Maybe it was because Fritz's folks were there and his Dad was playing the fiddle with them, but the boys seemed nervous.

Fresh Country Scrapple has been playing Zeno's, 100 W. College Ave., happy hours every Friday since Thanksgiving. And even though the band won these patrons' hearts months ago, they acted like this was their first gig. Fritz and John -- both dressed in jeans, flannel shirts and suspenders -- were pacing around tuning their banjos. And Vaughn kept fumbling with the PA system, trying to get the sound right.

The only one who looked calm was Wes, who stood against the wall sipping his beer and munching on a roast beef sandwich. He doesn't have to worry much about tuning his washtub bass.

But when the show got going, at about 5 p.m., Scrapple was in its usual form -- churning out a fine mix of bluegrass and early country music.

Few know there's such a difference between bluegrass and country. Fritz Kessler (graduate-cartography), who grew up in a mining town in Ohio, can run your ear off about it. He said bluegrass came from the "poor mountain folks" who used music to express their sorrow and entertain themselves. A lot of people who like country, hate bluegrass.

"Bluegrass takes three chords and tries to do as much with that as it can," he said last week. "But a lot of people get bored with it. I always like to consider bluegrass more powerful to the soul."

Scrapple got its big break last fall, opening up for Bill Monroe -- a guy Fritz called the "Elvis Presley of bluegrass." Scrapple's members were a little nervous opening for such an illustrious performer.

"It was all bluegrass, which is what the crowd liked and that kind of scared us because we're not that good at it," said Vaughn Neill, co-founder and leader.

Vaughn plays guitar and sings lead on all the country songs. With a thick beard, teddy-bear smile and ponytail, Vaughn gives Scrapple's shows their down-home feeling, talking to the crowd like they're all his good buddies.

"If you have any requests, feel free to come up and ask us," he tells the audience. "Just don't do it while we're singing."

The boys then launch into an old song with lyrics like, "Bake the biscuits baby, bake the biscuits brown."

"Vaughn really keeps us together," Fritz said. "John and I don't have that much personality."

But the guy everyone's crazy about is Wes Carter, who plays a handmade washtub bass. Wes, a lanky fellow with a thin beard, goes nuts twanging the nylon cord that extends from the top of a stick to the bottom of an overturned washtub.

"Wes makes up for all the movement that we don't do," Fritz said. "Wes is an incredible washtub bass player, if you can call a washtub player incredible."

To play it, Wes keeps one foot on top of the washtub and pulls the pine sapling taut while he plucks away. He wears a leather glove to prevent blisters. Playing the washtub isn't easy.

"My foot is killing me. You try standing on one foot for a whole evening," he complained. "I'm sure I'm slowly doing permanent damage to my index and middle fingers of my right hand."

Surprisingly, the washtub bass is a serious instrument. Bluegrass bands would make them when they didn't have enough money for a bass fiddle, Scrapple co-founder John Groninger (graduate-forestry) said.

"It's difficult to play with any tonal quality and Wes doesn't do it," Vaughn said. "He kind of goes for the thumping."

The band knows about 100 songs and rarely works from a playlist. But they have no originals.

"Our attitude has been that all the good songs have already been written," John said.

Everyone at Zeno's seems to love these guys, if only for their hick appeal. But talk to them for a few minutes and you'll be surprised by how they shatter stereotypes. All four members have either graduated from Penn State or will soon. Fritz and John both grew up playing classical instruments. And Vaughn's and Wes's musical tastes jump all over the spectrum.

That doesn't mean the suspenders, trucking caps and blue jeans they sport at each show are mere costumes.

"We certainly dress the part with the flannel, the boots, suspenders and the caps," Fritz said. "But that's not just an act, we wear that every day."

After May, however, they won't be around. They're going to hit the road this summer and play all the bluegrass festivals, after which they'll go their own ways.

"We'll just get together every two years and our wives will say, 'Why are they doing this?' and our kids won't understand us," Vaughn said. "I have no real plans unless the man from Nashville shows up."