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Screen capture of The Gregory Brothers and Tariq’s “It’s Corn.”

The “Corn Kid” is the hot new viral video, and The Gregory Brothers are shucking some rewards.

The Gregory Brothers, Radford-rooted and Brooklyn, New York-based, have scored again with “It’s Corn.” The musical comedy troupe responsible for the “Bed Intruder Song” (152 million Youtube page views) and the “Double Rainbow Song” (41 million views) has this time collaborated with Youtube channel Recess Therapy — and a wonderful kid named Tariq — for corn-centric goodness.

“I can’t imagine a more beautiful thing. It’s corn … a big lump with knobs. It has the juice,” Tariq says of the cob-bound, butter-slathered veggie, as a Gregory-style earworm percolates in the background.

The Recess Therapy original, with its 4.3 million views, was viral enough. See it at youtu.be/1VbZE6YhjKk. The Gregory Brothers, though, escalated the precocious Tariq’s cooked-ear love into more than 6.5 million more views by press time. (The 7-year-old’s family is keeping his last name private.) Their “Songified” version takes it to the bridge, highlighting the “Corn Kid’s” assessment that the best thing about it is “the grease,” and that “the corn break can restore your energy.”

See the Gregorys’ version at youtu.be/_caMQpiwiaU. Then revel in the TikTok version at bit.ly/corntok_gregorybros, which is way shorter but clocked in at press time with 74.5 million views, 9.8 million likes and almost one million shares. Beyond that, TikTok users have co-opted the Gregorys’ original sound to create more than 955,500 other videos, many of which have hundreds of thousands, even millions of eyes on them.

The idea came, as many do, from Gregory channel fans, brother Andrew Gregory said.

“If one person sends you a video clip, it’s probably not a great thing to songify,” Gregory said in a phone call on Thursday. “If 30 people send you the same clip on the same day, you’re kinda like, we’d better take a look at this one. … It just felt evident that the original video is extraordinary.”

Recess Therapy creator Julian Shapiro-Barnum uses his channel to interview children 2-9 about such topics as climate change and peeing your pants, according to The New York Times.

“I love how much space he gave Tariq to be himself, and Tariq is just like a fully fledged corn genius at age 7,” Gregory said.

“It’s Corn” — search “schmoyoho” on Youtube — has been out for only two weeks, and we expect it to keep growing in popularity, mostly thanks to such Tariq wisdom as “When there’s negative in the world, take a corn break.”

The Gregory Brothers are splitting profits with Shapiro-Barnum and Tariq, as per usual. They’ve been working that way since uploading “The Double Rainbow Song” to Spotify and will continue to do it, Gregory said.

“We look at these people as being the co-writers of it … Tariq wrote the lyrics. We had to rearrange them, but he wrote the lyrics,” he said.

Not every video release is a hit, in the old parlance, but the Gregorys have scored plenty in a 13-years Youtube run that includes “Auto-Tune the News.” With “It’s Corn” rocketing, the group is hearing from old fans who are being reacquainted. On TikTok, where the culture is different and the videos are (mostly) shorter, an entirely new audience is discovering the Gregorys — brothers Evan, Andrew and Michael, and Evan’s wife, Sarah.

“A friend sent me a really funny TikTok video today of a Gen Z-er realizing that we’re Millennials. …” Andrew Gregory said. “It’s so fun to be discovered by a new group of people, and it’s so fun to be rediscovered by some of our old fans.”

Side note: Steel pans player Jonathan Scales and bassist E’Lon JD, of the New York-based group Jonathan Scales Fourchestra, were part of the recording. Scales and his band have performed multiple Roanoke gigs, often to audiences that weren’t nearly as big as their talents deserved. Maybe next time, people. Come out for the quality. It’s corn-tastic.

The frontman for Drive-by Truckers is playing a solo show at Harvester Performance Center.

Patterson Hood, who has led that band throughout its alt-southern rock groundbreaking history, will play the Rocky Mount venue on Dec. 10. That’s just two days after blues-rock guitar-slinging and strong-singing chanteuse Samantha Fish hits the Harvester stage. Hood show tickets are $52, $32 and $260. Tickets to the Fish show are $57, $37 and $280 VIP. All are on sale via harvester-music.com.

The Spot on Kirk has a strong lineup of shows starting on Sept. 28 with Zephaniah OHora & Elijiah Ocean. The sage of Swoope, Scott Miller, will hit on Oct. 15. The next night, Steve Forbert will be in the room. Roanoke indie rockers Eternal Summers headline there on Oct. 21, and Railroad Earth’s Todd Sheaffer will share a bill with Coral Creek’s Chris Thompson on Oct. 28. More info at thespotonkirk.org.

Blacksburg’s The Lyric Theatre has announced blues-rockers GA-20 for Nov. 15. Tickets are $30, $27, $24 and $20 at thelyric.com.

Some weeks are crazier than others. It’s hard to address every topic. I want to give proper love to a few things in particular: Bristol Rhythm & Roots Reunion; Krantz Carlock Lefebvre at Jefferson Center; and new albums from a former Roanoker, Ross Flora, and Mountain Fever Records act Thomas Cassell. Check this space next week for all of that.

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Tad Dickens is the features editor for The Roanoke Times.

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Screen capture of The Gregory Brothers and Tariq’s “It’s Corn.”

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