By Lisa Weeks IT'S A COOL, quiet Sunday evening outside, but inside the Congress Grill feels warm and alive, if somewhat slow and casual. The neon chicken radiates orange warmth into the sparsely populated diner. Eyes shaded by his trademark red cap, Chick Cashman settles into the small booth, facing me across the Formica table. The soundtrack for our vignette is strangely appropriate: Swing jazz floats over the clanging and scraping of plates and utensils and the static hum of neighboring conversations. We're here to talk about what's in store for Chick Cashman and the Countrypolitans Burlesque Revue, which has been a regular Wednesday feature at Club Congress for the past year. But the weekly affair is soon to be a thing of the past, giving way to a monthly format Chick swears will surpass all expectations and wild imaginings. But the question on everyone's lips: When did the make-up start, and, moreover, why? Chick shrugs. "Hmmm, before we even started doing the show I did a bunch of drag shows...just for fun, you know, I've always done it. I'm trying to do something different with this, be more of an impresario. It's fun to get a little dolled up, and a good way to have a costume every week--it's like Garanimals." Or Under-Roos. Overall, Chick feels the reception to his beauty-in-drag has been fairly tolerant, despite the fact he's had some very homophobic audience members threaten his life on a few occasions. "It's just that I've got such nice legs." Hate mongers and assholes aside, does the makeup make the man? Does he feel more empowered as Chick, with the whole get-up? "Sure, yeah, it makes you a lot more fun, you can get away with murder, do whatever you want to do," he says. "It's like Halloween every fucking week. I get my ass pinched a lot more than I'd like...they've got to work around to the other end." Part P. T. Barnum, part Ed Sullivan, Tucson's king of faux fur and feathered fashion, Chick sees himself as "more like Tucson's Allan Freed," doing what no one else in Tucson is doing by organizing a stage show which over the last year has included such notable guest performers as Angela Bowie, the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, the Demolition Doll Rods, the Henchmen, and the Bindelstiff Fawley Circus, not to mention a myriad of colorful local talent. Chick has been out hawking since day one, seeking acts who, regardless of what they do, "do it in a fabulous way." He definitely doesn't want acts that are anatomically correct, and is grateful for the freedom to book whoever he wants. "Dan (Vinik, of Club Congress) has been super, super cool. Whatever we want to do, we do it, as long as it's within the confines of the law." Chick Cashman is a man who wears many hats...and wigs, and who at times has been seen wearing very little at all. "I showed far too much of my body one night, far too much," he shakes his head with a grin. Not only is there the daytime Chick who, donning red cap, white T-shirt and paint-spattered jeans, is a regular figure tooling around the Hotel Congress, there's Chick the band leader, Chick the stage manager, and Chick the creator of the Morning-After Line of wig-hats and accessories, available at Mr. Lulu's. Entertainment is the name of the game--the campier, spicier, more showy and sexy, the better. The new show will be as raucous and visual as possible with more star-spangled drag queens, hula hoops, strap-on dildos and erotic fashions. Chick envisions the new once-a-month gig as "a real chance to get as theatrical as possible, something really glamorous, heavy on the costumes," a bustling juke-joint burlesque that invites people to get dressed up, soused up, bawdy, loud and obnoxious. At first glance, it all seems like chaos, but in reality it's a carefully controlled chaos, along the lines of old rock-and-roll All-Star shows: a series of choreographed, rapid-fire 15-minute acts guided by an iron fist holding a schedule on a clipboard, supervised with the attitude that if you miss your time, too damn bad. The craze of show night responsibilities requires Chick to seek a stage manager to free him "from chasing people around all night" and allow him more time to focus on his own performance. Over the past year the band Chick put together to function as a part of the show, the Countrypolitans, has assumed an individual identity--the result of a conscious effort on the part of Chick to remove the band from the focus of the Wednesday night shows. The Countrypolitans include the amazing talents of Chris Wassell, Mike Nordberg, and a man who chooses to be referred to only as Mr. Tidy Paws. Chick has nothing but lavish praise and high regard for his bandmates. "They are really fucking great," he says. "I'm definitely the weak link." The band is working on a record Chick describes as definitely not retro, but "a new twist on an old stripper record," and is in the process of adding between-song chatter consisting of cuts from weird little tapes of random people talking and other curiosities. Thus far, the eight songs recorded at local Waterworks are, according to a "pleasantly surprised" Chick, straight-forward with a fairly rough-edged live sound. Scheduling problems have kept them from spending as much time at the studio as they'd like, but once the six or seven songs still in the works are laid down, Chick and the Countrypolitans have plans to float the recording around to a few people before releasing it themselves. Steering away from party band prostitution, Chick Cashman and the Countrypolitans court a younger, indie audience and aspire to the garage-type tour circuit with no mind to or patience for pop/alternative success. When asked to place himself and the band within a musical context, Chick winces and smiles. "People comment that we're a rock-a-billy or a swing band or a surf band, but we're not really any of them, more little bits and pieces of all of them. We're more of a garage act, a little slicker than most, but it falls apart on its own, you know?" There's a level of sophistication and--dare I say--maturity at work that defies the garage-band description. It's all way too sexy for that--the band is sexy, the music is sexy, "everybody humps their instruments to a certain extent," Chick admits. The switch from once-a-week appearances to once a month, designed to allow the band more time to develop new material, record and tour as a "regular band," is certain to elevate Chick Cashman and the Countrypolitans, as well as the Burlesque Revue, to new and previously only imagined heights. The mind reels at the prospect of keeping all those plates balanced and spinning evenly, but hey, as Chick says, "If you've got great calves; you can do pretty much anything." Catch--but resist the urge to grab--Chick Cashman and the Countrypolitans in their final weekly "Blowout Extravaganza" at 9:30 p.m. Wednesday, November 27, at Club Congress, 311 E. Congress St. Cover is $3 at the door. Call 622-8848 for information.

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