Known as “the voice of the arts”, Atlanta’s AM 1690 has a reputation for airing a variety of programs ranging from The Stomp and Stammer Radio Hour‘s underground music every Sunday afternoon to an inside look at Atlanta’s arts and entertainment scene with Backstage Atlanta on Tuesdays. In recent months the station has taken this variety to the stage with Vari-Okey, a periodical event that combines traditional variety show antics with an interactive karaoke format.

Better known for crushing beer cans with her boobs, the Clermont Lounge's Blondie will read poetry at Vari-Okey

The previous two Vari-Okey’s have been held at the Highland Inn Ballroom, but this Saturday Vari-Okey makes its debut at the more expansive Goat Farm space with The Return of Vari-Okey and the Launch of ArtWorks. Once again emceed by the host of The Pop Culture King Show himself, Jon Waterhouse, and Cage, the front man for Neil Diamond tribute band Nine Inch Neils, this Vari-Okey not only showcases AM 1690’s different radio shows, but also introduces its new ArtWorks venture.

“We were getting a really good turnout at the Highland Ballroom on weeknights,” says Waterhouse. “So we’re expecting quite a good crowd this Saturday night. The big reason we’re doing it is to give a push to ArtWorks, which is a new digital platform that AM 1690 is doing to help boost volunteering among the local Atlanta arts scene. We want to get people out and entertain them, but also make them more aware of what’s going on in the local arts scene and ways they can get involved themselves. It’s very interactive on a bunch of levels.”

Waterhouse, who goes by many guises as the singer for the Van Halen tribute band Van Heineken, Burt Reynolds-like front man for country cover band Burt and the Bandits and many other pop cultural projects, usually lets the audience do the singing at Vari-Okey. But he and Cage have also been known to put on costumes and take on other personas to help get the crowd going if there happens to be a lull in karaoke participants. And with a who’s who of Atlanta entertainers performing in between karaoke songs, you never can predict just what might happen at a Vari-Okey event.

Stephen Skipper channels Mick Jagger as front man for The Jagged Stones, a tribute to The Rolling Stones

“The way it’s set up is typical karaoke in the sense that anybody can sing,” says Waterhouse. “They just sign up, and Cage has an exhaustive amount of material. Just about anything you can think of, he’s got it. So we give a bunch of people the opportunity to get onstage, and we have different acts scattered in between there throughout the evening. So we’ll have Blondie from the Clermont Lounge there reading poetry. We’ll have David Stephens, who’s an accomplished bluegrass musician who has also worked with the Muppets and Sesame Street. He’s very talented and he’s going to be performing banjo. We also have indie rock band Christ, Lord playing and The Jagged Stones, an amazing Rolling Stones tribute that really nails it, doing an acoustic set. Some of the girls from Blast-Off Burlesque will be there performing and singing and we’ve got a whole bunch of other surprises. Some things may just happen off the cuff because we’ve got some guests that are kind of tentative, so we don’t know what’s going to happen. And that’s part of the excitement of the whole thing, not only for the audience but also for us.”

And with a cover of … oh, wait, it’s free? And all ages? Well, I really don’t see any excuse to pass up this kind of interactive fun.