CD Release - The Cogburns rock the highway to hell

Glenn, Jenn, Doug and Tony Cogburn love to perform as the Cogburns. They like to speckle their conversation with exclamations like “hanging out with my best friends” and “this is a lot of fun.” Certainly the band that hangs out together, rocks together.

Now the Cogburns are releasing a new CD, Pay Up, Sucker, on which the quartet pounds the garage-rock beat, strumming out riffs and hooks with enthusiasm. “She got the long legs/She like to roll the dice/She like a razor blade/She’ll make you feel alright,” Glenn Cogburn sings in a rangy, raspy voice on “My My Lola.” As Jenn and Doug confirm, Pay Up, Sucker is mostly about drinking, sex and rock and roll. “I think a typical Bible Belter would say that if you do anything on this album, you’re going to hell,” says Doug.

Pay Up, Sucker is the Cogburns’ second album (following 2004’s Bob) and the first for Jenn’s label, Be Particular! Records. More importantly, it marks a new, stabilized lineup after two years of personnel changes. “Glenn is the founder of the group, and he basically put together a whole new group,” says Jenn, who plays bass. She joined the group in the last year-and-a-half, as did drummer Tony and guitarist Doug.

“It’s been over time that all these changes have occurred,” adds Doug. “Glenn didn’t just go and fire everybody.”

“We’re just breaking out of being a local band into being more of a regional band,” notes Jenn. The Cogburns often play regional festivals like the Heavy Rebel Weekender in Winston-Salem, N.C., and in December they’re traveling to the U.K. for the first time. “The band is really taking it seriously. Once you hit that point of taking off, whoever’s in the band’s gotta decide, ‘Can I do it, too? Or do I have other obligations that I need to meet?’” She adds, “The lineup we have now is allowing us to be on the road almost as much as we’d like to be.”

The Cogburns take that hard-rockin’, easygoing attitude wherever they go. “We get on stage, and there’s 15 people in the club at the back of the room, and by the end of the show, there’s 30 people at the front of the stage,” says Doug. “And when we go back to a town, it just gets better.”

The Cogburns play Fri., July 28, with Rocket 350 and the Love Drunks. $7. 9 p.m. Star Bar, 437 Moreland Ave. 404-681-9018. www.starbar.net.