For the Long Haul : With a song list in the hundreds, they will still be playing country when the craze is over.

For more than three years, the country band Sky King has dutifully tended to the business of playing & W for all who would listen. But then a funny thing happened on the way to the gig. Last year, country music went through the roof.

Hordes of new country fans, many of them with visions of line dancing in their heads, turned the music into an explosive marketplace on both the national and local levels.

Sky King carries on, aided by demographics but undaunted in their pursuit of musical truth, beauty and, of course, work. This is, by definition, a working band. Delusions of grandeur are not allowed.

“We exist to propel dancers around the floor and welcome anybody who wants to take advantage of this craze going on,” guitarist-singer David West said matter-of-factly from his living room in Santa Barbara.

Which isn’t to say, of course, that the band isn’t glad for it.

“Remember 10 or 12 years ago when ‘Urban Cowboy’ started that country craze?” he asked. “That was a drop in the bucket compared to what’s going on now. My mind boggles. I don’t know if that’s good or bad, but it’s provided us with a hell of a lot of work.

“It’s not like we’re in the business to compete with Billy Ray Cyrus or Garth Brooks, but as far as being a blue-collar band for local dancers in Southern California and just being in the trenches making a living, it’s really helped out a lot.”

Just because they have a realistic attitude toward the job at hand doesn’t mean that the players don’t have fun or make good music. Last week at the Galleon Room, a local hot spot tucked away in Goleta’s Orchid Bowl, the band showed what it was made of. And to be sure, it’s about a lot more than performing human jukebox duties.

In one set, the band showed just how varied country music really is. It is broad and expansive enough to span from Hank Williams to Hank Ketcham, from Dwight Yoakum to the old classic “Ashes of Love”, from hidden gems from Merle Haggard and Buck Owens to “new blood” tunes from George Strait and Ricky Skaggs.

All in a night’s work for a thinking, working country band whose song list numbers in the hundreds.

Since November, the lineup of West, bassist-leader Dan Wilson and drummer Randy Guscman has included seasoned Ventura musician Tim Buley. A man of many talents, he brings a rock edge to round out West’s more rolling, country-rooted style.

Buley has an uncanny knack for music. He grabs an instrument (with hands or feet, as when he plays bass pedals on his one-man jobs); music just starts pouring out.

At the Galleon Room, Buley dished out an original tune, “This Is a Song,” which he had adapted from a more pop style to a swampy, country stomp.

The band ended the set with a psychedelic version, led by Buley, of “Maybelline.” In the piece’s open midsection, they slipped into a rockabilly reading of “Rawhide” and then some flamenco-tinged noodling before returning home to Chuck Berry’s original.

All this in a bowling alley. Culture pops up in the strangest places.

Despite Sky King’s workman-like philosophy, the group would also like to work original music into the mix. Wilson said he sees 1993 as “a breakthrough year for Sky King as far as that goes.”

It was former Sky King guitarist Lee Rolag who came up with the name, which some will remember as the TV series of yore. Rolag, a local guitar legend who worked with the late Roger Miller for several years, has since begun working in a new band, backing up fellow Sky King alumna Sarah Pierce.

Because its members are involved with their own projects (West, for instance, released a fine solo album last year and is preparing to record another one), Sky King is a band with a changing face. Or faces, as the case may be.

On the long list of substitutes are Ventura’s whiz guitarist Jimmy Monohan; Martin Young, the ex-Ojai resident now with Clint Black, and former Emmylou Harris guitarist Frank Recard.

The band also burns up the miles. It’s working turf extends from Zaca Creek in Buellton to Pioneer Town in Yucca Valley, mecca and getaway for Southern California musicians. In between, there are clubs in Ventura County and three clubs in Santa Barbara.

Unexpected surprises punctuate the workload. At the Red Dog a few months ago, Ketcham and his band came by after a concert at the Ventura Theater and wound up sitting in, playing to a rapt crowd for more than an hour.

According to Wilson, one of the band’s favorite places to work is Cold Springs Tavern at the top of San Marcos Pass, where the casual atmosphere is conducive to playing just the way they want.

For all the good things the country craze has brought, however, Wilson admits that there are some drawbacks. For one, he said, the line dance phenomenon sometimes gets irksome.

“People make requests for the dance, not the song,” West said. “It’s kind of bass-ackwards and I scratch my head a lot. But it’s keeping us employed. That’s when I stop scratching my head and start thinking of songs.”

And underneath it all, an undercurrent of collective musicality keeps the band from lapsing into complacency.

“From the git-go, the band was always a good band musically,” West said. “It’s always been a prerequisite that the band be made up of really good players. So even when we’re doing the cover material, we put ourselves into it. We stretch out solos, and a lot of times arrangements on tunes will change around for our own taste. I think that’s one reason we’ve been one of the popular bands.”

West is stoic about the upsurge of C & W appreciation. He sees it from the perspective of someone in it for the long haul.

“We’ve all been playing country music for years. Danny’s been playing it for almost 30 years. Basically, we’ve been doing our thing and all of a sudden there’s this big swell. We’ve just ridden along. with it. “I’d like to milk it for all it’s worth,” he added, laughing.

But if the craze dies down--and West is certain that it will--he won’t worry too much.

“We’ll still be playing country music when it’s over,” he said. “We’ll be just as unhip as we were five years ago when we were doing this.”