The Rosewood Thieves to steal the show at Club Cafe

The Rosewood Thieves, along with The Dead Trees and Doug Blevins

Wednesday, Sept. 23 at 9:30… The Rosewood Thieves, along with The Dead Trees and Doug Blevins

Wednesday, Sept. 23 at 9:30 p.m.

Club Café

Tickets: $8

Erick Jordan, frontman of the folk-rock group The Rosewood Thieves, has a theory for why music has deteriorated: accessibility.

“I just think it’s so easy to make music now,” Jordan said. “Your ears are kind of flooded with crap. There was as many crappy bands out in the ’60s and ’70s, but none of them could afford to go to a studio and record those crappy songs. So you never heard them — which is best. Now, anybody can be approachable and just record their crappy songs and put it on MySpace.”

Jordan’s answer to this overexposure of mediocrity is The Rosewood Thieves — a band that prefers to dwell on the warmer, less digitalized sounds of classic rock.

“You don’t have all these overdubs,” Jordan said. “You need to hear mess-ups.”

Jordan, a native of East Stroudsburg, Pa., said the band’s particular rock ’n’ roll purism was always there.

Jordan met the first members of the Thieves while attending a boarding school in California, and, united by their shared love of a bygone era, he and the

others moved to New York City to perfect their throwback sound.

“Everyone was pretty young,” Jordan said. “It’s just kind of what we grew up listening to. Without trying, it’s just how we always sounded.”

After being signed to V2 Records (labelmates include The White Stripes), the original members of The Rosewood Thieves decided to write their first EP.

“At that point, everybody kind of quit what they were doing and were like, ‘Let’s just go for this,’” Jordan said.

That winter, after being holed up in a cramped apartment, the fledging band was offered an upstate New York farmhouse in which to live free of charge — an experience many would consider an idyllic artistic endeavor. But not Jordan.

“It was really hard,” he said. “We were really young and stupid. It was very cold. It was like an abandoned house, basically. It wasn’t the most prime

place to be. But it was fun looking back.”

Despite its Siberian standard of living, the band managed to turn out a career-boosting EP, From the Decker House.

With Lennon-esque singing and sublime blues, allmusic.com called it “an understated beauty.” The album was soon featured in Paste magazine’s “Band of the Week” feature, in which Jordan joked, “My ear just doesn’t accept anything from 1975 on.”

Following this was another EP (Lonesome) and the band’s first full-length album, the cozy Rise and Shine, which earned the band sound comparisons to legendary rock bands like The Beatles.

But rather than settle forever into the mold of nostalgic rock, the band decided to change directions this year and cover a rhythm-and-blues pioneer — Solomon Burke, perhaps most famous for his single “Cry to Me.”

“I kind [of] always thought it was strange that his name never reached the fame pinnacle of James Brown or Otis Redding,” Jordan said.

To remedy this, the band memorized Burke’s songs, played them live and put them on an album titled Heartaches By the Pound.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Famer himself was quick to praise the album, saying, “I thought the Rolling Stones did me a favor, but [The Rosewood Thieves] have taken it to another level.”

As of now, things are looking up for Jordan and the Thieves. In addition to garnering praise from one of their R&B idols, their songs have appeared in “Grey’s Anatomy,” “Entourage” and an LG commercial. And, of course, they’re working on a new record — and a new style.

“I think now our new songs are a bit more mature,” Jordan said. “We’ve found our own voice and songwriting — not just a throwback to bands that we like, not wearing our influences on our sleeve anymore.”

Jordan said he views experimentation as vital for any band — a course he plans to follow.

“Every band needs to evolve and change,” Jordan said. “I think people can grasp onto that. I don’t think people want to hear From the Decker House in 10 years, like the same records being recorded. There needs to be an evolution of every band to keep it interesting for them and their fans.”

And in a world of recycled pop songs, keeping it interesting is no less than a necessity.

Check out the band’s Myspace page here