With album titles like “Songs for the Weary” and “Defeated, TN,” it’s clear that local country/folk outfit Theodore has an affinity with society’s down-and-out. The quartet writes about hard times, hard living and heartbreak, along the lines of Tom Waits, Wilco and any number of old country artists.

The lyrics fit the music, as the four multi-instrumentalists play dusty, slow-paced music with more than a hint of noir. Unusual instrumentation pops up to keep the listener engaged, such as dobro, accordion, trombone and musical saw. There are some barn burners, though, such as the electrifying “Down River Blues.”

Lead vocalist Justin Kinkel-Schuster’s voice is reminiscent of Neil Young, especially when the harmonica moans between verses.

The group is locked into an ambitious July tour, when they’ll visit many points north, south and east, including two dates in New York City.

I caught up with Kinkel-Schuster today via email as the band prepared to release “Defeated, TN” this Saturday at Off Broadway. They’ll be playing with Tim Rakel’s (Bad Folk) side project May Day Orchestra and Rats and People.

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RC: How did the band come together?

KS: We all met more or less by chance, as is often the case. Although I think having a common lust for particular musical strains made it more likely that we’d meet. I met Jason (Torbitzky) and JJ (Hamon) shortly after I moved to St. Louis with my wife in 2005. My friend Andy (Lashier) moved here a few months later and that was it.

RC: What is your musical background?

KS: As far as a musical background, I’m the only one in my family that plays any instruments, but my mom’s music collection was very important to me growing up. The first musical memories I have are of her singing “You are My Sunshine” to me when I was maybe five or six and having this strange realization that it was supposed to be a happy song but that it was also the most sad and beautiful thing… That it was simultaneously immensely hopeful and profoundly hopeless. The second thing I remember is her playing Neil Young records about that same time. Of course there were countless other things as I grew up.

RC: I hear your new album’s lyrics are based on some letters you found in an abandoned house in Tennessee. How did you find yourselves in the house out there?

KS: On an off day on tour in January of 2007 we were driving back roads through Tennessee as an alternative to the Interstate. After a couple of hours of seeing decrepit, abandoned structures, the idea to stop and explore one came up. This is where one’s perspective on determinism comes into play. In a certain place called Defeated Creek, we happened to choose a particular house to stop and explore. We had no expectations, but what we found, by absolute random chance, was decades of debris from a family’s disintegration. I mean just a crumbling house full of countless household artifacts strewn about as if the family had up and left recently — only everything inside was at least 20 to 25 years old. It was almost entombed, you might say. Needless to say, we were shocked. So we picked through things for a while in silence, then came upon a shoe box full of correspondence, largely comprised of letters from the presumable husband and father to his wife and children. Many of them were from prison, along with birthday cards and the like. It was, and is, some of the most absolutely heartbreaking sh-t you could ever lay your eyes on. Literally, just absolutely heartbreaking. And so we left, and within hours it was almost unspoken, but right at the same time we all just said, “we have to make something of this story,” and so we did. We got home and within a couple months, I had written the majority of the songs. So the record is essentially a fictionalized version of the disintegration of a rural American family based upon a small fraction — a Polaroid — of their story.

RC: Looks like you have an exciting tour coming up. Is it your most extensive?

KS: We’re so excited about this tour I can’t even tell you! We’ve got a brand new record that we couldn’t be more excited about and we’re taking it around the country in a van. That’s sort of what it’s ultimately about to my way of thinking. It’s definitely our most extensive and we’re hitting a really cool mix of venues, from bars to houses to art spaces to puppet theaters. It’s gonna be great.

Theodore “Defeated, TN” record release party with May Day Orchestra and Rats and People

Saturday, Off Broadway, $7

http://www.myspace.com/theodoreacoustic