Helping the Jake Leg Stompers to fill a much-needed gap in the local musical landscape, The Felt Shims are bringing some serious bluegrass to the ’Boro.

Playing numerous old bluegrass standards while mixing in a few unconventional covers and an original song or two, The Felt Shims are one of those refreshing bands that take their music, but not themselves, very seriously (they list G.E. Smith and the Saturday Night Live Band as an influence). They have four-part harmony fun onstage, a feeling that is noticeably contagious with their crowds.

Recently they kicked off Bluegrass Nights at Liquid Smoke, which will be a regular Saturday night fixture at the venue.

The Felt Shims are Calan O’Bryant (or the “banjer-pickin’-sum-bitch”) on banjo and vocals, Rocky Lane (his real name, says so on his driver’s license) on mandolin, harmonica and vocals and Dylan Mackin on guitar and vocals. Bobby Gray has been playing upright bass for a few gigs, but his future with the band is uncertain at the moment, as he is the lead singer and guitarist for local band The Middle Men.

Lane and O’Bryant are childhood friends from Pegram, Tenn., and began to suckle at the teat of bluegrass at a young age.

“My whole family plays bluegrass,” says Lane. “We grew up smack in the middle of it.”

Alan O’Bryant, banjoist for the Grammy award-winning Nashville Bluegrass Band, is Calan’s father. Lane’s cousin Deanie Richardson plays in the band Second Fiddle, and both have numerous guitar/fiddle/banjo/mandolin-playing aunts, uncles and cousins. O’Bryant remembers numerous “knockdown and drag-out hoedowns” from family reunions at his grandmother’s home in the Appalachian foothills of North Carolina.

“Bluegrass has been in my blood since way back,” as Lane aptly puts it.

While they did grow up around bluegrass, only recently did either Lane or O’Bryant begin to get serious about actually playing bluegrass music. Lane began playing mandolin just over a year ago. O’Bryant began to get serious about playing banjo after picking up John Hartford’s landmark 1976 album Mark Twang.

There is something pure and Southern about The Felt Shims. All three core members are from small towns and are easy-going, laid-back guys. They have scruffy facial hair and wear overalls and plaid shirts on stage. They are country fried steak and sweet tea, rope swings and swimming holes. They are 10-inch lift kits, having your first taste of Budweiser with your father, biscuits and gravy, drinking with your dog and both howling at the moon and getting a Craftsman tool set from your father as a high school graduation present. They play music because they love it, not to get famous. They would play for free drinks just as soon as they would play for a few bucks.

For more information on The Felt Shims, visit myspace.com/thefeltshims.