An almost too obvious entry point for the kind of satirical Americana of Shotgun Kitchen would be their spiritual forefather, John Prine. Just as Prine had a tendency to almost undermine salient points in his songs by making stoned-out, hallucinatory jokes about chasing rainbows down the street and nonchalantly tossing off non sequiturs about having a sister who's a nun, Shotgun Kitchen's perfectly legitimate satire is given a winking treatment that lets the medicine go down nice and easy. Stories about white-trash-living and country-road-dying are performed with appealingly unpolished instrumentation and vocals, giving everything the sort of spontaneous feeling of a group of good ol' boys sitting around a kitchen table and feeling a song out. But I always return to the lyrics, like the ones in "Down in my Basement," an in-turns creepy and hilarious subversion of the pining ballad.

SHOTGUN KITCHEN, w/ guests, 9 p.m., The New Frontier Lounge 301 E. 25th St, Tacoma, 253.572.4020]