The Devil Makes Three turns rockers onto old-timey string music.

It doesn’t make sense on the face of it, these tattooed hayseeds from Vermont stirring the punk-rock masses into a clodhopping frenzy with their banjos and standup bass. But there it is, every time The Devil Makes Three plays a show: proof that chaos is an organizing principle of the universe. Nothing else could explain the phenomenon of their popularity with crowds from Santa Cruz to the French Riviera.

The band members can’t. Cooper McBean, who sings and plays guitar and tenor banjo, is sitting on the back porch of Café Pergolesi in the band’s adopted hometown of Santa Cruz thinking about it.  He’s got the John Deere cap, the black leather jacket and the “Nintendo” tattoo spanning all eight fingers. Not the kind of guy you’d expect to worship—worship—Doc Watson, the dean of Appalachian fingerpicking guitar.

McBean isn’t having any luck coming up with an explanation for why, every once in a while, someone comes up to him or bassist Lucia Turino or singer/guitarist/tenor banjo player Pete Bernhard and says he listened exclusively to heavy metal until he heard The Devil Makes Three and now he’s tracking down old-timey recordings like a bloodhound on the trail. It’s like they’re a reverse gateway band leading the too-cool-for-school crowd to a hoedown.

“It really shocked me when the hordes started coming out for our shows,” McBean admits. “We didn’t expect people to be that into it. I remember one of our shows at Henfling’s. The crowd was great, dancing and singing along. It was the first time I looked out at the crowd and didn’t recognize anybody. And it was, ‘This is CRAZY.’”

Henfling’s is where I stumbled onto The Devil Makes Three a year ago, just after they’d released their second CD, Longjohns, Boots and a Belt. A biker bar deep in the redwoods of the San Lorenzo Valley just north of Santa Cruz, the place was roaring on a Saturday night, just bursting at the seams for—I strained on tiptoe to see the “stage,” just a corner of the room, really—an acoustic hillbilly music trio? My education began with the next song. When my sweetie and I left that evening, we were fans.

Let’s see. Was it “Old No. 7,” the paean to Jack Daniels, that won me over? Maybe. More likely it was the happy-go-lucky banjo pluck of McBean’s “Judgment Day” (more upbeat than the title implies) or the pissed-off populism of “Never Learn,” written by principle songwriter Bernhard. (And it goes a little something like this: “Let all the hounds off of their leashes/Gave all the money to the rich/They’re gonna hand you down that short-handled shovel/ And direct you directly to the ditch… Hallelujah/Let it all just burn/Cause they ain’t the type to listen/And they sure ain’t never gonna learn.”) If Woody Guthrie had grown up listening to the Pixies along with his old-timey favorites, he might have written songs like these.

There’s a kind of breakneck abandon to the way The Devil Makes Three plays this simple music that makes you want to stomp along and raise hell, in a good way. Sometimes the music is sweet and wholesome; sometimes it’s blistering and intense. A few songs, like “Tow” and “River Deep,” are incredibly infectious, rich with unfolding chord progressions and hypnotic fingerpicking. The music always makes you want to dance. The Devil Makes Three shows are a swirling maelstrom of movement. Even the toughest customers can’t stay still.

Not bad for a band that’s only been playing together since the summer of 2002. That was when Turino, who had never played a musical instrument before, demanded that McBean and Bernhard let her take a crack at the bass. The three had known each other since high school in Vermont, so she had an advantage. Still, it took some brass. Months later they released their self-titled debut CD, and things took off from there.

Since then they’ve toured France twice, bombed through Texas with Todd Snider and Fred Eaglesmith, played up and down the West Coast several times and are set to open for Robert Earl Keen in San Luis Obispo next month.

France has probably been the biggest mind-blower for the band. McBean says they were playing at the Hotel Utah in San Francisco when they were approached by a woman who introduced herself as Marie and said she was looking for bands to play in France, and were they interested?

“And our first reaction was, ‘Yeah. Right,’” McBean says. “You get used to hearing all kinds of things. But she was for real.” In May 2004, with the help of Marie From France, they played 17 shows in 23 days before wildly appreciative Gallic audiences. They returned last summer for more adulation doled out in the French manner.

Changes are afoot for the trio. Turino and Bernhard just moved to Sacramento so Turino can pursue the dream of veterinarianhood, though McBean insists that’s not an impediment. A live CD is forthcoming this spring. And if the past is any indication, The Devil Makes Three will keep on winning new fans with its curious brand of hickster punk.

THE DEVIL MAKES THREE PLAYS MONTEREY LIVE, LOCATED AT 414 ALVARADO ST. IN MONTEREY, THIS SATURDAY AT 7:30PM. $14/ADVANCE; $16/AT THE DOOR. 375-5483.