MUSIC / LIQUID SUNSHINE : CD Send-Off : The Isla Vista trio is all female and all acoustic. Just don’t call them folkies.

Liquid Sunshine may sound like another one of those hippie-trippy escalators to an illegal smile--and, thus, a one-way ticket to those barred rooms wherein the great state of California pays your rent.

But nope, this Liquid Sunshine is totally legit, a three-woman folk rock band out of Isla Vista that doesn’t even do any Grateful Dead covers.

Liquid Sunshine is Gina Villalobos and Laura Kravetz on guitars and Becky Curtis on lead vocals. Sometimes there’s just one singer, sometimes two; sometimes all three combine for some very happening harmonies. They’ll be playing tunes off their new CD, “Sweet Commitment,” Friday night at the Santa Barbara coffeehouse Green Dragon.

Yup, that’s right, a CD. There are about a million bands in Santa Barbara, and about 500,000 of them released tapes during the last year or so. So Liquid Sunshine joins Tao Jonz and Spencer the Gardener as the only local acts to release a CD.

“A CD was way more expensive than a tape,” Villalobos said during a recent phoner. “We got a good deal, so it only cost us about $3,000. You can send a CD to radio stations. It’s not just a demo; it’s out there for immediate release.

“They don’t play tapes on the radio--they ignore them,” she added. “Tapes don’t mean that much. People just think, ‘Oh, big deal.’ We sent a CD to Jeff Hanley on KTYD and we’re gonna start buggin’ him to play it. Hey, we live here and we want to be on the radio.”

Radio play is usually a later phase of the Master Plan, which often entails taking the show on the road, making T-shirts, getting signed and other such dreams.

“We’re going to continue to play in Isla Vista and Santa Barbara, and travel throughout the state,” Villalobos said. “We’ve already played in San Diego and Los Angeles, even Oregon. I like traveling and hanging out with the other bands. When we went to San Diego, there were no distractions and we were totally focused. We want all the labels to look at us.”

One place the labels won’t be looking is at the UC Santa Barbara campus bar, The Pub, which has been closed--reportedly for a couple of years now--for remodeling. Which makes a person wonder: Can a student get a quality education in the ‘90s without a bar on campus?

“A lot of the bands that play downtown are I. V. bands,” Villalobos said. “There’s not really a difference between I. V. bands and Santa Barbara bands. We want to play downtown a little more before we sell our CD down there. By playing downtown, say, one night at Alex’s and the next night at Toes, everyone knows about it and only goes to one show.”

Then again, spreading the word never hurts. Which is exactly what Villalobos did to find her first band mate.

“I’d been playing guitar since I was in high school at Mira Costa when I moved to Santa Barbara to go to Brooks,” Villalobos said. “My brother suggested that I put some flyers up and Laura answered my ad the same day. She came over and we played some songs, and her playing just blew me away.

“We got another member who didn’t work out, then we got Becky,” she said. “I’d known her for a long time before she joined. We used to say, ‘We should be in a band, yeah, yeah, yeah, talk, talk, talk.’ Our first gig with Becky was at Alex’s in Goleta. She was real nervous.”

Two women playing guitars, another one shaking a tambourine. Folk music, right? The Indigo Girls plus one, Suzanne Vega plus two? Well, it depends on whom you ask.

“First of all, I don’t think we do folk. Wanna know why?” Villalobos asked. “There’s a lot of emotion and meaning in the lyrics, and the chord progressions and the lead guitar isn’t folk. To me, folk is stuff like ‘I love the trees, sitting by the river. . . .’

“If you add drums to our music, it’s rock the way we do it. When we played the Bluebird Cafe, they thought we were too rock.”

Most of Liquid Sunshine’s songs “are just like life, time periods, something that has happened,” said Villalobos, who also composes the songs. “They’re not political. That’s not my job. They’re not depressing or anything. I just write about how I feel.

“We feel good about our music and only do two covers--one by Lenny Kravitz and one by Sinead O’Connor. In fact, once we played for a high school graduation. They had their party at the S. B. Zoo.

“We played all our original stuff and, by the end, they really liked us.”

* WHERE AND WHEN

Liquid Sunshine at the Green Dragon, 22 W. Mission St., Santa Barbara, 687-1902. Friday at 8:30 p.m. Even the long-suffering middle class can afford this one. It’s free.