Country musicians Kieran Kane and Kevin Welch play against Nashville type.

Country songwriters/musicians Kieran Kane and Kevin Welch don’t need to play together. Each is a stand-alone talent with a wealth of legendary connections. Welch has written songs for Garth Brooks, Waylon Jennings, and The Highwaymen, a country supergroup once composed of Jennings, Kris Kristofferson, Willie Nelson and Johnny Cash. In the early 1990s, Welch released two major label albums on Warner/Reprise, and by 1999, he had released two more albums on Dead Reckoning Records.

Kane, who met Welch when the two were songwriters at Sony Tree Publishing, has penned tunes for Alan Jackson, Emmylou Harris and Randy Travis. After releasing a successful debut solo album with two hits, Kane formed the O’Kanes with Jamie O’Hara. During the O’Kanes’ three-year career, the duo had several popular singles including 1987’s “Can’t Stop My Heart From Loving You,” a song that reached the top of the country charts. Since the O’Kanes disbanded, Kane has released four critically acclaimed solo albums, and started playing with Welch.

“It’s just more fun than the law should allow,’ Welch says during a phone interview from Canada. “Every night is a little revelation. We approach this stuff like jazz where you stay the theme and jam on it.”

In addition to their love of performing together, the duo’s latest release, You Can’t Save Everybody , reveals that Kane and Welch share a love of old-fashioned acoustic music that doesn’t exist in most of today’s country. While most contemporary country sounds like overproduced pop with a slight twang, Kane and Welch’s CD sounds like a couple of friends jamming together in a cabin or by a campfire.

But the two definitely have different styles. While Kane’s “You Can’t Save Everybody” has the solemn sing-along quality of a hymn or a traditional song, Welch’s “Jersey Devil,” a song about the legendary beast that roams New Jersey’s Pine Barrens, sounds like an acoustic version of a rock song.

“I think Kieran might be more rooted in traditional styles than I am,” Welch says. “He always seems to be going for simplification.”

Loaded with banjo, fiddle and mandolin, some of the album sounds like Steve Earle’s 1999 bluegrass release, The Mountain . On “Everybody’s Working for the Man Again…” Welch sings liberal-leaning lyrics reminiscent of Earle like “The broadcasters bought off the FCC/ Big oil has got the EPA/ Haliburton, Haliburton, Haliburton, Haliburton/ What else have I got to say?”

In the song, Welch rails against the music industry: “Had a radio station/ They played our music/ The way we all liked it ‘round here/ Then a big corporation/ With a whole lot of money/ Told our jockeys what we wanted to hear.”

The song is personal: it was Welch and Kane’s disgust with the major label record companies that led to the pair starting Dead Reckoning Records in 1995 with Mike Henderson, Tammy Rogers and Harry Stinson. The five musicians pooled their money and musical resources so that they would never have to conform to the demands of the major labels.

“We didn’t have any money or anything or any investors,” Welch says. “Every record was a little miracle.”

Even though Welch got his start in Nashville, the songwriter is relieved to no longer be a part of Nashville’s mainstream music scene. “I have quit listening to it all together,” he says. “It feels like a giant dentist’s office on Music Row.”

Kevin Welch and Kieran Kane play Hidden Valley Theater, located at Carmel Valley Road and Ford Road in Carmel Valley, at 7pm Saturday. $25/advance, $30/door. 659-5042.