They’re tuning up their Stratocasters in the name of literature.

San Francisco’s fifth annual literary festival, Litquake, co-sponsored by The Chronicle, kicks off Saturday with a rock ‘n’ roll launch party featuring "author bands."

In the glamorous downstairs gloom of Cafe du Nord, musically inclined authors will boldly exhibit their inner rock star on opening night. And Litquake co-founder Jack Boulware, author of Sex, American Style and San Francisco Bizarro, will be among them.

For the sake of Litquake, he explains, "we thought we could put on the wigs again." He and his colleagues will reprise Rëzzin, their parody of a ’70s band. It all began in 1992, when Boulware was editor of the Nose, a satirical investigative magazine. "We decided to do a cover story about the resurgence of marijuana in youth culture. We were seeing references to marijuana on hats, album artwork and articles of clothing," he says.

"It made us think of the golden era of marijuana in the ’70s, when we all grew up. So we put Bill Clinton and Al Gore on the cover and called them ‘The Doobie Brothers.’ " For the issue-release party, it seemed natural for the staff to form a "stoner rock" band.

"Everyone had musical instruments, and some of us had been in bands over the years. We rented a warehouse South of Market, bought a keg of beer and learned 12 songs," Boulware says, wistfully. "Things will never be that good again."

The party was such a smash, they decided to keep playing together. "We started writing original songs, even after the magazine went out of business in ‘95," he says. "Most of the lyrics were about pot — to make people recognize their inner stoner."

This Litquake gig marks the first time the Rëzzin members have played together in four years. "A fair number of us still work in publishing or writing," Boulware says, which brings the whole enterprise full circle.

In addition to Rëzzin, four other bands will play on Litquake’s opening night.

The Yard Dogs Jug Band: Eddy Joe Cotton, author of Hobo: A Young Man’s Thoughts on Trains and Tramping in America, performs with this stripped-down version of his trippy carnival band, the Yard Dogs Road Show.

Chicken Truck: Robert Mailer Anderson, author of the novel Boonville, and his band.

Brontë Saurus: Kathi Kamen Goldmark, creator of the superstar author band the Rock Bottom Remainders ("they’re going strong; we’re doing a tour of the Midwest soon," she says) and author of Mid-Life Confidential and And My Shoes Keep Walking Back to You, will perform with a trio.

Born at the Squaw Valley Community of Writers, Bronte Saurus includes HarperSanFrancisco’s Sam Barry on harmonica and piano, and on guitar, Louis B. Jones, author of Ordinary Money and California’s Over.

"Louie is a wonderful guitarist," she says, "and Sam is a real pianist –he sits in for Mike Greensill (on KALW’s West Coast Live) when he’s out of town." For Litquake? "We’ll do a very short set of original songs."

What will surely keep folks glued to their seats till the wee hours is this special added attraction: a band that must go unnamed (for contractual reasons). Recent winners of a California Music Award, no less, they will play their "idiosyncratic brand of hip-hop garage" music.

Those unfond of rock needn’t fear. During the nine-day festival (up from three days last year), all strands of the Bay Area’s literary tapestry will be represented. "We’re trying to accurately reflect the many facets of San Francisco," says Boulware. Therefore, it is unlikely that authors such as Maxine Hong Kingston or Tobias Wolff, two of the 175 participants, will be twirling the mike during a rendition of "My Generation." What they will be doing is reading from their recent work. (For a schedule of readings, panels and performances, visit www.litquake.com.)

This year, Litquake boasts more evening events. More literary genres will be represented, too, including: From Page to Screen (a conversation with Barry Gifford and Tamara Straus, editor of Zoetrope: All Story magazine, which precedes a screening of Wild at Heart), plus The Art of the Mystery, Writing Women’s Lives, Loudmouths of Lit, Kidquake and a panel called Throes of Rejection with Ianthe Brautigan and Dave Eggers.

As Boulware says, "It’s all part of the grand stew of Fogtown."