Nick Capodice and his band, The Flanks, label themselves as the "least hardworking band in showbiz."

"We're just more about fun songs about shady stuff," said Capodice, a Penacook native and Brooklyn transplant.

But the group found a niche when they started playing together in 2002. Their gritty, bluegrass, backporch-stomping country sound was hard to find in Brooklyn, and they started booking gigs at up-and-coming honky tonks in the borough. Over the last five years they've put out their first album, performed on New York Public Radio, closed the show at Brooklyn's biggest country music festival and made their national debut on a commercial for a new Sylvania lightbulb.

This weekend they will perform for their biggest crowd yet - more than 100,000 NASCAR fans - at the Sylvania 300 race at the New Hampshire International Speedway. Oh, and they want you to come to the Barley House the night before, too.

It all started with a harmonica. Capodice bought his first one for $5 just a few days after moving to the city, and taught himself to play soon after.

"I just grew to love it so much, because you can take it anywhere," he said.

Capodice had majored in acting at Emerson College, and moved to the Big Apple with his boarding school roommate from Deerfield Academy in Massachusetts in 2001. He was there to act, and his friend, Tom Bouman, was there for publishing.

Bouman, a guitar, mandolin and banjo player, started playing with Capodice in their small Brooklyn apartment. They brought in another guitar player and friend, Danny Mulligan, and after their first country show, they were hooked. They recruited Tom Mayer, a stand-up bass player, and Margaret Mitchell, a viola player originally from Amherst.

The group played together for a few weeks and learned a few cover songs when they decided they needed a name. It was just a few months after Sept. 11, and it was hard to find a job in the city. They were hungry.

"So the story goes, we were on the roof and every band name I was coming up with was a different cut of meat," Capodice said. The Porterhouses and the T-Bones were in the running before the group settled on The Flanks - three of the original band members had played rugby and were "flankers."

They debuted at an open mic night at Brooklyn's Art Land. Despite the looks they received - five-piece bands don't usually play at open mics - The Flanks did well, and started getting offers for gigs "because there weren't that many country bands at the time in Brooklyn," Capodice said.

The Flanks found other bands that needed opening acts and slowly worked their way up to headlining their own shows. They were hired as the house band at a club called Galapagos, and after about a year or two, Bouman and Mulligan started writing the band's own music.

There are many styles of country, and The Flanks latched onto roots country for inspiration. It's bluegrass-influenced, a "little louder, little more fun," and nothing like modern country, Capodice said. Their style is also know as jug-band - a band that draws on various rural music traditions, using homemade instruments including jugs, washboards, spoons and kazoos.

"The kind of country music that we play is totally unmarketable," he said.

But it was exactly what Sylvania was looking for when they put together four musical groups, from four different genres, to perform "This Little Light of Mine" on a commercial for the company's new energy-efficient light bulb. It was right about the time The Flanks had just released their first album, You and Me and The People Who Can't Go Home.

"We sent them a tape and then they just called us up and said they'd love to have us up to Portland," he said.

They shot the commercial last year and it still airs in markets near Milwaukee, Minneapolis and Charlotte. (It's also available for viewing on YouTube.) About a month ago, Sylvania called on The Flanks again to perform three sets at the Sylvania 300 NASCAR race on Sunday. (next page »)