The Avett Brothers interviewed at BottleRock Napa Valley on May 10, 2013. Roman Gokhman/STAFF.

Unlike their predecessors Bob Dylan or Johnny Cash, the Avett Brothers of North Carolina don’t write songs about characters in faraway places. Seth and Scott Avett stick to songs about themselves.

There’s little third-person storytelling, and everything is true.

“I love a lot of music that is either fictional or observational, but generally we’re more drawn to songs that speak directly to a life experience that we’ve had, something we would like to happen or something we learned,” says singer-guitarist Seth Avett, who brings his Americana folk band to the BottleRock Napa Valley festival on Thursday. The inaugural four-day destination event boasts rock music, comedy, food and wine.

If the Avetts were to write a song about the week leading up to their trip to Napa, it would be about the unrelenting rain that has kept them indoors.

“It would probably have to do with … some gloomy, stay-in-your-house kind of days,” Avett says. “I imagine it would be pretty quiet and lean toward a little bit of cabin fever. I’m looking out the window right now and it’s raining, so I’m looking forward to coming out there.”

The Avett Brothers — Seth, his singer-banjo-player brother Scott Avett, bassist Bob Crawford and cellist Joe Kwon — are often grouped into the recent Americana revival scene that includes Mumford and Sons, Old Crow Medicine Show, the Lumineers and fellow BottleRock performers Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros.

But some don’t realize the band has been around for more than a decade and is among the leaders of the revival.
When Avett Brothers performed at the 2011 Grammy Awards (as did Dylan and Mumford and Sons), their fifth album had been issued. The current full-length release, “The Carpenter,” debuted at No. 4 on the Billboard Top 200 chart last fall.

“It does seem like there’s something happening as far as bands with American roots elements in them having more popularity and success,” Avett says. “I think there’s a natural ebb and flow that happens with the mainstream attraction.”

Despite the proliferation of bands that look like they have time-traveled from the Great Depression, Avett isn’t irked that others have mimicked the aesthetic. He views it as a compliment.

“I feel like the longevity of a band, or the quality of a band, comes down to the songs, and nobody can do that for you,” he says. “You can put some suspenders and a Depression-era hat and a beard on somebody, you can put an acoustic guitar in their hands and have them go out and play a song, they can look the part — but if the song isn’t great, it will come out in the wash.”

Follow editor Roman Gokhman at Twitter.com/RomiTheWriter.