Sevier County-based Irish/punk-rock hybrid outfit Cutthroat Shamrock is calling it quits, at least for now, with one final performance on St. Patrick’s Day on Market Square.

The 13-year-old Shamrock came together in the early ’00s when founders Benjamin Whitehead and Derek McRotten, veterans of local punk bands, decided to change course and explore their Scots-Irish roots with an all-acoustic unit.

“It started with me and Ben sitting on the corner of a bar in Gatlinburg, and we just started adding people from there,” says McRotten, now the only remaining original member of the band. “We wanted to do something different, something that drew on a lot of the music we grew up on.

“Then someone handed us a Pogues album, and it was all over from there.”

Cutthroat Shamrock played music that harkened to traditional Celtic styles and to the rural American music that grew out of them when Scots-Irish immigrants settled in the Appalachians a couple of centuries ago. But the band infused their acoustic reels and bluegrass breakdowns with punk-rock intensity—headlong tempos and a relentlessly thumping stand-up bass—held over from the members’ formative experiences in various local bands. The result was an explosive melding of traditional and modern aesthetics, and eruptive live shows that bristled with electricity, even though the band’s lineup was all-acoustic.

Cutthroat Shamrock went on to release four full-length albums and play innumerable shows, the vast majority during extended cross-country tours. But the years have taken a toll, McRotten says, as have the responsibilities of adulthood. And in the last couple of years, Cutthroat Shamrock’s live performances have been less frequent, and nearer to home.

“It’s just too hard for all of us to be in the same place at the same time now,” says the single-named Marcus, who replaced Whitehead in the six-piece outfit about five years ago. “We’ve got different jobs and different lives. And sleeping in a van every night with five or six guys in blazing heat or freezing cold—it gets hard.”

“It really got to the point where we decided it’s best to say that’s it for now,” says McRotten. “If we get together again sometime down the road, that’s great.”

McRotten notes there aren’t any hard feelings in the Shamrock split. It’s just a matter of time and timing. “I’m really happy that it’s worked out the way it has for 13 years,” he says. “We’ve played in almost every state, done a whole lot of festivals, lots of partying, and plenty of sleeping in questionable places. It’s been a great run.”