Albums of standards seem to be about as common as the cold, but not many performers approach it like Erin McKeown.

	"I love when people in their 50s come up and tell me they love my rock records," says Erin McKeown, "and people in their early 20s come up and say I love 'Sing You Sinners.' " Click photo for larger image. Erin McKeown Where: Club Cafe, South Side. When: 7 and 10:30 p.m. Saturday. Tickets: $14 advance; $16 at the door; 412-323-1919.

The singer-songwriter from the indie-folk scene brings plenty of delightful quirks to "Sing You Sinners," a record of popular and obscure jazz and swing tunes from the '30s to '50s.

While so many throwback records either go through the motions or strive too hard for reverence, McKeown's set is very much alive -- played with a quartet that's fast on its feet and sung by a singer more interested in capturing the song than showing off her voice.

It's a sweet voice, cute even, that bounces through "Paper Moon," coos through "Coucou," gently caresses "They Say It's Spring" and turns all the breathless curves of "Thanks for the Boogie Ride."

"Sing You Sinners" is the fifth record for McKeown, an artist from Northampton, Mass., who graduated from Brown with a degree in ethnomusicology. As she says in the interview done from Montana, in a van eventually making its way to Pittsburgh, her swing experiment had little to do with academics.

Q. To what extent was this music part of your past?

A. Not so much part of my childhood -- in fact, not a part of my childhood at all. This is music I found when I first went to college, hanging out with a group of people who were really into old-time music and vaudeville and early jazz and swing, just on a much deeper level than I had ever encountered before. Like a lot of things, once I get interested in something, I really, really get into it.

Q. Even though this was an album of standards, it doesn't seem like authenticity was your goal.

A. It was important for me to add my own spin to it. Authenticity is such a tricky concept. I tend to want to stay away from it with a 10-foot pole. What I care more about as a concept is sincerity, making sure that the music that I make is true to myself and not some model of the way someone has done it before.

Q. Did you listen to any other records of contemporary people who had done standards?

A. No, not anyone like Rod Stewart or Linda Ronstadt or anyone like that. I don't see that I'm really a part of what they're doing. There are a couple of groups that I've followed for a while that I think are relevant to this music. Andrew Bird is one artist, who, four, five years ago, was making some great old swing records. Squirrel Nut Zippers had a really great take on this kind of music. Those are the two contemporary artists that I paid attention to, but I kind of made this record in a vacuum. I kind of made it from my impression of what this old-time music was rather than any kind of like real knowledge.

Q. You're getting a lot of praise for the arrangements -- how did they take shape?

A. They took shape in a natural way. First thing is, I have to give credit to the band because they were really free with their ideas and really creative and no one thought that they had any rules to follow. So a lot of the things that ended up in the record were really collaborations. I was just one of four people throwing out things. The actual arrangements usually happened between the first or second take of something.

Q. There are about a hundred million songs to choose from. How did you decide which songs to cover and whether a song worked for you?

A. It's kind of a process I can't really articulate, it's really like a gut thing. Do I like the song or not? I could like it because I like something about the words or something about the melody made sense to me. Or I could like it because something in the song made sense to something that was happening in my life at the time. It depends on the song. A song like 'Coucou,' I had been kicking around for about 10 years, whereas 'Something's Gotta Give,' I found a month before we made the record.

Q. Were there some songs that you wanted to sing, but felt that you're just not the right singer for this song?

A. That's a good question. I had about 30 songs I was working with before I even narrowed it down to the 15 we took to the studio. There might have been a song where I liked someone's version of it, but when I sat down to do a version with just me and my guitar, for whatever reason, it didn't work -- I couldn't find a way for the guitar to do what I wanted to do, or something about the spirit of it I couldn't catch with my voice. There was a Frank Sinatra song, 'The Nearness of You,' that I wanted to do, but when I took it apart and put it back together, it didn't work for me.

Q. One of things I'm saying is that you have a really great voice, but it doesn't seem like you're a crooner type.

A. I have a really unique voice and up to this point, writing my own songs has been the best way to showcase it. One of the reasons why people become songwriters is because they're not the kind of singers who can sing the phone book. And I would describe myself that way. I'm very proud of my voice and I take good care of it, but there are some things that it's just never going to do. It's got a unique range and an interesting quality that lends itself to some things and not to other things.

Q. No one's going to say "she sings like Streisand" or anything like that.

A. Yeah, there's something that I couldn't get behind in the kind of song that Barbara Streisand sings. I think that's part of it, too. I really have to understand and feel where a song is coming from. Barbara Streisand or Dionne Warwick, they're doing something that comes from a different place in terms of emotions that isn't where my personality is. That's part of it, too.

Q. Well, do people's moms like it? Has anyone said "My mom ..." or 'My grandma loves this record'?

A. Um, I don't know. No, no, no, no one's really said that. My experience with the shows that we've been doing is it's been a real mixture of fans -- a lot of longtime fans and a lot of new ones coming, young and old. And they're seeing what I do in terms of my whole body of work, not just this record. So, it's not real generational because this record is old songs, and I'm really proud about that. I love when people in their 50s come up and tell me they love my rock records and people in the early 20s come up and say I love 'Sing You Sinners.' There's a whole picture of my music that this record is just a part of.

Q. You're touring as a trio. How do you do this on stage without a bass player?

A. Well, the bass comes from the piano and my own guitar style has a lot of bass in it. It's actually really fun to solve that problem. When it works, it's great. If you put the music together in the right way, it can sound like more than three people. There are a lot of ways to have bass without a bass player.

Q. Like the Doors.

A. Exactly ... I really do look at the Doors as like a super-creative version of what I want my band to be. The traditional organ trio is jazz, there's no bass in that.

Q. I mention that because one of the songs, "Just One of Those Things," has a Doors sound. Is that what you had in mind?

A. I think part of that is that the song is in E minor. And there's a lot of guitar hiss that sounds like that rain effect of "Riders on the Storm." That song actually got made in a great way that symbolizes how we made the record. I had a version of that song -- and there are tons of versions of that song -- but, it's great because lyrically, you can be totally flippant with that song and sing it in a fast, offhand way: "it's just one of those things, and you're just another in a line of my, like, my bitches." Or you could sing it in a way that's really sad, like, "life always takes away what I love," that kind of thing. I had a version that was a little snappier that was I was thinking about doing. It wasn't working and Todd [Sickafoose, the bassist] just started playing that riff and the band just fell in. I wasn't sure what I should be doing at the time, but we stuck with it, and it came out great. I've had people say after that it sounded like the Doors or this Coltrane thing, neither of which reference I was aware of at the time at all, which I'm glad because I wouldn't have done if I had thought about it at the beginning.

Q. Did you go back and listen to a lot of older music when you were doing this?

A. Only by accident. I don't have a TV so if I'm at home at night and, if there's no baseball on, I will listen to the late-night jazz program. I have bought so much music because of that. They really go deep into jazz and swing. A lot of the research was done that way. I didn't really go to the library and grab the Ella Fitzgerald song book. I just stumbled upon the songs.

Q. Did you have a favorite singer from this time period, someone who really inspired you?

A. No, not really. There were a couple that, when I found, were really lightening bolts for me. Blossom Dearie is absolutely the best example of that. She's kind of like a b-level jazz singer. She wasn't as famous as Sarah, Ella or Billie, she was like the next level down. She was also a piano player, but she has this flat, ironic delivery that allows her to sing like really stupid songs and get away with it. It blew me away. And, I think, Anita O'Day. Maybe two years ago, I found her music and it really changed the way I thought about this music.

Q. After this are you going back to a more typical Erin McKeown record?

A. Yeah, there's one, I've already written it.

Q. I guess if you don't have a TV you have a lot of time for songwriting ...

A. I mean, I do other things. I spend a lot of time listening to baseball. I live in the middle of nowhere, but I spend a lot of time outside and I spend a lot time on the road playing music. But it's been written and hopefully this summer I'll get to record it. I wouldn't say it's 'typical' since none of my records seem to follow the next.