Three Sheets host stops in Henniker
For over a decade, Zane Lamprey traveled the world and drank for a living.
His pub crawl series Three Sheets ran for four seasons starting in 2006. In 2010, Drinking Made Easy launched on Mark Cuban’s HDNet, followed by the crowd-funded Chug. Lamprey’s most recent series, Four Sheets, aired its final episode in early 2020.
Since then Lamprey has done a lot of standup comedy, primarily at places like Henniker Brewery, where his Another Round tour stops on March 22. He began playing the craft beer circuit out of necessity; clubs and theatres were slow to open after the pandemic, and he needed work. He’s now done more than 500 brewery gigs, with 10 in New England on the current run.
“I have a lot of great relationships at breweries because of the shows I’ve done, and I reached out to them,” Lamprey said by phone recently. “They loved the idea of having me come in and bring attention to their brewery, fill it with people, do a night of comedy, and so it was a very synergistic kind of thing.”
Unlike many who use stand-up to launch a television career, Lamprey took an inverse route, and after he finishes writing a memoir in progress he’ll begin a book about becoming a comedian at age 49. He says it’s all a natural progression: “I’ve always been someone, in all the shows that I’ve done, who needs to understand comedic timing and how to tell a joke.”
Through his years of imbibing across the planet, Lamprey has gathered more than enough material for multiple comedy specials. His latest, The Medium Club, premiered in January. “I’ve made a lot of poor decisions that have led to some great stories,” he said.
He’s also drunk many strange concoctions in his years, like rum aged in a bottle with a drowned snake. He once knocked back 23 shots, each containing a preserved scorpion. Later he realized that “your body is not designed to digest exoskeletons.” The shoot-and-chew experience led to an excruciating, barrel-full-of-monkeys situation.
But Lamprey has never declined a proffered glass, because entertainment.
“I always said that my job in any of the shows I’ve done was creating a water cooler moment,” he said. “Doing those shots are what people talk about. For that reason, I’m happy to do it … to take one for the team.”
Non-liquid challenges can be different, and Lamprey recalled one time he did draw the line.
“The only thing that I said no to is balut.” The popular Philippines snack is a two-thirds gestated duck egg hard boiled and served with salt and vinegar. “Basically a baby duck sitting on the yolk or the amniotic sack…. I was like, absolutely not. I tried drinking enough beers to bring myself to do it, and I couldn’t get to that place. It was too vile.”
Lamprey prefers to remember beautiful moments, like the time he rented out the Eiffel Tower for a Champagne party that wrapped as the sun was rising, or filming in Croatia a decade after their civil war. “It was very eye-opening,” he recalled. “These people weren’t war-torn and bitter because of what they went through, they were … embracing life and moving on — without forgetting about the past.”
While there, he ran into a restaurant owner singing with his friends in the street, and went in for a drink.
“We weren’t even going to shoot there … and it was one of the best experiences of my life,” Lamprey said. “But you could name any episode, and I would tell you about a moment in it that I was so grateful to be doing what I was doing.”
When Lamprey is asked why he left television, his response is that it left him.
“People every night are just like, ‘Please go back and do one of those shows again.’ I would love to.” Networks that ran his shows, like Spike, Fine Living and HDNet, are long gone, supplanted by YouTube and TikTok.
“I’ve had the privilege of being able to go and do some of the coolest things ever and be followed by a camera crew,” he said. “But the landscape of television has changed. Places where Three Sheets would have fit perfectly … no longer exist. They drop the vowels in their name, and all they do is paranormal shows.”
That said, Lamprey’s not about to stop telling jokes to crowds.
“I would actually choose the stand-up over those shows,” he said. “Which is probably why now discussions to do another TV show have resurfaced; but it would have to be perfect for me to do it.”
Zane Lamprey
When: Saturday, March 22, 8 p.m.
Where: Henniker Brewing Co., 129 Centervale Road, Henniker
Tickets: $25 and up at eventbrite.com
Featured photo. Courtesy photo.
