Ellis Brothers Have Big Expectations : Country Music: The two 6-footers give audiences a pop flavor with their novel songs.

Look! Up in the sky! It’s the Everly Brothers on steroids! No, it’s the Righteous Brothers with bolo ties!

No, it’s Darryl and Don Ellis, country music’s latest brother act. At 6-foot-4 and 6-foot-7, respectively, Darryl and Don may be the biggest thing to hit country music in years--at least in the literal sense.

The slick, pop-edged duo boasts good looks and muscular voices to match the frames, hummable material and mountains of teen appeal. They represent the new, blow-dried breed of country music artist whose crossover potential overshadows any hillbilly authenticity: David Allen Coe would doubtless relish the thought of encountering a freshly coiffed Ellis brother in a dark honky tonk.

But, unlike many a nouveau country bantamweight, these boys can actually sing a bit--with big, booming basso voices more than a little reminiscent of the Righteous Bill Medley.

Their debut album, “No Sir,” on Epic, was released last month and is holding steady at the middle of the country charts, while a video of the title cut is in rotation on the Nashville Network. During a recent interview, Don Ellis asserted that “No Sir” has already moved a respectable 70,000 units since its release.

But Don, 25, and Darryl, 27, are no overnight success story--they’ve been plying their trade for more than a decade. Growing up in Beaver Falls, Pa., the brothers have been singing together professionally since junior high school. They moved to Nashville in 1987 to seek a record contract, but it took more than five years for one to materialize. Yet, according to Don, the brothers never got discouraged.

“It’s always been one step at a time for us, one goal,” he said. “Every year has been a little bit better than the year before. We set small goals that we can attain, rather than crazy goals we can never reach. And now we’ve been playing for so long that we’ve built up a really good base of people who buy our album.”

Record sales aside, the brothers have based their reputation largely on the strength of their live show, which both Don and his record company’s press releases hype as chock-full of energy and youthful enthusiasm. Local audiences will have the chance to judge for themselves when the brothers appear tonight at In Cahoots. With a cover charge of just $2, consider it the bargain of the month, even if they fail to live up to their billing.

“I knew we were meant to do this ever since we walked onstage for the first big show we ever did,” Don said. “We were opening for Hank Williams Jr. We came on, and the crowd just went nuts. I mean, they went crazy! It was so easy for us that I knew we were in the right profession. I had watched a bunch of older acts have to work so hard to get a reaction from an audience, and, for us it came so easy and natural.”

But, if he sees the going as smooth contrasted with many older, more established country music acts, he may discover down the road that the hard-core hillbilly fan can be hard to convert.

Although it’s true that a new crop of young artists has been tearing up the charts with glossy, facile facsimiles of country music, many dyed-in-the-wool C & W fans are likely to look upon the Ellises’ brand of cow-yup music with open contempt.

Undaunted by the prospect, Don sees the lines defining country music becoming more blurred all the time.

“I think if we went back in time 20 years ago, I’d say no, we aren’t country,” he said. “We’d be a pop group. We’d be more along the lines of Billy Joel, James Taylor, Elton John, England Dan and John Ford Coley. That would be our deal.

“But you look at Dan Seals (England Dan), and he hasn’t hardly changed his music at all, and now he’s considered country. You look at the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Are they rock ‘n’ roll or are they something different? People put them in the rock ‘n’ roll category. All music has changed, but the labels stay the same, and that’s not just in country, either.”

In fact, he sees the duo treading even further into pop crossover territory. He also views their sound as “family-oriented,” with an appeal he hopes will draw fans of all ages.

“But I guess we’re pretty boring as far as getting into trouble and stuff goes,” he said. “I don’t want to say that we’re goody two-shoes kind of guys, but Darryl and I like to do things on the up and up.”

Boring? Goody two-shoes? How does this image stack up with the long-held perception of the country singer as “the Lonesome Rebel”?

From the hobo laments of the late, great Jimmie Rodgers--the acknowledged “Father of Country Music,” to the live-fast, die-young legend of Hank Williams and the outlaw stance of Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson, country music’s brightest stars have almost always had their dark side.

While Darryl and Don break with that tradition and in that sense come closer to the clean-cut image of Garth Brooks, they don’t want to be characterized as being in a lightweight league with Billy Ray Cyrus, of “Achy Breaky Heart” infamy.

“It’s all in whether or not you can sing,” Don said. “I heard Waylon Jennings say about Billy Ray Cyrus, ‘Well, the boy can’t really sing.’ I don’t know that he could say that about us. If we played a show with Waylon, I think he’d consider us legitimate country artists. When Waylon came out, he was different. He had that beard and the whole outlaw thing. He and Willie did something different in country music at the time, so I think they’d be more accepting of a new breed of country artists themselves.”

* Darryl and Don Ellis will appear today at In Cahoots, 5373 Mission Center Road, San Diego. Show starts at 9 p.m. Cover charge is $2.