Harmonic Convergence

"It's tough because if you want to be honest, you run that risk of being sentimental," says Kleinberg. "You could write a song and mask it behind all kinds of stuff that nobody can understand, and they can get whatever they want out of it. But if you write a song where you're clearly saying something you feel, it's hard [because] you run that risk of seeming cheesy."

Indeed, after all the odes to old cars, bad directions, and getting drunk, the album closes on a somber and emotional note with Murach's "Don't Close Your Eyes" and Kleinberg's "Morning Sun," which is based on a childhood friend's strange reaction to the news of his father's murder.

Marissa Hereso

86: The perfect mixture of serious and silly.

Details

Sunday, April 22, at 9 p.m. Tickets are $5; call 647-2877.

Make-Out Room, 3225 22nd St. (at Mission), S.F.

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More About

• Tom Murach
• Jason Kleinberg
• Joel Murach
• Bluegrass
• World Music

Murach penned "Don't Close Your Eyes" in spring 1998 while he and Kleinberg were on a cross-country trip through the South -- a journey occasioned in part by the breakup of Murach and Kleinberg's previous band, Paddlefoot. (Like many other Bay Area new country bands in the early '90s, Paddlefoot was an amalgam of California musical history, beginning with the hard country of Buck Owens and running through Gram Parsons, the Byrds, Creedence Clearwater Revival, and even some punk acts.)

"I had always wanted to go on a trip across the States just to go to all the big music cities [like] Memphis, Nashville," says Murach. "So I was talking about this idea, and Jason said he wanted to go, too, and so we took a couple weeks and drove to those cities. Along the way we had a mandolin in the car and were learning a lot of the music we were coming across. Just [playing] older bluegrass and country tunes, singing a lot of two-part harmonies, working on them and trying to get them better."

After the pair got home, they began to write new songs and formed 86. "When the band first started I was thinking of it as being more Jason's band," says Murach. "And it seemed like whenever I tried to put that on Jason, he would always say, "No, that's not how it is. We're a real band: Everyone has input and everyone has to make a contribution.' And that's why we sound like a band."

That cohesion comes across most strongly onstage, where Joel Murach's confident, high-lonesome lyrics, Kleinberg's nasal twang, Tom Murach's rock rhythms, and Davis' banjo stylings blend to make a sound that's not quite country and not quite indie rock -- a mixture that drives even the most stoic San Francisco audiences to dance. By agreeing to disagree, 86 has started a tradition of its own.