Over the last 10 years, more than 30 musicians have contributed to Austin's all-acoustic jug band Asylum Street Spankers. Three things, however, have stayed constant: metalhead poet/ washboard player Wammo; chanteuse and banjo picker Christina Marrs; and the quality of the music -- mixing jazz, punk, blues and metal, as complex as it is comedic. The Spankers' Vaudeville-style shows incorporate twisted originals along with reworkings of "classics" spanning the 19th century to the present. Now the Spankers have compiled some favorite live covers on the group's sixth full-length, Mercurial.

While the Spankers' take on the B-52's manic "Dance This Mess Around" is dead on, the remaining songs are made the group's own. Marrs, who can go from bellowing Bessie Smith blues to Betty Boop's helium hiccup in a heartbeat, rekindles rag and jazz standards such as "Digga Digga Doo" and "Sugar in My Bowl" with new sexual heat. Wammo discovers the inner swing in the Beastie Boys' "Paul Revere," then does back-to-back white trash anthems "TV Party" (Black Flag) and "Hick Hop" (a Wammo original). Occasionally, the Spankers' ideas don't work. Incorporating Jim Carroll's pained "People Who Died" into 19th-century rag "Tight Like That" is an awkward juxtoposition merely seeking cred. But most of the Spankers' pop culture references are as relevant as they are hilarious.

The Asylum Street Spankers play Smith's Olde Bar, Thurs., March 11. 8 p.m. $10.