HWY 5 will open for Texas country music act the Casey Donahew Band as Donahew makes his first stop in Little Rock at Revolution Music Room on Saturday. The 18-and-up show kicks off at 9 p.m. with tickets $8 advance and $10 day of.

NORTH LITTLE ROCK — North Little Rock band HWY 5 waits in their tiny rehearsal space downstairs until the office upstairs is nearly vacant before plugging in guitars and cranking up the amps. The resulting music from the quintet is feisty, country-flavored, Southern rock tunes filled with fire and brimstone guitars, and a brawny rhythm foundation.

It’s not Waylon and Willie’s country, but it shares its dangerous, outlaw roots. And if modern-day Nashville country is going to borrow classic rock hooks to sell itself, HWY 5 is going to channel the dangerous, hard rock crunch of Guns N’ Roses and Mötley Crüe to create a muscular blend of country and hard rock.

“We used to be country,” lead singer Chris Stillman said. “I mean straight-up country with cowboy hats, and Telecasters and Fenders. It just went that way. Then [the rest of the band] went into this Mötley Crüe phase, and it all went to hell.”

It’s a rainy, late-October evening, and the band — Stillman, who also doubles on acoustic guitar, Jackson Hagerman on rhythm guitar, Ben Richman on lead guitar, Cason Barnhill on bass and backing vocals, and Lance Berry on drums — is between touring dates with Texas country artist Casey Donahew. On and off the road with the Casey Donahew Band since September, playing some of the bigger Texas dance halls such as Gruene Hall in New Braunfels and Graham Central Station in Odessa, the break delivers a return to day jobs. But it also supplies an opportunity to refine live renditions of the tunes from the band’s proper debut, the early October release Famous Last Words (available on iTunes and at shows), an 11-tune blast of wildfire Southern rock with Stillman’s countrified vocals, recorded by HWY 5 and produced by Andy Wallis at Signature Studios in Maumelle.

While the rest of the band throws around The Beatles, The Who, Cream, Crüe, Aerosmith, Bon Jovi and GN’R as influences, Stillman learned to sing by listening to natural vocalists such as Merle Haggard, Hanks Williams Jr. and Chris Whitley.

“I learned guitar by listening to country music because it was the easiest to play,” he said. “It’s just a G, C or D chord. So I was learning country guitar and that’s where my vocals come from. I just stuck with it.”

Formed in 2004 while band members were students at Sylvan Hills High School (minus Richman who joined a year and a half ago), HWY 5’s name memorializes 16-year-olds Jae Lynn Russell and Alicia Rix along with 15-year-old Taylor Hall (Hagerman’s cousin), who were killed at the intersection of Arkansas 5 and 89 on the next-to-last day of spring break in 2004. The group started off playing country covers such as George Strait’s “The Fireman,” Alan Jackson’s “Midnight in Montgomery” and Pat Green’s “Wave on Wave” at venues such as the Hollywood Country Club in Jacksonville, and Fatbacks Sports Bar and Grill, and Parrot Beach Cafe in North Little Rock.

“We played a lot of rough bars when we were just pups,” Barnhill said.

The band released a handful of EPs and albums, played Riverfest and their nationwide radio single “Country Ain’t a Feelin’” debuted in March 2008, but the addition of Richman lit the band’s fuse. Richman, the missing link between the band’s country past and rock future, was living “right up the hill” from the band’s rehearsal spot on John F. Kennedy Boulevard in North Little Rock when he placed a guitarist-looking-for-a-band advertisement in March 2008. The band had rotated through a selection of lead guitarists, and Stillman asked his bandmates about Richman coming by to jam.

“We knew we needed someone to take us to the next level,” Hagerman said.

“I didn’t know anything about country,” Richman said. “As soon as we started playing it just felt right. As soon as we started playing I felt that energy. It wasn’t my idea of what country was supposed to be.”

November and December will see the band, a group of 21- and 22-year-olds mostly raised in North Little Rock (Barnhill is a Sherwood resident while Richman moved to North Little Rock from Virginia.), back on the road with Donahew, appearing in cities such as Chicago; Monroe, La.; and College Station, Waco, Amarillo and Lubbock, Texas.

Managed by Donahew’s wife Melinda Donahew and her Burleson, Texas, based Almost Country Entertainment, HWY 5’s debut single from Famous Last Words, “Believe in Love,” was hovering just outside the Top 50 of the Texas Music Chart in late October, thanks in large part to Casey Donahew’s assistance. The band cold e-mailed Melinda Donahew in June, and a stroke of serendipity later, Melinda Donahew was guiding HWY 5’s fledgling career.

The band has played more shows in the past two months than all of last year.

“Casey and Melinda took a chance on us, and we can’t thank them enough,” Berry said. “Casey allowing us to play with him means so much. Casey and Melinda — it’s all just a chance. They believed in us.”

But touring Texas dance halls is different from playing hometown shows at Juanita’s, Revolution Music Room or Vino’s, where, thanks to the strong support of family, friends and fans, HWY 5 can pack a venue. In Texas it’s a new set of rules, and each night the band’s reputation as a hard-charging, country-tinged Southern rock outfit is on the line. But so far, so good.

“It’s cool to have that feeling when you go out there that you have to win that crowd over,” Barnhill said. “For the first three songs or so, the people usually hang back and kind of have a look on their face like: ‘Who are you?’ But after about three songs they get into it.”

HWY 5 will open for Texas country music act the Casey Donahew Band as Donahew makes his first stop in Little Rock at Revolution Music Room on Saturday. The 18-and-up show kicks off at 9 p.m. with tickets $8 advance and $10 day of.