And it is love that is bringing together Mike Ness and Jesse Dayton this Monday for a country-rock, honky-tonk barnstormer.

"We're aligned," Dayton said about opening for Ness, the frontman of legendary (and still kicking) Social Distortion, a Southern California punk band with rockabilly leanings. "I was the only kid in Beaumont, Texas, with a cowboy hat and Social Distortion shirt."

Ness shared the love for Dayton when he asked the Austin turbo-country singer to open his first solo country shows in a decade.

Back in 1999, Ness toured as a solo act, performing songs from his solo debut album, "Cheating at Solitaire." He had led Social Distortion to cover songs such as Johnny Cash's "Ring of Fire," but "Cheating" was when he let his country-freak flag fly. Sounding like his hero Buck Owens while playing nasty, stripped-down Bakersfield-style country music, Ness showed that country was as much a part of his music as punk.

"It will be fun to play those songs again," he said. "I haven't heard these since the last tour."

Dayton, too, straddles the line between country and rock, and said that's what he appreciates about Ness. "He has more in common with Hank Williams [Sr.] than anyone coming out of Nashville," Dayton said.

Yet the slick Nashville sound has no place in Dayton's life. After beginning his career as a sideman to country outlaws Ray Price and Waylon Jennings, Dayton electrified his life and guitar more and more until he erased the boundary between rock and country.

It was Dayton's iconoclasm that led Rob Zombie to ask him to contribute to the soundtrack of Zombie's horror movie "The Devil's Rejects." Dayton wrote songs for two characters, honky-tonk musicians, who were killed by a homicidal gang, and he came up with comic and fierce songs like "Dick Soup," "Lord Don't Let Me Die in a Cheap Motel," and "I'm at Home Getting Hammered (While She's Out Getting Nailed)."

The country music Dayton and Ness play, Dayton said, is for people who as teenagers listened to X and the Supersuckers.

"Those fans are older now," Dayton said. "They have mortgages. They're falling off their skateboards. They can't listen to the Dead Kennedys anymore. They're listening to Johnny Cash."

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* DAVID BURGER can be reached at dburger@sltrib.com or 801-257-8620. Send comments about this story to livingeditor@sltrib.com.

At The Depot

* MIKE NESS AND JESSE DAYTON perform Monday at 7 p.m. at The Depot, 400 W. South Temple, Salt Lake City.

* TICKETS are $30 at SmithsTix.