Folks from the old Confederate states are fascinated by the rowdy roots of their underclass and defiantly proud of such badges as gaudy cowboy clothes, festive alcoholic excess and plaintive laments for lost love, the trashier, the better.

The tradition is dying out now, so the nostalgia is getting thicker on the ground. That accounts for the perky little revue that has just opened at the North Coast Repertory Theatre in Solana Beach, “Honky Tonk Angels.”

It’s not a terrible idea: Gather some of the more baroque country-western/pop songs involving vivid women and then string them together like bruised pearls on a gossamer story line of three rural gals who come to Nashville seeking etc.

Ted Swindley, who earlier assembled an entertainment built around the splendid Patsy Cline, nailed this one together with the same crude sentimentality. The difference, though, is in the material. Practically anything Cline touched turned golden, whereas these songs tend to be maudlin, leering novelties like Lee Hazelwood’s “These Boots Were Made For Walking,” associated with Nancy Sinatra, or “Fancy,” an elaborate whore’s reminiscence of being turned out by her desperate mother, written and sung by Bobbie Gentry.

Bobbie who? Well, the Bobbie Gentry who better tweaked 1960s imagination with “Ode to Billy Joe,” the atmospheric cornpone about vague doings on the Tallahassee Bridge.

One of Swindley’s three “Honky Tonk Angels” had a coal miner father, a late boyfriend named Billy Jo and a poignant fall from innocence, and that takes care of Loretta Lynn, Bobbie Gentry and a host of “Delta Dawn” interpreters from Tanya Tucker to Helen Reddy to Bette Midler.

Another of the girls works in a Los Angeles office from 9 to 5 (Hey there, Dolly Parton!) while a third tries to keep loving the Bubba who gave her six children, ironing away to the tune of “Stand By Your Man.”

I DID so wish for the exact classic accompaniment to Tammy Wynette’s masterwork but the rest of the show’s arrangements were (shrug) quite acceptable. And played nicely.

In fact, the best thing about the show by far is the five-piece band, headed by W. Brent Sawyer, which spends way too much time hidden by second-rate Marty Burnett scenery. (The only mildly successful set joke is the bar: Three shelves of liquor bottles with one holding only Jack Daniels.)

The singing was less successful. Meredith Kaye Clark and Kelli Maguire, imported by director David Ellenstein from an earlier production he staged in Alabama, sawed away with practiced twinkle and generally nailed the harmony. So did Jenni-Lynn McMillin, though she had a distressing tendency to wander off key when assigned solo work.

Sadly, Ellenstein shows such a skewed basic understanding of or sympathy for the material that one might suspect sinister motives of social content except that the show is so darned anxious to be cute and sassy.

“Bullcrap,” says one of the girls, in a moment of stress. That sort of thing. So, for best results, forget the rural sociology and fix upon the show-biz fizz.

Oh, and if you object to being pressed into service as a performer’s aide, then avoid the front row of seats. Ellenstein has his girls ranging outward frequently and “no” probably doesn’t sit well with them. Think of these as similar to the seats at Sea World where everybody always gets splashed by Shamu.

I’ll bet this show worked better in Alabama than it will here. The name “Bubba” just doesn’t inspire lasting instant mirth on this side of the Rockies. Broad jokes about L.A. weirdoes tend to go “clunk.” And, along this coast, losers are mostly just embarrassing.

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