“We’re the last comedy team. Comedy teams aren’t a part of comedy anymore.”

Tommy Smothers prefaces our phone interview with this very accurate declamation on the state of standup performance today that sounds anything but humorous. Where have all the great musical comedy duos gone?

Aside from the likes of a newly reunited Cheech and Chong, or the more recent mock-rock stylings of the Jack Black-fronted Tenacious D, the witty repartee synonymous with the traditional straight man/funny man stage act is conspicuously absent from modern day comedy, with one exception: The Smothers Brothers.

When Tommy and Dick Smothers got the chance at hosting their first variety show in 1967, they’d cut their network TV teeth on a short-lived situational comedy. Musically gifted, they’d also been one of the lynchpins of the early 1960s folk scene. All these elements deftly blended by the duo produced a unique concoction of comedy, music and political commentary.

The latter, of course, was what got the brothers in hot water with parent network CBS, and wry commentary on the worsening Vietnam conflict, President Nixon and the generation gap made the Smothers popular with counterculture audiences but reviled by the censors, resulting in their firing from the network in 1969 (Tom stresses they were fired, not cancelled).

Pop performers of the time, relegated to lyrical and professional compromise — or utter rejection altogether — on shows like Ed Sullivan, were welcomed with open arms by Tom and Dick in all their unabashed controversy.

Everyone remembers Harry Belafonte singing against a backlit projection of footage from the 1968 Democratic Convention. The Smothers allowed Jim Morrison and company to take the reins following the Doors’ “Light My Fire” debacle on Sullivan’s program. Then there was Pete Seeger’s performance of “Waist Deep in the Muddy” which caused him to return a second time to the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour when the network killed his first attempt at the anti-war paean. The brothers remained true to their artistic standards.

That these guys were actually real-life brothers made their rival sibling banter (especially Tommy’s “Mom liked you best!” routine) all the more endearing, the sort of genuine familial affection one can imagine continuing off stage between the two.

What’s more is that Tom and Dick haven’t missed a beat, and if anything, today’s social and political climes have made for better fodder on their current anniversary tour, dovetailing with the release of a retrospective Smothers DVD.

Tom Smothers took the time to talk to us in advance of the brothers’ performance in Agoura Hills this week.

VCR: Anything special for 50 years on the new tour?

Tom Smothers: Well, we say we’ve been in the business 100 years now, 50 years a piece. We don’t make a big deal about it, but it’s a pretty good accomplishment. And the show, it’s a family show. It’s pretty good. We do “The Impossible Dream,” we do a vaudeville piece. It’s very eclectic, and people leave very happy. Sometimes people stand up and give us applause when we walk on stage. Now you know that we’re close to death. (Laughs). You know, back in the days of vaudeville, the straight man used to get paid more than the comic. The straight man could emcee the whole show and they could bring people up from the audience if he had to. So if they put a comic with them, he was the one who kind of controlled it. That’s why the straight man was so good back then.

VCR: Do you and Dick ever say, who’s the straight man and who’s not?

No, there’s no question (Laughs). Although Dickie, in concert, the audience roars, and he says, “I’m not supposed to get a laugh there.”

VCR: When you were first coming up in the ’60s, you had a blend of folk song, comedy, social commentary. Did you go to work on evolving that deliberately, or did it just come about?

It just came about. We started as singers and the comedy evolved into it. Then we had the sitcom that was bland (The Smothers Brothers Show, 1965-66), we did 32 of those, and then they gave us this variety show, and I remember I said, we’re going to have creative control. But I didn’t know what I wanted to be creative about, but when the Vietnam War heated up, and all the riots and stuff were happening, we started taking a position. We’re the only show at that time that was anti-war and aggressively pro-integration and all that kind of stuff.

VCR: When the show first aired, did you know it would be as controversial as it was?

No. The first season, we had a few problems, but in the second season …whenever they tell you, “You can’t say that,” you say why? “Because you just can’t say that.” Well, don’t ever tell a comic you can’t say anything. I didn’t know

I was saying anything important until they said, “You can’t say that.” So I said, this must be important to be said. It was not premeditated at all, just a lot of us get caught up in the things that are happening around us and start reacting to them. There’s no premeditation or ideology around it at all.

VCR: And you and your brother never backed down from taking risks when other performers might have.

We were young, and just been 10 years in the business. It was in ’69 when we were fired. I kind of had a premonition things are getting tight here. And then Nixon got elected and then we were fired. For false reasons, but one that put us out of business for about 10 years, as far as the Smothers Brothers. So it was a hard one. I tell you, 40 years later it might have been a gift. I wasn’t getting serious about things until the last season; my humor wasn’t full blown (Laughs). So about three years later, I started getting everything in perspective, starting doing plays and stuff like that. So when we got back together and started working again, it was so much better. People hadn’t seen us; we hadn’t worn out our welcome. It was kind of a nice thing. And I get a lot of residual respect about it: “Hey man, thanks for standing up, that was really cool.” But it took 10 years before that started coming back. They thought, Tommy’s too stubborn, he’s this, he’s that, he’s screwed up. Now they’re saying, hey, thanks for standing up. It wasn’t a screw-up, we stood up. So that was pretty neat.

VCR: So regarding censorship, do you think it’s just as hard today as it was in the’60s to get something said?

Oh yeah, it’s harder. It’s an illusion that the language has changed so much you can say anything you want. You can say fuck and everything. But there’s no real content. And look at what happened to the Dixie Chicks, for their one comment. Government didn’t stop them, all the corporations that own the government said, “We’re not gonna play the record.”

VCR: Do you think the corporate ownership makes it harder? You still have stuff like The Daily Show or The Colbert Report.

But they’re all on cable. Look at the numbers they have as opposed to broadcast. They allow it because they can put it on those fringes. But Daily Show’s gotten a lot softer, if you’ve noticed. My heroes are Michael Moore and the guy from Politically Incorrect [Bill Maher] and George Carlin and Pete Seeger.

VCR: And today you’ve been campaigning to get Seeger a Nobel Prize, too. Why has it been so overdue for him?

Well if you get over the political funky things: he’s a liberal, he’s a socialist. Now they’re recognizing what character and ethic he had. He went through all those things and stuck true to his beliefs. And his beliefs were all in fairness, someone who spends their life making music for people and worrying about workers, people who work for a living, and he’s never stopped. I get so angry when people say, “Well, he’s just an ego trip.”

VCR: What’s your opinion on modern television in general?

I don’t watch it that much. It’s gotta be so much harder to break through nowadays. Back then there were three networks, but you got in. You could be a star if you did The Tonight Show. Two days later you’re a star! Now, there’re so many shows out there, it doesn’t make any difference. But there’s a lot of good stuff out there.

VCR: And the variety show format: we really don’t see too much of that anymore.

It’s the award shows that turn into variety. I don’t think variety show’s gonna happen. I just miss Ed Sullivan (Laughs). I want to see the plate spinners and the jugglers, all that stuff. A lot of people who come to see us have never seen us live. And maybe for 40 years, 50 years in the business people want to go back to a better time. So we’ve got a little heat going for some reason, and I guess the Emmy helped, and the DVD that’s out there, it has five hours of extra stuff that’s really cool. Pat Paulsen for President and all that stuff is in there.

VCR: In the late ’80s, the Bush/Dukakis race, he tried again.

(Laughs) The ’68 election was the best. It was the best run. Life’s been good.

VCR: When you look back at the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, how well do you think it holds up today? I ask because then you had Nixon and Vietnam and most recently we’ve had Bush and Iraq, and you watch some of those episodes and the performers and it’s just as relevant today as it was then.

It is. Pete Seeger singing “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy,” and my God, it sounds like today. What a quagmire. To me, it’s like we’ve got a country of warlords, Democrats and Republicans, and they’re both basically owned by the industrial military complex. If you question anything, “You don’t support our troops!” It’s bullshit. If Obama makes it through here, maybe we’ll get a change. It’s a hard thing. You gotta stay real hopeful because at least we’ve got him. I thought the blackness and darkness was gonna go on forever! (Laughs) Eight years is a long time.

VCR: The Emmy you received last year. Why was now the right time for that?

I don’t know. I was so surprised when they called me and said, “You know, we’d like to give you this Emmy,” because I took my name off the thing. I was very mixed about it. And then I realized, it’s a real compliment to the show and the history of the show, and what it stood for. So it was pretty neat, especially Steve Martin giving it to me.

VCR: He started as a writer on your show.

Yeah, we started him out, he was 21 years old. Bob Einstein was 22. We had a lot of young people. Rob Reiner was 22. We all came towards a sense of equity and fairness. Why can’t this country be more like that: we support underdogs. But we only go out there and overthrow governments if they vote for somebody we don’t like. The DVD, the Emmy, a couple of other little things, and public television is playing the Smothers. It’s a nice little heat at the end of our career. And we’re also doing some of our best work right now.

The Smothers Brothers will appear at the Canyon Club in Agoura Hills on Friday, Feb. 27, at 9 p.m. For ticket info visit www.smothersbrothers.com or www.canyonclub.net.

paul@vcreporter.com