TRUCKER PUNKS THE Crosstops celebrated the release of their new CD, Truck and Disorderly (Malt Soda), with the wonders of bad attitude and spilt beer at the Wednesday-night Alcoholocaust Presents bash at the Elbo Room. Their set opened with – what else? – the country standby "Rough and Rowdy Ways." Though it didn't sound a hell of a lot like Merle Haggard or Lefty Frizzell at that breakneck, balls-out, no-brakes-on-the-Grapevine-this-big-rig's-comin'-through tempo. Football players talk about "setting the tone" in banal postgame interviews. Well, the tone was set.

By the time the band played "Goin' Schoolastic" – the new term for "going postal" in the post-Columbine world, according to singer-lead guitarist-lyricist (and former Bay Guardian staffer) Barry "the Wooper" Ward – the audience was doing just that. Started off by a tanked, middle-aged cat with a can of Tecate, hollerin' like a hot-footed frat boy, things started to get rather squishy. Soon everyone was doing a slip-and-sliding, speeded-up Texas two-step as the lily-white arsewipe, who had previously laid down, got a good malted-barley dousing. As the Wooper leaned into the mic and crooned the heart-wrenching intro to "Le Stump," a giddy-up, cowpunk send-up of Dalty from Angry Amputees – "the ladies all want the Stump" – a sauced pit wench leaned into me and asked, "How can you write poetry?"

Some guy jumped onstage and sang along with bass player Joey "the Silky Weasel" Hancock during "Fingercuffs," a ribald sex romp perhaps inspired by Kevin Smith's Chasing Amy. At first I thought it was a random guy, but he seemed to know the words inordinately well, especially since the crowd was ham-headed on PBR. And yes, the band were swilling that prize-winning brew as well, though at a somewhat more moderate pace. To quote Frank Booth, Dennis Hopper's character in Blue Velvet: "Heineken? Fuck that shit! Pabst! Blue Ribbon!" (Who got the red ribbon, I wonder?) It turned out the random one was actually DUI Good Pecker, former Crosstops bass player, who returned to the Weasel's mic for "Drinkin' Man," a tune he wrote. Mr. Pecker looked the part, with his backward baseball cap, plaid shirt, and tan pants, but I've been wrong before. The Weasel, for his part, stood out from the rest of the band in his blazer and fedora, perhaps a nod to Sinatra and his East Coast roots. "That boy's got a whole lot of New Jersey in him," his girlfriend told me before the show. Guitarist Isaac "Eyeball" Camner and drummer Andre "Chatty" Salcido were sporting unbuttoned cowboy shirts, Chatty topped his off with a Kenworth hat, while the Wooper had a T-shirt endorsing "Cain's: Tulsa's Timeless Honky Tonk."

Which is what the Elbo Room turned into with "Shotgun Wedding," the rollicking country get-down from their previous LP, Cloverleaf Fandango (Tinnitus). Well, not so much a honky-tonk as a full-on urban hillbilly barn dance.

"I'm a firm believer in cheap beer," the Wooper said by way of introducing "Old Milwaukee," far and away my favorite tune from the new album, a rheumy-eyed paean to shitty jobs, bad beer, and worse girlfriends. Pecker hopped back onstage. I turned around to check on how my date, a hip-hop aficionado who had never been to a punk show before, was holding out. But that was the moment I witnessed some guy come out of the shadows of the room, back behind the bar by the pinball machine, and wend his way up to her. I thought she knew him, which was somewhat odd considering the event, but it turned out he just wanted to buy her a drink and give her his number.