Split Lip Rayfield isn’t your typical four-piece, acoustic, bluegrass band from Kansas.

Somehow, the quartet manages to combine a honky-tonk twang with a garage-rock feeling.

“I think we sound like a band of gypsies … no, I don’t know, we probably just sound like acoustic rock ‘n’ roll,” says mandolin player Wayne Gottstine.

Because of its unusual sound, Split Lip Rayfield says it finds it hard to classify itself into any specific genre. Rayfield’s sound, Gottstine says, has given the group a wide variety of followers — from indie-rock kids to longtime country fans. One way Split Lip Rayfield’s bluegrass feel can easily blend with a punk rock sound is the music speed. All of its music is high energy and fast, says guitarist Kirk Rundstrom.

“There is so much emotion in our music that it is painful to play that long and that fast,” Rundstrom says.

Split Lip Rayfield has been a band for seven years, and during those years its music has stayed constant.

The band has kept the focus on its music rather than exterior aspects, like a band name, Gottstine says.

“We took a bunch of names and threw them all into a hat, the one we picked out was Split Lip Rayfield,” he says.

The band is made up of four musicians, all playing acoustic string instruments. In addition to Gottstine and Rundstrom, the band includes Eric Mardis on the banjo and bassist Jeff Eaton, who has the most unique instrument in the band.

Eaton made his bass out of some spare parts from a Weedwhacker and the gas tank from a 1965 Ford. What’s even more bizarre, though, is that the bass only has one string.

Although Split Lip Rayfield is by no means a typical country band, Gottstine says, it does choose to sing about typical country themes like broken cars, bad jobs and women.

Who: Split Lip Rayfield

Where: M-Shop

When: 8 p.m. Thursday

Cost: $8 students, $10 public