Chart attack: Pop hits get scrambled by jazz group Omaha Diner

The late Casey Kasem would have furrowed his brow at the music of Omaha Diner, an instrumental quartet of genre-bending renegades whose entire repertoire consists of songs that hit No. 1 on the Billboard pop chart. When they play the Dakota in Minneapolis on Monday, audience members will alternately be grooving to and guessing at the genesis of the creative interplay onstage.

Sometimes it's immediately apparent. Beyoncé's "Single Ladies" gets a big-beat intro from drummer Bobby Previte before the horns of saxophonist Skerik and slide trumpeter Steve Bernstein bark out the signature riff, with guitarist Charlie Hunter providing the fills on electric guitar. And the O'Jays' "Love Train," bleached into our cultural DNA through incessant Coors ads, is divined right back to its soulful roots with just a few chordal strums from Hunter.

But elsewhere the Omaha Diner crew would confound Kasem. Edwin Starr's "War" ("What is it good for?") is a cacophonous jazz jam that uses the title as a metaphor for its horn-driven carnage. "Big Girls Don't Cry," renowned for its taunting, high-pitched vocal "wahs" by the Four Seasons, is transformed into a molasses-slow ballad, a poignant weeper.

"I am not as interested in what songs we do, as much as how we do them," Previte said in an interview. Unlike most cover bands, Omaha Diner is up for the challenge of "divorcing a song from its zeitgeist, from the cultural moment when it was No. 1. Sometimes that means digging deeper and repurposing it for a different era, so the song could mean something else."

It requires daring musicianship and a high degree of familiarity among the band members. Fortunately, Omaha Diner qualifies on both counts.

Hunter has known Bernstein since they went to high school together in Berkeley. Hunter and Skerik were two-thirds of the group Garage a Trois, and all four have been a part of Previte's ensemble the Coalition of the Willing. They share a sensibility that encompasses everything from experimental jazz to punk rock to show tunes to rhythm and blues.

For years they kicked around the notion of repurposing Billboard hits. It crystallized into action during a package tour with their various groups. Previte can't remember if the group's first cover was the Beyoncé number from 2008 or "Sixteen Tons," a Merle Travis song that Tennessee Ernie Ford rode to the top in 1955. The group regards the wide-open spectrum between those two songs — chronologically and stylistically — as their playground.

Suggestions on what to play are e-mailed back and forth. Each member is an accomplished arranger, but the bulk of the initial charts are done by Bernstein, renowned for his work in the Lounge Lizards and Sex Mob, among others.

Kitsch is inevitable in a set list comprising nothing but blockbuster hits. But in interviews with everyone but Bernstein (who was touring out of the country), the musicians sought to minimize the notion that they are goofing around.

As Hunter puts it, "Personally, I don't ever approach music in an ironic way. If I am doing an Osmonds tune, I don't expect people to think I'm cute so I can turn around and laugh and say I don't mean it. And I think everyone in the band feels that way."

In lieu of irony, what is the attitude then? "You can put the song in a blender," Hunter responds. "Put it in the interrogation room."

"I think the people who know us are coming out because of the level of musicianship we can provide," says Skerik. "I mean it is incredible to play with these guys — the way Bobby and Charlie can lock down a rhythm. And improvisation is not a problem."

Yet, fun also creeps into the equation. For their self-titled debut album, released this year after a crowdfunding campaign, the group let people who pledged $500 help pick the songs, resulting in such unlikely numbers as Eminem's "Lose Yourself" and Queen's "Another One Bites the Dust."

"I love to watch the audience trying to figure it out," says Skerik. "It's like when we do 'Jump' by Van Halen. Everybody knows it when Charlie plays the riff, but then we might do it as a ballad."

There is something fitting about letting the audience choose the album songs. Among the nostalgic attractions of vintage diners are the personalized jukeboxes jutting out of the wall above the condiments in the upholstered booths, enabling customers to flip through rows of hit songs and drop a coin in the slot without leaving their seats. In the case of Omaha Diner, the customers dropped coins into the Internet.