The Rowan Brothers: They're not just that '70s show

After more than 30 years in the Bay Area, and a musical career full of the kind of ups and downs that make the Red Sox look like a sure thing, the Rowan Brothers are back. Known for their harmony-laced folk rock, Chris and Lorin Rowan have come back to Boston with a two-disc collection of material, ''Now and Then," that captures their whole saga in song.

''I kind of look at it as, Chris and Lorin, this is your life,"' Chris said by phone from New York. Their tour hits the Zeitgeist Gallery tonight.

What a life it has been. Before they were even teenagers, the brothers were playing Club Passim, back when the folk destination was still called Club 47. This was thanks to their older brother, Peter, who first led the charge from their musical household in Wayland and went on to become a successful bluegrass musician.

Chris and Lorin shared local stages with the J. Geils Band in the late 1960s and opened for Jerry Garcia at the Orpheum before signing a deal with Clive Davis and moving out to the Bay Area. But their seemingly unstoppable momentum skidded to a halt when Davis was fired from Columbia and the duo landed in record label limbo.

So they regrouped, recording with Peter in the early '70s as the Rowans, collaborating with famous friends such as Garcia, Phil Lesh, and David Grisman, who also produced their first album. Both brothers also maintained active solo careers, but neither came close to capitalizing on their early potential.

It wasn't until a devoted fan contacted Lorin Rowan in the late '90s with a request for some old tapes that things started to happen again. The admirer was local writer Mick Skidmore, who put the brothers in touch with the artist-run label Bos Music in Maryland.

Enthusiasm about the project eventually propelled it into a two-disc album. The ''Then" disc includes unreleased songs from the '70s, which have a folkie mysticism and sunny twang that recalls Crosby, Stills & Nash. The ''Now" disc includes newly recorded songs that highlight a more polished and refined sound, with Everly Brothers-influenced harmonies.

Taken together, the discs encompass the scope of their career, and the brothers are thrilled that listeners can discover their old material along with the new.

''It kind of brings us to a point where we never got to take it," Lorin said. ''Because we only made one record, and then Clive Davis got fired, and then we changed, became a trio, which is a different sound. So this is neat. It's Chris and me."

Longtime fans are just as excited about the reunion. Bluegrass legend Ricky Skaggs first heard the duo at a music festival in Kentucky in the 1970s and was instantly smitten by their harmonies and songwriting. Skaggs went on to record Lorin's ''Soldier of the Cross" as the title track for his 1999 Grammy Award-winning album and has remained a faithful devotee.

''They just really impressed me as great musicians and great singers," Skaggs said by phone from Nashville, where he's recording a new album with Bruce Hornsby. ''And I've been a fan of theirs for a long, long time."

Even if it's taken a while to get here, the brothers seem genuinely thrilled to find themselves in front of an audience again, even in venues that are quite modest compared to their glory days when they were teenagers.

''There's a muse that happens when you pick up your tool -- in our case, an instrument," Chris said. ''And it's just -- there's always a creative thing happening there, so the best thing is now we can look over our lives that we've been having a great chance to live, and we have that love of music that just is kind of the icing on the cake."

They're also excited to prove they never really went away. ''Yesterday I was in Philadelphia, visiting some of Lorin's wife's friends," Chris said.

''And I ran up the steps where Rocky ran up those steps, you know, and I jumped around because I'm going, like, you know, 'They thought we were down. They thought we had had our shot, but as long as Lorin and I have that vision, it ain't over.' "