When: 9:30 p.m. Saturday
Where: Mojo’s

If, in the year 2012, you can get more than 1.6 million people to watch your cover of [Hall & Oates’ “I Can’t Go For That (No Can Do)”](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJiCUdLBxuI&feature=player_embedded) (or your cover of any song not by Justin Bieber or Katy Perry, for that matter), you know you’re doing something right.

Nicki Bluhm and The Gramblers have done just that. The San Francisco group, made up of members Nicki Bluhm, Tim Bluhm, Deren Ney, Dave Mulligan, Steve Adams and Mike Curry, can now claim nearly 4 million total views to their YouTube channel name.

“It was completely accidental, to be honest,” Nicki Bluhm says. “At the time, the van didn’t have a radio, so we just started kind of playing songs in the car. We recorded the first one because Tim wasn’t with us, and Steve had the idea to just put it on YouTube so our family and friends at home could see it.”

Apparently, the idea was an excellent one. Calling their cover videos the “Van Sessions,” Bluhm and The Gramblers made recording videos in the car into a regular event. Today, the band doesn’t have a single uploaded video with less than a four-figure view count.

“As far as YouTube goes, I think it can be a powerful tool to get your music out there,” band publicist Maggie Poulos says. “Obviously, in the case of Nicki … having a good song and an engaging video go viral can really help an artist get on the map.”

However, don’t go boxing Bluhm into the role of “that YouTube girl.” Before she had even touched YouTube, fellow band member and husband Tim Bluhm noticed her serious talent.

“I was at a New Year’s Eve show watching (Tim’s band) The Mother Hips in San Diego,” Nicki Bluhm says. “We ended up at the same party after the show, and people were kind of doing a round robin thing, passing the guitar around. Just real casual. It got passed to me and I sang a song. Tim heard it and was impressed and invited me up to San Francisco to do some recording with him.”

Another reason not to classify Nicki Bluhm? Believe it or not, before adopting music as a career, she was a grade school teacher.

“Yeah, I have a teaching credential,” she says. “I taught environmental education, did a lot of substitute teaching and worked with autistic kids. That was definitely one of the hats that I wore.”

Two albums (one of which includes her hit single, [“Jetplane”](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwpgaRkQd3w )), a song featured on the ESPYS and a Gap modeling gig later, and life for Bluhm is a little different. If you look back at her archive of tour dates, you’ll see that she has been touring and playing shows almost constantly for the last year.

“We were just joking the other day, me and my husband,” Nicki Bluhm says. “You walk out the door and you’re just totally disoriented every morning. You don’t even know where the bathroom is.”

Early morning confusion aside, she and the Gramblers seem to thoroughly enjoy life on the road and bringing their music to all parts of the country.

“Our set was a blast and a great foot to start this tour on,” guitarist Deren Ney wrote of The Gramblers’ gig at the Grand Point North Music Festival in Vermont on his tour blog, The [Grambler Diaries](http://gramblerdiaries.tumblr.com). “While we noticed (and GREATLY appreciated) people familiar with our tunes, we were unknown to most of this large East Coast crowd, and they were incredibly welcoming to us anyway.”

So what is The Gramblers’ sound, anyway? Much like how Nicki Bluhm cannot be simply labeled “that YouTube girl,” the band’s genre is difficult to define.

“People say it’s sort of country rock with a little bit of soul, which I think is pretty reflective of what it is,” Nicki Bluhm says. “It’s unfortunate that it’s so many words, but it is what it is, you know?”

Whatever it is, it’s working.