Jaded Era joins pop rock band for the Odeon’s farewell show

The Click Five is not your average boy band. The group brings its “old-time rock ‘n’ roll sort of vibe” to The Odeon Friday night. COURTESY OF ATLANTIC RECORDS

Credit: Carl Schierhorn

The Click Five was described by one critic as “the missing link between the Backstreet Boys and Fountains of Wayne,” and the band’s guitarist, Joe Guese, agrees.

The Click Five is marketed more like the Backstreet Boys, he said, but doesn’t share much in common with them musically.

“I’d say that we’re a rock band that plays pop songs,” Guese said. “I have always been a fan of the three-minute pop song.”

The five members of The Click Five met at the Berklee College of Music in Boston. While studying at Berklee the band members lived in a house on Imrie Street, which is where the title for the band’s 2005 debut on Lava Records, Greetings from Imrie House, came from.

The band is currently touring in support of that album and will be at the Odeon, performing in the venue’s final show, tomorrow.

“We just try to have a lot of fun,” Guese said. “We try to bring back that old-time rock ‘n’ roll sort of vibe.”

The band has opened for Ashlee Simpson, Alanis Morissette, the Backstreet Boys and Jesse McCartney and is currently on tour with the upcoming band, Big City Rock.

After The Click Five is finished with the current tour, it plans on going back into the studio in April to record its second album.

“Hopefully we will be putting out our second record in September,” he said.

On the band’s first album, Greetings from Imrie House, the members worked with Paul Stanley of Kiss and Adam Schlesinger of Fountains of Wayne. Stanley co-wrote the song “Angel to You (Devil to Me)” with Click Five keyboardist Ben Romans. Schlesinger wrote “I’ll Take My Chances” and “Just the Girl” for the band.

“I think you just take away a certain level of professionalism that they have with their own music,” Guese said.

Elliot Easton of The Cars played guitar on “Angel to You (Devil to Me)” and “I’ll Take My Chances.”

“It was really inspiring to see him and how he works, how he approaches guitar solos,” Guese said.

The Click Five, inspired by power-pop bands of the late ’70s such as the Talking Heads and Cheap Trick, packaged a trading card of one of the band members in each copy of Greetings from Imrie House.

The band hoped some crazed female fans – the band’s target audience – would buy five albums to get all five trading cards, Guese said. Fans like to trade the cards online.

Click Five frontman Eric Dill’s trading card is the most sought after, but each band member is big on different fan Web sites and in different parts of the country.

“I was big in Little Rock, Arkansas,” Guese said.

The band also is marketed toward a younger audience.

“For a lot of these girls it is the first concert they have been to, or the first band they have been linked to,” he said.

The Click Five would rather play to younger, more enthusiastic audiences than for people in bars.

“Girls going crazy are better than some guy in a bar waiting to fight you outside after you’re done playing,” Guese said.

Contact ALL reporter Gabe Gott at [email protected].