Un-Cat-Egorizable : Pop music: The Acousticats will return to San Juan Capistrano with their eclectic blend of bluegrass, rock and other influences.

An Acousticats set can range all over the map, from the Allman Brothers to Benny Goodman, from an old coal-mining ballad or two to soaring instrumental workouts.

If you have to call this five-piece acoustic band something, you can call it progressive folk-bluegrass. Cyrus Clarke, the group’s guitarist and songwriter, would just as soon leave categories out of it.

That eclectic approach flows naturally from the group’s influences, Clarke said by phone from his home in Santa Barbara. “I didn’t learn my music at my grandpappy’s knee, I learned it from the radio dial.”

So, although the group’s music has a rural bent, “We’re all rockers. I love bluegrass, but I grew up listening to rock ‘n’ roll.”

The Acousticats play two sets tonight at the San Juan Capistrano Library, a return engagement that comes one year after their Orange County debut there. Their strategy is to conquer California, piece by piece, before making an all-out effort for a national audience.

“One of the things about California is that it’s so large, we’re gonna spend the next five years checking it out,” Clarke said. “If it takes us four or five years to build an audience in Orange County, so be it.”

Part of that careful approach comes from acknowledgment of the fact that the Acousticats’ music must compete for attention with more commercial brands of pop, so group members make a point of doing personal appearances at record stores and radio stations when they come for a performance. “It’s not enough for us to come in and play and say, ‘I’ll see you later,’ ” Clarke said.

Group members believe that once they draw someone in to a concert, be it a festival or at a club show, that person will be hooked.

“We seem to hit a nerve with a lot of people,” Clarke said. Audience members can range from young grunge fans to older bluegrass aficionados, and that’s just great by him. “One of the things we don’t do is we don’t create barriers. I think people do that because of marketing.”

The Acousticats’ hallmark is a twin-fiddle attack led by Phil Salazar and Charl Ann Gastineau. Rounding out the band with Clarke are bassist Rick Borella and mandolin player Tom Corbett.

Although the band is relatively new--it was formed in 1990--all are veteran musicians. Clarke spent 13 years in an acoustic band called the Cache Valley Drifters, which broke up in 1985. Some of the members of that group joined up with members of the Phil Salazar Band to create the Acousticats.

The band has one album out on Flying Fish Records, but members parted ways with the company after its founder died last year. They have since recorded a new album and are negotiating with another independent label for its release. If that doesn’t work out, they may put it out themselves.

Taking such a home-grown approach is becoming a trend among artists who fall outside the commercial mainstream. Knowing how to produce an album, and even to market and distribute it, are aspects of the business that everyone needs to know these days, Clarke said.

“My mom was a nightclub singer, and she would just sing and do nothing else,” he said. “These days, in order to compete and survive, you need to know the whole thing. There are just too many great players and producers.”

That means keeping up with all the new digital recording technology, even for all-acoustic outfits such as the Acousticats. “One of these days I’m going to write the ‘Silicon Valley Breakdown,’ ” Clarke joked.

Clarke does most of the band’s writing, although Corbett has penned some tunes since joining the group early last year. “I do love songwriting more than everything else. . . . It’s been a great outlet for me.”

Even so, he said, a second songwriter has been a welcome addition.

“I have a more folk, poetic (feel) in my writing. I’ll spend weeks and weeks on a verse to make it just right. I don’t want to waste a syllable.” Corbett, he said, “is more pop-oriented.”

Together, “it gives us depth,” he said. “It’s like traveling: You get to visit other people’s cultures. We don’t have a competition thing going on. We are very careful about that.”

The confluence of styles and influences is part of a larger trend in American music in which styles blend and meld and create new form. As acoustic music evolves, also, it attracts more trained musicians, and the level of playing continues to rise. Both Salazar and Gastineau, for instance, are classically trained.

Clarke likens it to the early days of the jazz era, when most musicians were self-taught.

“As jazz became popular, it attracted trained musicians,” Clarke said. “It looks like acoustic music is starting to undergo the same sort of process. A lot of bluegrass and old-time country music came from the hills” but has since moved beyond those sources.

California, with its multiplicity of styles and influences, is one place where acoustic music is changing dynamically, and it is those changes that are fueling the Acousticats.

“We have a very strong sense of time and place: The time is now and the place is California,” Clarke said. “We feel that if we’re able to succeed regionally, we’ll be able to succeed nationally.”

* The Acousticats play tonight at 7 and 9 at the San Juan Capistrano Library, La Sala Auditorium, 31495 El Camino Real, San Juan Capistrano. $3. (714) 493-1752.