POP MUSIC REVIEW : Pinkard & Bowden Humor Lacking in Yuks

Though it’s still a fairly well-kept secret, country music does have its “Weird Al” Yankovic equivalent: Pinkard & Bowden, a Nashville-based duo with two albums out and a third on the way. The pair’s At My Place appearance Monday followed a songwriters seminar on penning novelty songs.

Like their pop counterpart, Sandy Pinkard and Richard Bowden sometimes take successful genre tunes and write new, comic lyrics to them. But just as Yankovic’s “Like a Surgeon” was unamusing because its gag lyrics had nothing to do with the original song (“Like a Virgin”), neither is Pinkard & Bowden’s “Delta Dog” (based on “Delta Dawn”) funny, for the same reasons. These songs can’t even be called parody; they merely borrow a melody and a rhyme scheme.

Their original material was an improvement. Much of the hour set was spoken banter, with the patter possibly outweighing the pop. And this pair had a most personable way of putting across even the most painful yuks: Perhaps it was just the Southern accents, but a certain benign innocence informed even the more scatological humor.

For better or verse, right now Pinkard & Bowden would rather settle for “novelty” than actual parody or something more substantial like social satire--which is at least within their range.

The best number of the evening veered hilariously toward it: “Elvis Was a Narc” contrasted the legend’s anti-drug words with his indulgent actions, hypothesizing a reason behind the insane conflict: “He knew every pill he’d eat / Would be one less on the street.” That’s certainly funnier, if not any more tasteful, than ditties about farmers’ amorous relations with barnyard animals.