The Sweetback Sisters were waiting. This modern day honky-tonk band had sent Prairie Home Companion their self-released debut EP, Bang!, to enter the live radio variety show’s “People in their Twenties” talent contest. “We didn’t hear anything for forever,” says Sweetback singer and guitarist Emily Miller.

Prairie Home finally contacted the band to invite them on as guests. They were given a week’s notice. Garrison Keillor, the show’s host, listened to them practice, advised them on which songs to play and even wrote the band into the script for “Guy Noir,” an ongoing segment.

   ”Garrison was a really gracious host,” Ms. Miller says. “I think they just do everything last minute there.”

   In the two-and-a-half years since then, the Sweetback Sisters have continued to share their joyful if irreverent take on traditional country music through touring and a full-length album. The band will arrive at the New Hope Winery in New Hope, Pa., Oct. 9, their first performance after an 11-date, seven-state September tour.

   ”Ninety-eight percent of our material is dance music,” Ms. Miller says. “If the venue has the right space, we get people dancing, which is so fun. The main comment I get after a show is, ‘That was so much fun.’”

   The harmonies of Ms. Miller and fellow Brooklynite Zara Bode drive the Sweetback Sisters’ sound. The pair wears matching dresses as they perform an array of old-time country tunes mixed with original material. “We do a lot of funny songs that are either funny lyrically or have little jokes built into them musically,” Ms. Miller says.

   The group released its debut album, Chicken Ain’t Chicken (Signature Sounds), in June. It takes its name from a lyric in the Roger Miller song “My Uncle Used to Love Me But She Died.” Nine of the album’s 13 songs are traditional, three are written by contemporaries (“Deputy Blues No.2” by Josh Ritter, “They Say Virginia is for Lovers” by Mary Lucey-Cardine and Kristin Andreassen, and “Red Shoes Blues” by Ms. Andreassen) and one is by Jessie Milnes, Sweetback’s guitar and fiddle player. He wrote “You’re Gone Again” with Doug Van Gundy.

   Mr. Milnes grew up playing old-time fiddle music — what Ms. Miller calls the roots of country music. She also grew up listening to, singing and performing this music, in the Miller Family Band. Born in Kansas and raised in Hong Kong, she and her mom continue to teach singing.

   The rest of the six-member Sweetback Sisters — guitar player Ross Bellenoit, who toured with Amos Lee opening for Bob Dylan and Elvis Costello in 2007, bassist Bridget Kearney and drummer Stefan Amidon — are classically trained and bring a retro funkiness to the old-time sound.

   ”These people bring these other genres into the mix, especially jazz, which I’m totally ignorant about,” Ms. Miller says. “The band has amazing chops. They have so much potential in their fingertips.”

   Though most songs in Sweetback’s set last no more than three minutes, they all feature solos that riff on the subdued country solos of the ‘40s and ‘50s. “(Guitar player Ross Bellenoit) is anything but subdued,” Ms. Miller says. “He’s probably the secret weapon” in helping the band achieve its modern sound.

   Ms. Bode had a less direct route to country music than Ms. Miller. Growing up in San Francisco, she has said she listened to everything but country music. She met Ms. Miller in 2005 while touring Europe with a world-music choir. Though they didn’t know each other, Ms. Bode had known and sung in a choir for Ms. Miller’s mother. “My mom had been blown away by her singing, so I was primed to like her already,” Ms. Miller says. The choir’s repertoire included Bavarian folk music and traditional songs of the Republic of Georgia, which is to say it didn’t resemble at all the country stylings later adopted by the Sweetback Sisters.

   In between performances Ms. Miller heard Ms. Bode singing Hank Williams’ “Your Cheating Heart.” “That’s what I want to be doing,” she recalls thinking. After the tour ended they wound up living a few blocks from each other in Brooklyn.

   Before this most recent tour Ms. Bode suffered herniated discs in her back. “We had an extra member on this tour — a walker,” Ms. Miller says. “We called it Walker Texas Ranger.” Though Ms. Bode didn’t miss any shows, the band had to consider if they could perform without her. “We would be sacrificing a lot,” Ms. Miller says. “It would sound empty.”

   The Sweetback Sisters performed their first gig in June 2006. A few months later they had their self-released EP, which was made primarily to secure more shows. They couldn’t necessarily embark on a long tour because band members were still in college, but they managed to string together a series of weeklong dates. In August Ms. Miller received her master’s in speech pathology from Vanderbilt University in Nashville. “It was perfect placement,” she says. “I got to be around all that great country music.” Upon receiving her degree, she placed her belongings in storage, hit the road and drove directly to a gig.

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  The Sweetback Sisters will perform at the New Hope Winery, 6123 Lower York Road, New Hope, Pa., Oct. 9, 8 p.m., $20; 215-794-2331; www.newhopewinery.com; www.sweetbacksisters.com