Click here to watch the Off the Record video of The Cousin Brothers interviewed and performing

The Cousin Brothers don't have many peers in the category of bluegrass bands that play comedy tunes, songs based on the Indianapolis Colts and reworked versions of modern rock hits.

Vocalist-bass player Kevin Vickery, banjo player Ben Long, guitar-mandolin player Dave Bagdade and drummer T.R. Yelton fill their specific corner of the musical universe with good humor and hot licks. Listeners to radio station WRZX-FM (103.3) likely know the Cousin Brothers through their frequent appearances on the weekday morning show hosted by Don Stuck (and, until recently, co-hosted by Dave "Gunner" Gunn).

The quartet will showcase tunes such as "Musk" -- inspired by Avon's bygone male fragrance Wild Country Musk -- Friday at the Melody Inn, 3826 N. Illinois St.

Vickery, Long and Bagdade recently talked to Indy.com about their high lonesome high jinks:

On the band's philosophy:

"There are no rules. That's the bottom line," Vickery says. "If it's stupid, do it. If no one else has ever done it, why shouldn't we? I tend to watch the world as it spins around me and take notes of the crazy things that are going on. I spin them back in my own way, which is probably what any songwriter does. I'd love to write serious love ballads that would make us millions of dollars, and maybe someday I'll graduate to that level. In the meantime, when I write, it sounds like stuff you'd sing on the back of a school bus."

On traditional bluegrass:

"Around here, there's not a whole lot of funny bluegrass," Long says. "There's a lot of stuffy 'grass. People will look down on you if you don't play it just like Bill Monroe did. We love bluegrass, and we love country and rock 'n' roll. We also like to have a good time." Bagdade adds: "Bill Monroe liked a lot of different things, too. He combined country music and Celtic music and country blues that he was hearing from what they called 'race' artists back then. He melded all that together. We don't play like Monroe does, but we take kind of a similar approach."

On the band's appearances on WRZX:

"We reach a lot more people by playing for five minutes on the radio at 6:20 a.m. than we do playing three hours at a time in some honky-tonk," Vickery says. "We like to do it. Don Stuck is a great guy, and we go in there and have fun with him. We play goofy songs that we write, and we play rock songs that we cover bluegrass-style."

On the song "Musk":

"We musk up before every gig," Vickery says. "We come home from gigs just stinking: Sweat, smoky bar, cheap beer and musk. We always tell the crowd: 'It's like chick repellent.' At the same time, it's a funny reference to my childhood. It's really a song about my grandpa. He was a big influence in my life and I miss him. I think about him every time we play that song."

On the song "Pork":

"When you're a band like the Cousin Brothers, you're booked places that serve pork," Vickery says. "How many hog roasts have we played? I couldn't count them. We do a lot of private shows, and they're always serving up some pulled pork or some ribs. We play bars that are known for their tenderloins. Everywhere we play, somebody is eating pig."