Photo by Roy Mata

Reckless Kelly members are, from left, Willy Braun, Jay Nazz and Cody Braun.

Home town boys Reckless Kelly took the Austin Ventures stage Friday night for their fourth appearance at the Austin City Limits music festival.

Familiarity doesn’t breed contempt as far as high-energy root rock band members are concerned. They can’t get enough of the local music festival.

“How could we miss this – it’s right in our backyard,” said instrumentalist Cody Braun. “All our friends in other bands love coming to Austin to play ACL. That creates a special kind of energy. It’s a great place to play.”

It’s been an exciting two years for the band. In June, the group nabbed an American Music Association nomination for Best Duo or Group of the Year.

In 2008, the Reckless Kelly release “Ragged As the Road” off the band’s “Bulletproof” album earned a number one Americana song and a number one Texas Charts ranking. That same year, the band won Country Band of the Year, a bit of an odd designation for the group, from the Austin Music Awards.

Reckless Kelly hit Austin Friday after a gig Thursday night in Denton.

Saturday night, they play the legendary Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival in San Francisco. The three-day stretch is typical for the band. Despite the fatigue of a hectic schedule, the band is excited about their current work in progress – a CD honoring hard country, Idaho musician Pinto Bennett.

“This new album is giving us a chance to get back to our roots, something we’ve been wanting to do for years,” Braun said. “We’ve been around Pinto and his music all our lives. These songs will be about Pinto and the Motel Cowboys, but it’s definitely a Reckless Kelly record. There are some rockers on there too.”

At Round Rock’s Dell Diamond in June, band members Cody, Willy Braun and Jay Nazz presented The Miracle League with checks totaling $30,000, money earned from their first Reckless Kelly Celebrity Softball Jam held at the stadium in April.

The Braun brothers and Nazz are still jazzed from their philanthropic venture and plan to repeat the event next year.

“We got very lucky in that all the bands that played did it for free,” Braun said. “We got the idea when we were with friends at a ballgame at Dell Diamond, and we thought it would be great to get a bunch of bands together to play ball and follow it with a concert for charity.”

Reckless Kelly will make a tour run of the southeast coast in November and then start work writing songs for a new record. Braun said the band is also talking to Joe Ely about doing songs together for a new Ely release.