Solomon Blaylock is not one for joining any sort of group — besides Rochester’s Southern Gothic band The Lobster Quadrille. The group’s lead singer grew up in Georgia and is a practicing Jehovah’s Witness; but after some loud questioning of his faith, he left the church. Upon finding himself in Rochester, Blaylock fell in with a group of Buddhists.

“Well, I don’t call myself a Buddhist anymore; I don’t call myself anything anymore. I feel at this point in my life, it makes more sense for me to trust my moral intuition ... I’m not interested in surrendering my will in regards to any sort of group anymore — and that’s not just religious, but politically, socially, anything like that.”

Blaylock’s The Lobster Quadrille, which began as a solo project, has grown into a seven-piece outfit, complete with accordions and washboards mixed with the standard guitar, drums and bass to achieve a sinfully Southern sound. You can hear it when the group plays Abilene’s on Friday, Jan. 8, and The Club at Water Street (for the first time) on Wednesday, Jan. 13.

We spoke with Blaylock in advance of the shows, about sex, death, religion and other influences.

It seems the music of The Lobster Quadrille is heavily influenced by your religious experiences, even though it may poke fun at them.
Basic metaphysical issues … and the difficulties attendant just on existence are always a big concern to me. They’re on my mind all the time, and they definitely manifest themselves through the music about as much as anything. Death and sex are the other (influences).

The Lobster Quadrille began as a solo project. Do you ever miss performing solo?
Not at all. I only ever performed solo out of necessity. I’d always wanted to do this with a lot of different people; I always had orchestrations in mind. The way it sounds now is definitely the best it’s ever sounded, and I’m very happy with the ensemble we have.

Tell me how your latest self-titled release came together and how it differs from past releases.
It was the first time we’d gone into an actual recording studio and done all that work. We’re still sort of finding out how to translate what we do in that environment because we normally feed so much off the energy of a crowd … We were having a lot of fun, bringing booze in there and piling everybody into the studio and having these big sessions where we’d record as much as we could. It definitely has more of a produced sound, (and) it’s slicker than the stuff we’ve done in the past.

We really used to play up that satanic tent revival thing — which is definitely an aspect of what we do. I’m sure it’ll always be an aspect, but if you actually listen to this CD and look at the lyrics, a lot of them deal with the sort of metaphysical concerns. There really isn’t a lot of the explicit faux-religiosity thing coming through.