The 47-year-old woman with the cowboy hat and painted toenails has been listening to REO Speedwagon since nights spent in the backseat of a Chevy Chevelle more than 30 years ago.

Waiting with 6,300 fans to play air guitar and holler out album titles like "You Can Tune a Piano But You Can't Tuna Fish" as the classic rockers played the Ventura County Fair on Saturday night, she asked one question:

"They're not in walkers or anything?"

No, but lead singer Kevin Cronin, who wrote hits like "Keep on Loving You" and "Roll With the Changes," is 55. That's six years younger than keyboard player Neal Doughty, who named the band the same year Richard Nixon was elected — the first time. Both are musical industry adolescents compared to Tony Orlando, who sang "Tie A Yellow Ribbon" and other hits at the fair Tuesday in his 48th year in the biz.

Call them dinosaurs or classics, the fair lineup is loaded with them: the Beach Boys, who may have drawn as many as 12,000 people to their show Tuesday night, country singer Tanya Tucker and tonight's act, the Bangles, who catapulted onto the music scene 21 years ago with hits like "Walk Like an Egyptian" and "Manic Monday."

Some people focus on the recycled hits, original band members who have long been replaced and gray hair. But for fans who came of age listening to the music, the shows reconnect to days when a great night meant driving into back hills with friends and swilling cheap beer as a car stereo cranked out classic rock or surf pop or Tucker's "Delta Dawn."

When the country singer was 14 and belting out that lyric about "a faded rose from days gone by," Lee Cole was a store manager at a Ventura Safeway. Johnny Cash used to shop there, and years earlier, Cole told him about a great stretch of land in the Sespe Wilderness beyond Fillmore. Cash went there to write songs, and on one trip, according to the book "Johnny Cash: Life of an Icon," a spark from his camper van contributed to a forest fire.

'We didn't have karaoke'

It's the kind of story that is as much a fair staple as corn dogs. Told a few minutes before Tucker took the grandstand stage, it triggered another tale from Cora Reedy of Port Hueneme. She comes from Olongapo City in the Philippines and remembers listening to Tucker's hits on a bar jukebox. All her friends would be there and they'd try to duplicate the singer's throaty, country twang without sloshing their drinks.

"We didn't have karaoke," she said with a smile.

For many, the music from Tucker or REO or the Bangles is a soundtrack forever linked to first dates or insider stories that end with punch lines like "bacon cheeseburger."

In 1973 when REO started to gain attention with "Ridin' the Storm Out," now a classic rock anthem, Mike Hahn graduated from high school, was booted out of his parents' home and spent as much time as he could tattooing rhythms on his drums.

About 34 years later, Hahn stood on the scarred dirt of an arena flanked by soiled billboards and a large, inflatable beer bottle. He's 51 now, lives in Northridge and still plays the drums, though he makes his living repairing laser printers.

Memories are a strong lure

Classic rock and REO mean a chance to go back to a time when "rock music was real," he said, and "I still had hair."

The memories can be a powerful draw. Two hours before REO's show, fans waited in a serpentine line that stretched more than 200 yards. Many had grown up with REO and were in their 40s. Others weren't born during the band's early 1980s heyday but had been caught by the radio avalanche that is classic rock.

They filed past a souvenir stand where Mike Gillespa sold T-shirts, guitar pick earrings and two kinds of REO-stamped underwear: regular and thong. Gillespa, who is 24, believes the bond between the middle-age musicians and America's consumers isn't weakening any time soon.

"When you go to a bar, do you get into the new songs or do you get into the old classic rock with a beer in your hand, trying to sing along?" he asked, offering his own vote for the latter.

Performers say the connection is even more tangible than money. When Tony Orlando arrives a couple of hours before a county or state fair, people holler out "Hey Tony, how are you?" as if they were roommates from college. It's one of the reasons, along with roasted corn, he gets rhapsodical when talking about the fair circuit.

A sense of warmth

"There's a sense of being embraced, of welcome to the neighborhood," he said. "There's a warmth and a beauty and almost a sense of great audience art within the confines of the fair."

Orlando is 63 or, as he prefers, two years younger than Paul McCartney. He was on the business side of the industry, serving as a vice president for CBS Records, when he stumbled into a performing career that included five No. 1 hits and the 1970s television variety series, "Tony Orlando and Dawn."

Now Dawn-less, he lives outside Branson, Mo., and travels to 160 performances a year. He understands people come to his shows looking for the guy who cracked bad jokes on TV and looked a little like Geraldo Rivera. But for him, his shows aren't a jaunt back to the '70s.

"My objective has always been to be in the now," Orlando said, noting that if he ever thought of himself as a nostalgic act, he'd quit. "There would not be a growth factor."

In its heyday, REO was in the rock 'n' roll elite as a band that sold 40 million records and played venues like Madison Square Garden. Now, they play the Palms Hotel in Las Vegas and the Western Idaho Fair in Boise.

"You either make that leap," said Cronin, referring to the legion of classic rock bands that play the fair circuit, "or you don't work."

High energy by band, fans

The singer and guitarist, who lives in Westlake Village, sat backstage at the fair, eating a buffet dish he couldn't identify as a hairdresser fussed over his spiky, dyed-blond hairstyle. He wore a T-shirt and tan pants soon to be ditched for his show gear — a silky, long-sleeved shirt untucked over black leather pants.

He said maybe there will be a day when bands like REO should bow out like boxers who have taken too many punches. But that final roundhouse right feels far away.

"I still feel like I'm 25," he said. "We still lay it down out there."

The energy generated by the band is more than matched by their fans. When Alesha Hensley was a high school student at James Monroe High School in North Hills, she auditioned for a flag-waving pep squad using REO's hit, "Take It on the Run."

She made the team, and 26 years later the cornerstone triumph made her feel like she deserved one of the guitar picks the band pitched into the crowd at the end of the show. She had one of the souvenirs under her foot but another woman grabbed it and didn't let go even when Hensley stepped on her hand.

Even that injustice couldn't spoil the show.

"It was awesome," Hensley said.