Cousin Lovers Fiddle a Hip Hillbilly Tune

“Swingers II: The Hoedown Years”?

Don’t be too surprised if hip watering holes around town start offering fiddles and mandolins instead of saxes and crooning--and your neighborhood lounge lizards slither out of their sharkskin and satin and into dungarees and dirndls.

Most prominent pop movements in L.A. have led directly to rediscovery of rustic roots, from the ‘60s Byrds-Burrito Brothers axis to the ‘80s X-Knitters crowd. In that light, the advent of the Cousin Lovers--a bluegrass-based quintet from Hollywood that includes two members of now-defunct Love Jones, one of the first notable names on L.A.’s lounge-rock scene--probably was inevitable.

At Jacks Sugar Shack on Saturday, the group impressed with a certain amount of authenticity. Its roots are real (four of the members hail from Louisville, Ky.; singer-mandolinist Tim Ferguson is Georgia-born) and the original songs capture the rambler-gambler aesthetic--and flip-side repentance--with a measure of elan. Musically, only fiddler Craig Eastman dazzled, but the three-part harmonies and often hyper rhythms were plenty solid.

But make no mistake: These guys are hipster hillbillies, and their shtick Saturday was more Catskills than Ozarks. Ferguson effects a sort of movie-Elvis cool and the band is wont to toss in pop culture references, such as slipping George Clinton’s “Atomic Dog” into the middle of “Freeborn Man.” But the several couples on the dance floor didn’t miss a beat sliding from two-step to funk, so these Cousin Lovers may be on to something.

* Cousin Lovers return to Jacks on Jan. 18 with local country-rocker Dan Janisch, who opened Saturday, plus San Francisco’s self-explanatory Those Darn Accordions.