Lessons of a Favorite Uncle : Killing off Uncle Tupelo was a great career move after all for its members, who went their separate ways to form Wilco and Son Volt.

As rock legends go, Uncle Tupelo hasn’t much to offer: just a handful of little-noticed albums, an engaging mix of traditional country and edgy rock and a small but intense following.

So how did this band from Belleville, Ill., which broke up in 1994, find itself among the most discussed bands of 1995?

The answer rests in the strength of two critically acclaimed bands that arose from its ashes: Son Volt and Wilco.

“Uncle Tupelo is bigger now than ever,” says Son Volt drummer Mike Heidorn, a founding member of Tupelo. “I guess death is a great career move.”

Singer-songwriters Jay Farrar, and Jeff Tweedy, both 28, were the yin and yang of Uncle Tupelo, crafting music that was equal parts Hank Williams, Merle Haggard, Rolling Stones and early Neil Young. Those elements continue to dominate their new projects.

Tweedy’s Wilco plays cheeky, country-flavored rock that’s laced with humor and youthful emotion. By contrast, Son Volt--which plays the Coach House on Saturday, Troubadour March 25-26 and the Ventura Theatre March 28--offers a heavier, rough-edged blend that’s anchored by Farrar’s deep, forlorn vocals. Album sales of Wilco’s “A.M.” (about 55,000 copies, according to SoundScan) and Son Volt’s “Trace” (nearly 75,000) have put both acts at the forefront of the new, so-called “Americana” movement in pop, alongside such acts as the Bottle Rockets and the disbanded Jayhawks.

“Trace” and “A.M.” also landed on several critics’ 1995 year-end Top 10 lists.

‘It seems like they’re wanting to make this the new grunge, some really identifiable sound that they can sell across several different formats,” Tweedy says with a laugh. “I don’t think it’s going to happen.”

This musical weave of rock and country, new and old, has existed at least since the late ‘60s, when Gram Parsons, Young and even the Stones were countrifying the pop landscape.

But now that Son Volt is enjoying some airplay on rock radio and VH1 with the song “Drown,” Heidorn, 28, has noticed a shift in the mostly college-age audience he remembers from his days in Uncle Tupelo.

“The demographics of [our] crowd is very diverse,” he says. “I remember being in Denver and seeing a couple of old guys in cowboy hats and gray beards right next to some college dudes. Seems like a younger crowd, an older crowd--kind of weird.”

The history of Uncle Tupelo begins in the mid-’80s in Belleville, where high schoolers Tweedy, Farrar and Heidorn were playing three-chord, ‘60s-style garage rock in a band called the Primitives. All of them were still just learning to play their instruments and spending weekend nights at rock concerts in nearby St. Louis in search of inspiration from visiting punk-rock bands.

Then Farrar rediscovered the classic country albums of George Jones and others, and shared them with his friends.

“We had bought every punk-rock record there was, and then all of a sudden we listened to Hank Williams sing, and that was like true punk rock,” Heidorn says. “He was a total loner, outsider.”

Uncle Tupelo recorded three albums for a small independent label, Rockville, each one with an increasing country flavor, before the band was signed to Warner Bros. Records in 1993. The result was 1993’s “Anodyne” album, which producer Brian Paulson suggests was “a loss of innocence” for the band, as Tweedy and Farrar began to pull in different musical directions.

“The tension on ‘Anodyne’ is kind of apparent, as far as I’m concerned,” says Paulson, who also produced the debut albums by Wilco and Son Volt (both released by Warner Bros.). “Stylistically, it starts to diverge quite a bit.”

Heidorn was the first to quit Tupelo, just before the “Anodyne” sessions, though his reasons were financial ones. It was Farrar’s sudden departure that finally killed the band.

“To me the band had just run its course,” Farrar says now. “After six or seven years of doing the same thing, you start to question what you’re doing.”

Wilco was the first project to emerge from that breakup. Previously, Tweedy would spend all year polishing the five or six songs he contributed to each Tupelo record. Now, as Wilco’s leader and only songwriter, he devotes two hours a day to writing and is already at work on a follow-up album, with plans for an August release.

The interest in Wilco (which also includes two Tupelo alumni--drummer Ken Coomer and bassist John Stirratt--and multi-instrumentalist Max Johnston) did catch Tweedy off guard. “I didn’t realize going into it that there would be that much of a focus on me,” Tweedy says. “A lot of people treated it like it was a solo record, even though it had a band name.”

Farrar is a man of few words with strangers. Likewise, the songs on Son Volt’s “Trace” were written in solitude: during long drives between New Orleans, his home at the time, and Minnesota, where bandmates Jim (bass) and Dave (guitar, banjo et al) Boquist live.

“I’ll tell you, if there’s anything you want to know about Jay, it’s probably in a song somewhere,” Heidorn says. “He pretty much says exactly how he feels somewhere in there.”

Members of both bands insist that there’s no acrimony between Son Volt and Wilco, as has been suggested in the music press. Just weeks ago, Tweedy called up Farrar for the first time since the breakup to say hello.

“I’m sure there is some rivalry there,” Tweedy says. “There was in [Tupelo]. It was never acknowledged in the band. We were too smart for that. We would look down on that line of thinking.”

Besides, all this talk about Tupelo is distracting.

“A lot of the Uncle Tupelo stuff doesn’t hold up,” Tweedy says. “It’s kind of embarrassing that people are going out and buying the first two records thinking it’s some kind of beginning of a country rock vision from the Midwest.”

Yet all the attention has had some impact, as the members of Son Volt continue for the next several months on the road.

“We’re traveling in two vans,” Farrar says. “I guess that’s a step up.”*

* Son Volt plays on Saturday at the Coach House, 33157 Camino Capistrano, San Juan Capistrano, 8 p.m. $10. (714) 496-8927. Also March 25-26 at the Troubadour, 9081 Santa Monica Blvd., West Hollywood, 8 p.m. $10. (310) 276-6168; March 28 at the Ventura Theatre, 26 S. Chestnut Ave., Ventura, 8 p.m. $10. (805) 648-1936,

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Hear the Music

* To hear excerpts from Wilco’s album “A.M.,” call TimesLine at 808-8463 and press *5711.

* To hear excerpts from Son Volt’s “Trace,” press *5712.

In 805 area code, call (818) 808-8463.