Melodrama & Vaudeville in Oceano, Calif. “Dinny gave me my first job when I was 18,” Lord says. “This is the first time we’ve worked together in about 25 years.”

While Lord headed off to sing at opera houses, McGuire headed to the big top, where he became ringmaster for the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey and the Big Apple circuses.

Lord created “3 Redneck Tenors” to help raise funds for a school in Grapevine, Texas. The show was a hit and Lord began getting calls from other venues. Over the past three years, the show has toured to more than 100 cities throughout the United States.

Although it didn’t win, an appearance on “America’s Got Talent” led to the Luxor engagement as Carrot Top’s vacation replacement.

“It’s the music that draws everybody to the show. We do wear mullets the whole show — it’s such a juxtaposition and I think people are freaking out, laughing about it. We have no message. It’s purely to entertain. I don’t have any political or religious points. We believe we’re dumber than the audience so we play up to the audience instead of down. There’s not another show like it.”