Serious musicians who happen to be seriously funny, TopHouse refer to themselves in the third person as TopHouse the Band LLC. They also call themselves a folk band, which they kinda are. They’re also sorta a bluegrass band, a bit of rock band and a comedy troupe. 

After two weeks together in the van they call Black Lung, the quartet pulled into Skully’s Music-Diner in Columbus, Ohio, for an early – 6:30 p.m. – show with Cris Jacobs supporting. And they were ailing. 

Singer Joe Larson (guitar, banjo, mandolin, keyboards, percussion), Jesse Davis (guitar, mandolin, kick drum, percussion), William Cook (fiddle), and Eli Isbell (guitar, banjo, penny whistle, keyboards, percussion) were passing around something, with Isbell coughing into his sleeve and Davis unable to sing harmonies and mostly resigned to bantering by typing into his phone and playing it back with a voice app. 

“I can still whisper but it’s a little weird and I didn’t want to turn anybody on,” he whispered late in the 95-minute show. 

“Too late!,” a dude yelled. 

The audience was, indeed, turned on, lustily following TopHouse’s command to yell, “I heard ‘Anglo Saxon!’” every time the band sang the words “Anglo Saxon” on the breezy “Wine or the Weather.”

Opening with “WDYTWH,” TopHouse ignited rabid singalongs on it and similarly uptempo numbers like “Drive Back Home” and “Deathbed” and dived into rock ’n’ roll on the menacing “Run” with Larson’s voice echoing over Cook’s electric violin, which subbed for guitar. In these moments, the diner felt like an arena. 

Because the show was nearly sold out, Cook, as is TopHouse the Band LLC tradition at such times, read an excerpt from “the Hobbit” to Renaissance accompaniment from his bandmates; Isbell improvised poetry; and “I Don’t Wanna Move On” was preceded by a shaggy-dog story about a guy named Von asking Isbell to moo. 

“I don’t want to moo, Von,” Isbell said to laughter and groans. 

That song was interrupted when Cook blew an amp with his fiddle and the musicians fell out with laughter. It’s a testament to TopHouse the Band LLC – professional businessmen that they are – that they quickly got back on track and finished the number. 

There was no encore break, as Larson feared there would be no applause if they left the stage and the band closed, before 9:30 p.m., with “Drive Back Home.” 

Jacobs opened the evening solo-acoustic style with the unreleased “Halos” and followed with his lonely version of “Poor Davey,” originally recorded with Billy Strings. Later, Jacobs switched to three-string, cigar-box guitar for bluesy renditions of the traditional “Samson and Delilah” and “When the Levee Breaks” in the styles of Grateful Dead and Led Zeppelin, respectively. 

“You can’t AI this,” he said, underscoring the beauty of people gathered in a room to hear – or in the case of many in attendance, talk over – music. Jacobs called them out and closed his 45-minute set with one of his quietest songs, the folksy “September.”