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Maybe it's the jubilation that calls for a Bruce Springsteen comparison, but aside from a workingman's ethos, that's about as close to the music of The Boss that Red Collar gets.

Then again, guitarist and vocalist Jason Kutchma doesn't bring up Springsteen so much anymore. He used to, and sometimes he'll still mention New Jersey's favorite rocker as a point of reference, but more than anything, he allows his group's music to stand on its own.

"In the beginning, we weren't sure how to describe it when someone would ask, 'What kind of band are you in?'" Kutchma told The Daily Times this week. "At first, we would say, 'Oh, a rock band.' But then they would say, 'Oh, wow -- so what kind of band are you in?' We would keep going on and try to describe it in these strange terms, but ultimately, people want to hear that it's one thing crossed with something else.

"So we started saying that we sound like Fugazi with The Replacements and Bruce Springsteen, all rolled into one. Which inevitably disappointed some people who showed up and decided we sounded nothing like Bruce Springsteen."

In the end, it's probably best to go into a Red Collar show -- like the one Saturday night at the Longbranch Saloon in Knoxville -- with an open mind. Know this -- there's plenty of rock guitar, a la Sonic Youth; post-punk effervescence (hence the Fugazi reference), rock 'n' roll attitude circa the Mats and Americana grit born of the band's Durham, N.C. roots.

The group got its start when Kutchma and his wife, bassist/vocalist Beth, sought a second guitar player to join their group. What they really wanted, Kutchma said, was someone who could act as a counterbalance to his particular style of playing.

"I kept on breaking strings and was always out of tune and just couldn't get it together, so I told the others that we needed to get another guitar player because I didn't know any other way to play," he said. "We found one through Craigslist (Mike Jackson), but we found out that Mike's the exact same sort of guitar player as I am -- playing out of tune and breaking strings.

"We realized that's how we played together, and it's worked out well so far. We learned to change out strings before a show and to always have a tuner and backup guitars. I just think it's funny that the person we decidedly thought was going to cure us had the same problems I do."

As a permanent drummer was added to the mix (Jonathan Truesdale), Red Collar began to grow a bigger fanbase outside of the Durham area. The key was earnestness -- the four members throw themselves into every performance with pure, unadulterated joy, and that sound comes across crystalline on "Pilgrim," Red Collar's debut record.

"Even though some of the things we're talking about aren't necessarily a celebration, the music itself is," Kutchma said. "All of us work full-time, 9-to-5 jobs, and this is what we do at night. All during the day, somebody is telling you to file these papers here or type this in column one here or be at work at this time.

"In a rock band, this is our time to do what we want and play what we want. It's always bothered me seeing bands on stage performing like I do at my 9-to-5 job. I don't like seeing bands that look like they're going through the motions and just schlubbing it. That's not what we're about."

"Pilgrim" encapsulates that mentality in a way that surpasses the expectations of most debut albums. It hums with authenticity, as if the very disc itself is made of a congealed mix of stale beer, cigarette butts, sweat, busted drum sticks and broken guitar strings from a hundred different venues around the Southeast. It isn't flashy or shiny; there's little studio trickery or polish. What's there is a mental image of a band playing its guts out, giving everything it has to a lone producer on the other side of studio glass just as it would to a room full of people.

"This album is the culmination of what we've been through for the past three-and-a-half years," Kutchma said. "We were careful that there wasn't going to be a lot of fat on the album. I don't like albums that are pop hit after pop hit; I like them to be these self-contained things without a lot of fluff or fat on them.

"Over the course of us being together for the past three-and-a-half years, we've only released one EP, and it was because I never liked it when bands thought that just because they wrote something, they should release it, too. We like to write it and test it and play it out. We like to see what changes in the live environment and then record it."

In these days of a singles-driven music economy, when albums have become piecemeal objects collected a song at a time, making "The Pilgrim" goes against the grain. Kutchma and his bandmates envisioned it as an album in the classic sense of the word -- a collection of solid songs woven together into a single tapestry.

"I think bands have to do what they feel is right, regardless of what the market is calling for," he said. "I think people have to look at their lives the exact same way."

On stage, the musicians in Red Collar take that to heart. Kutchma likens the group's approach to a live show to a job he used to have working in a mall coffee shop.

"I used to have a boss who, every morning, would always have this big smile on his face, and I couldn't believe it," he said. "I was barely awake, and I had to have two or three cups of coffee before I could converse with people. I asked him one time, 'How can you do it?' and he said, 'I really love my job. I'm the first face people see in the morning or the last one they see at night when they've had a hard day and need a cup of coffee to get home.'

"That's what we are. We love our job of playing rock 'n' roll. We may be the first band people see on the weekend to forget a long week at work, or the last band they see at night to forget a long, rough Saturday night. That stage, that 10- by 20-foot stage, has always meant freedom for me, because I get to do what I want up there, and I love what it is that we do."