Mike Brenner is sitting center stage at The Fire, glowing in a baggy white suit. His neck is craning. Greasy strands of hair fall thickly over his brow as he sings.

There's a breathy twang in his rhyming: "Right on Girard/ Turn left hard/ Get your Shackamaxon." It matches the hee-hawing sway of his melodies.

He presses his fingers into his lap steel guitar, spitting out a swampy reeeeeer. The shit's loud — a searing metal blast. Splayed against a rubbery rhythm provided by drummer Mark Schreiber, bassist Steve Demarest and dumbek master Hoagy Wing, there's a textured hominess, an odd mix of mellow country gold and fired-up funk stuck somewhere between the Middle East and Middle Earth.

A: Slo-Mo B: Mic Wrecka C: The Low Road D: Marah E: John Train F: The Donuts G: Magnolia Electric Co.

All that would be enough without Mic Wrecka. But the West Philly MC, born Doug Jenkins, leaps through rhymes while Susan Rosetti and Steph Hayes, singing siren of the now-departed Stargazer Lily, let their brisk voices carry the chorus.

"A change of pace/ A change of place," raps Wrecka in a deep, clean baritone.

The sound made on this crowded stage opens wider than any Brenner's made before. And Slo-Mo — Brenner's Tom Wolfe-ian alter ego — is smiling. He's come around from the neatly appointed but angry acoustifolk of his beginnings to a place of funky bliss.

Or is it what he's always wanted to do?

"You mean make weird pop," says Brenner.

Is that what he's been doing? Starting the soft machine that was The Low Road? Playing dobro and pedal steel for homegrown artists Marah, Lauren Hart, Mia Johnson and John Train? Recording with Songs: Ohia and Magnolia Electric Company? Lending his racy raucous pedal steel to the Dust Brothers and Badly Drawn Boy?

Making weird pop?

"It's been interesting, watching him grow from reluctant main guy to sideman to quasi-fronting Slo-Mo," says Schreiber. After 15 years, Schreiber intrinsically knows Brenner's musical intuitions, having backed him from Low to Slo. "Mark identifies the core of what's important to a song," says Brenner. "Don't just show how good a player you are. If the song is good, it'll come naturally."

That's what makes Slo-Mo — on 2000's Novelty and this year's dirrrty My Buzz Comes Back — so fluid. The soft progression of "3Way," the gentle roll of "Adios Amigos," they just pour with confidence even if they seem an improbable match. "When Mike told me his Slo-Mo idea," says Wing, "he wanted people to love it or hate it. No middle ground."

Brenner's not averse to bold moves; it was confidence that made him jump from rock into something intimate upon his return to Philly from Boston University. "I was sick of electric guitar," says Brenner, who'd suffered through the last gasp of Beantown's garage band scene at the end of the 1980s. Even now, despite the rangy roar of his lap pedal steel, Brenner's not up for full-on kerrang.

In 1988, Philly was going through an R.E.M. thing. You had Wishniaks, Nixon's Head and Flight of Mavis, in which Brenner played guitar briefly.

Brenner figured there was room for an eclectic acoustic band in that climate. Think Pixies and Yo La Tengo, but dynamic. And subtle. "Going acoustic would make us stick out," says Brenner. So began The Low Road with Brenner, Schreiber, harmonicat Palmer Yale, violinist Rosie McNamara and bassist Alan Hewitt.

There was room.

After a year of nights at Tavern on Green, Low Road started getting airplay on WXPN and attention from Caroline Records, who signed them for 1994's Devil's Pocket. Their songs — mostly penned by Brenner — were earnest, coolly Celtic, jazz-sexy tunes, surprisingly nasty in their lyricism.

They got attention at home, but the Devil didn't get its due outside the city. But touring left them shocked at how nowhere they got elsewhere. By the time they reached their second CD, Fidelity (which foretold Slo-Mo in the Middle Eastern-hop of "Leave You Hanging"), fans and bands in Philly cattily wanted to know how much they were drawing in audience attendance.

"Hearing that — constantly — burns bands out, being judged by your draw," snorts Brenner.

Does he do that now — ask about another band's numbers?

"Yeah… I do that," he laughs. "You can only be the new kids so long."

Spinto Band, take note.

Touring turned the Road from this perceived muffiny bunch of softies into a louder, looser unit. Sounding dinky in a big club led to bigger amps and louder, more aggressive tunes. The sonic ire matched Brenner's pissy lyrics. He picked up the pedal steel to expand the Road's rage and range. "The weirdness of playing it on your lap appealed to me," he says.

Nothing's more compelling than electric steel in overdrive. That noise affected what Brenner did with Marah and John Train, two wildly diverse Philly acts anchored by an urban hillbilly bent.

The Low Road ended on Valentine's Day, 1997, just as Brenner's rep for playing well with others was solidifying. Though he had gigged with Train (recording the melancholic All of Your Stories in 1996), it was joining Marah for Let's Cut the Crap & Hook Up Later on Tonight that allowed Brenner a rugged sonic palette. "The loudness I executed with Marah was a reaction to what came before," says Brenner of The Low Road's confines. "I could come, go, bring an amp, turn it up. And not be responsible for anyone else."

"No longer feeling the weight of four others and the pressure of being a parental guardian mellowed Mike," says Schreiber.

Being a hired gun, at first, sounded like whoring. "It has this lousy connotation," recalls Brenner. "But I like being paid to play." Someone wanted some steel. You got some steel. Playing one great gig with someone well-connected always led to another great gig.

Working as part of Train found him under Edan Cohen's production at Soundgun Studios in Northern Liberties. Cohen in turn tapped Brenner for Songs: Ohia's Didn't It Rain in 2002. The ghostly, folkish Rain found Cohen and Brenner in a dark groove equitable to that of Jason Molina, Songs: Ohia's frontman. "I felt Molina's spare arrangements could use a signature sound and Brenner was screwing with an electric slide bass — essentially an old beat-up Ibanez outfitted with a 'Hawaiian Nut' — which enabled the strings to be raised and played with a slide," says Cohen. "It was an insane sound, somewhere between a cello and Satan laughing."

"'Why don't you bring that fake bass steel thing over and imitate a cello?' is what I remember Edan saying," laughs Brenner.

Rain became a hallmark of indie-folk, and he got the call when Molina started another project, Magnolia Electric Company.

"Brenner's got this professional — not in the slick, Nashville sense — sound, one that comes across as confident," says Cohen, who co-produced My Buzz Comes Back. "Here's a guy who can play the living shit out of his instrument and, on some songs, you can barely hear his part."

The steel sound led Brenner past the usual twang into something else he was a fan of: electronic music. Chaz Molins, who had signed Low Road to Caroline, heard Brenner's experiments with producer John Wicks and referred him to Tom Rothrock at Bongload.

Rothrock, who had co-produced Beck's Mellow Gold and Odelay, dug Brenner's funky tests and offered him a deal on the spot.

"I had no songs, but a deal's a deal," jokes Brenner, who not only created the beats-based Novelty, but a concept derived from a high school nickname ("my friend Bobby Jones used to call me that playing basketball because I moved so slow") and an image of a white-suited vaudevillian, Roy Smeck, who played Hawaiian slack guitar with a group of grass-skirted islanders. "Seeing me now onstage, this goofy white guy in a white suit alongside a hipster black guy has got to look great," says Brenner.

Though Novelty was deliciously dirty, its live interpretation most fascinated Brenner. "Reinterpretation without emulating loops," is how Brenner describes it, pointing out the live heft of Wing, Schreiber and Demarest.

"Mike has this keen 'big picture,' choosing something for me to percuss on and for me to percuss with, telling me what the song is about and his vision," says Wing. "Then I do my thing."

"The sound has got to be in the pocket, organic," says Brenner, who experimented with a DJ — pal Vince DiLorenzo — for live sets he now calls abrasively funny. "I can't tell you how many dance clubs and alt-country places I've cleared with that scrawwwwwl."

Most of what feels right about Slo-Mo right now is Mic Wrecka. It's the way his dense raps and singsong voice sounds honeycombed within the hyper-chorus of girl singers (Nancy Falkow on the record; Rosetti and Hayes onstage) and Brenner's steel pulse.

Doug Jenkins had never heard of Slo-Mo before meeting Brenner through Cohen. "I just thought a rapper could be nice, which even as I'm saying it sounds corny," says Brenner.

"I certainly didn't know how to classify his sound," says Jenkins. "But I had an idea of what he was trying to accomplish." Intrigued, Wrecka recorded the song "My Buzz Comes Back" with Brenner and Cohen in 2002 and kept coming back for more sessions. And more live gigs.

Now Wrecka is a member of Slo-Mo, with rhymes on all Brenner's tunes. "I grew fond of the diligence and hard work he put in to finishing a vision we both had," says Jenkins. "Now, what started out as experimental had evolved into chemistry."

And just like that, Wrecka has become the front man of Slo-Mo. The girls provide the big hooks. And Brenner is side and front, banging the steel, singing when it's not too uncomfortable. "It hurts my neck," he laughs.

Mostly, he's in a comfortable place, connected to the past and the future, with as many old friends playing on My Buzz Comes Back as new friends. "All phases of my career are here. Different yet connected. I hear the melody and orchestration I started with. It's just fresher. You have no idea how cool that is."