Ever since Arista Nashville plucked BR5-49 out of their residency at Robert's Western World and thrust them in the national spotlight, the Nashville quintet has been heralded by Music City trend-watchers and critics across America as the Future of Country Music. And held up against the dimming bulbs of Music Row's stable of interchangeable hat acts, BR5-49's brand of in-your-face, retro honky-tonk in thrift store duds does give off a heady, healthy glow. But judging from the band's spirited but predictable display on record and on stage tonight, it's hard to buy BR5-49 as the future of country anymore than Sha Na Na was the future of rock at Woodstock and the Stray Cats the future of rock in MTV's infancy.

Giving credit where credit is due, BR5-49 boasts some of the finest musicians country music has to offer today. Don Herron, aptly nicknamed "The Professor," jumps from steel guitar to fiddle to dobro and back again in the space of a single song without missing a note. Had they been around back in the day, drummer "Hawk" Shaw Wilson and upright bassist Smilin' Jay McDowell might have held court with the King and cats like Cash and Perkins. And BR5-49's resident Lennon and McCartney, singer/guitarists Chuck Mead and Gary Bennett, could sing Garth Brooks under the table and mimic George Jones well-enough to pull a fast-one on Tammy Wynette. As a performing unit, BR5-49 is a blast to watch (particularly the slap-happy McDowell) and quick with stage-patter wit, albeit often as a set up for their notorious tip pandering.

And hot damn, do they know their country music. You could see and hear better versions of western-swing, honky-tonk, and rockabilly classics like Bob Will's "Take Me Back to Tulsa," Johnny Horton's "Cherokee Boogie," and Carl Perkin's "Gone, Gone, Gone," but doing so would require a time machine and a booking agent with God's card in his Rolodex. Throw in vintage George Jones, Mel Tillis, Buck Owens -- and a handful of originals that sound like vintage Jones, Tillis, and Owens -- and it's easy to understand BR5-49's appeal to disgruntled country purists and wide-eyed new recruits of the No Depression "alternative country" movement. Whether you're aching to hear songs you grew up with or songs your passion for Wilco make you wish you had grown up with, BR5-49 are your dedicated country jukebox heroes.

Given the band's considerable talent, it would be thrilling to hear what BR5-49 could cook up if they expanded their musical horizons just a smidgen to the left. But even at their most ambitious, the band never lets go of the past quite enough to move convincingly forward. The only curve ball BR5-49 threw all night was their set-opening cover of country-outlaw Billy Joe Shaver's "Georgia on a Fast Train," a raging bull of a song that seemed oddly docile harnessed by the band's unrelenting retro sensibility. And while the two originals always cited as proof of the band's "punk" ethic -- the alt-country anthem "Little Ramona's Gone Hillbilly Nuts" and the fractured, drugs-and-sex-laced Andy Griffith theme "Me 'N' Opie (Down by the Duck Pond)" -- are always good for laughs, they're no more provocative than "Roly Poly," the 1945 Bob Wills chestnut with the pre-P.C. lyric, "Roly Poly, daddy's little fatty..."

Rather than looking backwards, anyone pondering the future of country music would be better served keeping track of forward-looking mavericks like Steve Earle, Lyle Lovett, and Richard Buckner, or -- in an Orwellian sense -- the Girl-Power pop of Shania Twain. But for a healthy slice of remember-when and a hell of a fun night out, BR5-49 still hits the spot dead-on. Chances are, that's probably all the boys ever wanted to prove from the beginning -- trend-watchers and industry gamblers be damned.

RICHARD SKANSE