POP MUSIC : They Earn Their Name Honestly : The Mavericks have come a long way by going their own way. They play what they want and, if they feel like it, may play all night long.

‘I don’t know about that cutting-edge stuff,” says the Mavericks’ singer Raul Malo. He stabs the air with his cigar, as if to pop this image that’s somehow developed around his group.

“Man, cutting-edge? People go on our tour bus and they’re expecting to see God knows what, chimps flyin’ from the chandeliers or somethin’. You go on our bus and we’re listening to Ray Conniff. How cutting-edge is that?”

Not very. But there’s definitely some kind of edge to the Mavericks, a band that’s never had a problem standing out from the country competition.

For starters, it arrived with an Elvis swagger, an Orbison vulnerability and a Cuban American singer, and it got its start playing rock clubs in its hometown of Miami.

Instead of waiting for a record deal, the group (which begins a series of Southland dates on Thursday at the House of Blues) recorded and released its first album independently. When its major-label debut came out in 1992, it included songs attacking Castro and child abuse.

Inspired by the epic emotional range of Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the U.S.A.” concerts, they’d sometimes play draining, three-hour shows. And when they shelved the social commentary and turned to heartbreak on their third album, the Mavericks summoned an emotional resonance and dash of cool that completely set them apart from Nashville’s cookie-cutter bands.

“They’re a contemporary country band unlike anybody else,” says MCA/Nashville president Tony Brown, the respected executive who signed the Mavericks in 1991. “They look like U2 and they sound like Buck Owens and Roy Orbison. . . . Their chemistry is so cool, but Raul’s voice comin’ out of those speakers, man, how can you deny that? I think it’s one of the greatest voices to come down the pike in Nashville in years.”

Says Malo: “It kind of sounds pretentious to say that we have a vision. But we do. We do have an ideal of what we like. . . . We don’t do one song because some goddamn producer tells us to play it, or some record company dude. . . . We play a song because we like it.”

*

If they had no trouble standing out, surviving was another issue.

“Just one year ago, we were in a pretty rank tour bus, watching the Super Bowl at a truck stop and not knowing what our future was gonna be,” says drummer Paul Deakin.

At the time, the debut MCA album “From Hell to Paradise” had been quietly laid to rest, and the title single from the upcoming “Crying Shame” album was languishing on the charts.

“We were determined not to change what we were,” Deakin continues. “We used to say if this isn’t gonna work we’re gonna have given it our best shot.”

The intervening year has provided ringing vindication, thanks to country radio’s hard-won embrace.

As Malo, Deakin, bassist Robert Reynolds and guitarist Nick Kane gather for breakfast at the outdoor cafe of their West Hollywood hotel, “Crying Shame” is nearing the million sales mark, and they have a Grammy nomination in the duo or group country vocal category.

They’ve just finished a new album that they say “taps the ‘50s and ‘60s vibe” even better than “Crying Shame” (it’s due in September) and a high-profile tour opening for Mary Chapin Carpenter is ready to roll.

Malo, Deakin and Reynolds are the band’s original core, tightly bonded by their shared struggle and their devotion to rock and country’s ‘50s and ‘60s roots.

Malo, 29, took to that music early, scouring his immigrant parents’ well-stocked record collection. Reynolds, 32, discovered it during garage sale expeditions with his mom, who steered him to the ‘50s records she’d loved as a teen-ager. He transmitted the passion to Deakin--a formally trained drummer who’d played everything from new wave rock to jazz--when they became pals in Miami.

Kane, the band’s third lead guitarist, joined in late ‘93, shortly after “Crying Shame” was finished, and he looks like a good fit: A decade older than his bandmates, he played with Orbison on USO tours and toiled for a few years on L.A.’s rockabilly scene.

About the group’s classic approach, Malo says, “If you can achieve the same feeling that you got when you first put on a Beatles record and heard the count to ‘I Saw Her Standing There’--you heard that song kick off, it was like, ‘Wow, what is this?!’ If you can do that on a record, you’ve done your job. . . . We strive for that. Bring a smile to the face of the person listening to it.”

The four members of the Mavericks can joke around like schoolboys, but they become dead serious when it comes to their musical vision-- mission might be a better term.

That commitment was tested in the band’s early days, when they’d play four sets a night at Miami rock clubs.

“That kind of set the tone for us loving to play,” says Malo. “I mean, you have to love to play to be up at 4:30 in the (expletive) morning, playing for 10, 20 people.”

The Mavericks’ reputation as a live act eventually reached Nashville, and the band was signed by MCA. The promising but unfocused “From Hell to Paradise” was a commercial failure, but it got some critical attention, thanks in part to four socially themed songs, including the Castro-bashing title track and the anthemic “Children.”

“It really set a standard because it was so left of center that we pretty much could do whatever the hell we wanted after that,” says Malo. “We established that we weren’t gonna go the normal route. What I’m sayin’ is, somebody hears it and goes, ‘God, this thing sucks.’ Well, you know, it’s the Mavericks, they’re kinda crazy anyway.”

The Mavericks’ goal then was to establish their true nature as a honky-tonk band. MCA’s Brown teamed them with producer Don Cook to help bring out their accessible side.

The result was “What a Crying Shame,” which came out in February, 1994. Critics swooned, but so did sales, as country radio was indifferent again.

The label’s determined efforts finally got the band airplay, and things began to snowball.

While they won’t admit feeling too secure about things yet, the Mavericks probably won’t need to second-guess themselves again, the way they did a while back when they were booked for five arena dates opening for Alan Jackson. Over-thinking, they tried to calculate a crowd-pleasing selection of songs, but they ended up scrapping it on stage.

“Raul kind of did it with a few odd song calls that were complete departures from the set list--he even surprised us,” recalls Reynolds. “We’d all be going, ‘I hope he does one that we remember.’

“The point was that we left the thinking and went to the gut and just played music. Forgot about business. It made for a great buzz. We went home goin’, ‘All right, that’s what we do, that’s when we’re the Mavericks.’ ”

* The Mavericks play Thursday at the House of Blues, 8430 Sunset Blvd., 9 p.m. Sold out. (213) 650-1451. Also next Sunday at the Coach House, 10475 San Diego Mission Road, San Diego, 8 p.m. $23.50. (619) 563-0060. Feb. 27 at the Galaxy Theatre, 3503 S. Harbor Blvd., Santa Ana, 8 p.m. Sold out. (714) 957-0600. Feb. 28 at the Ventura Theatre, 26 S. Chestnut Ave., Ventura, 8 p.m. $18.50. (805) 648-1888.