If you attend a Voot Warnings show, there's a 50-50 chance you'll see lead singer and guitarist David Wood -- AKA "Voot"-- dressed in drag.

"I like the shock value, I guess," says Voot, who's 6 feet 3 inches tall and 225 pounds. "But when people start expecting me to be weird, then I just show up in jeans."

Voot Warnings' rock-country trio -- once described as "trash rock" -- has been around since 1996 and today consists of drummer Victor Demichei, bassist/keyboardist Mary Firary and Voot, who plays guitar and sings, sometimes in a polyester dress and a wig.

His music is as unpredictable as his attire.

"Our music is all over the place," says Voot, who is longtime friends with The Violent Femmes, and wrote "Dance, Motherf---er, Dance" which the Femmes play live and included on a compilation CD.

Voot, 47, has gigged for almost 35 years, starting at age 14 when he occasionally sat in with Mark Shurilla's band, The Electric A-sholes. He later started his own band, Box, and scored his first show at a North Side Catholic church.

"After the first set we were paid not to play a second," he laughs.

Over the years, Voot's been in numerous bands, including Voot Warnings' Mama, The Trash Queens, The Fresh Sounds and The Gothics, a band formed with Plasticland's John Frankovic.

Voot's sense of humor -- a playful mix of the ironic, dry and twisted -- permeates his demeanor, as well as his album titles. He called his first record "Platinum" mocking his expectation for low record sales.

With lyrics like "the whole world is starving but I wanna smell good" not everyone's going to "get" his humor, but Voot's sarcasm is usually laced with melancholy and a deeper message -- unless it's just meant to be ridiculous.

His second disc, "You Owe Me Ten Bucks," was named for people who claimed they didn't have any money to buy his CD. So, paradoxically, Voot gave the CD away. And some folks, he says, actually floated him the money.

"In any case it was better (to give them away) than to have boxes and boxes of CDs lying around," says Voot, a self-described "Army brat" who was born in Germany but grew up in Milwaukee's Rufus King neighborhood before touring the country with the Barnum & Bailey circus as a prop hand and getting discharged from the U.S. Navy.

His third record, tentatively called "Bastard That I Am," is simmering on the back burner because these days, Voot channels much of his creative energy into Alana, his 2--year-old daughter.

"Having a kid is the best thing that ever happened to me," he says. "She reminds me how silly it is to be too serious."

Voot Warnings plays Saturday, Sept. 18 at Center Street Daze at 1 p.m. on the Uptowner stage; Friday, Oct. 15 at Circle A Café; and Saturday, Oct. 30 at the Uptowner's Halloween Party.