It’s 8 on a Friday evening and the members of local band Ideal Cleaners are sitting in drummer Ted Alesio’s living room cracking open their first beer.

 “Should we just get it out of the way?” asks vocalist and songwriter Dan Jenkins.

It’s unanimous that they should.

As it turns out, the story really isn’t all that complicated, or even all that unheard of.

The guys are brothers-in-law.

And no, holiday and family reunion jam sessions do not happen.

The relationship is cute, and it’s really kind of a savvy marketing ploy, but it shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who has followed the Lincoln band since its inception in January of 2003.

Created from the remnants of bassist Mike Keeling’s and Jenkins’ previous band, Drive-by Honky, Ideal Cleaners came onto the scene looking for nothing more than to try something new.

“We made a conscious decision to kind of be a little heavier and harder,” Jenkins said.

But even with a conscious decision, they still have a hard time grouping their music into any sort of a genre. When asked to describe their music, all three looked blankly at one another, shifting in their seats as they searched for an accurate description.

“Indie,” someone throws out.

“Hard rock? Hard indie rock?”

Nothing concrete.

“I think I even said indie jock rock once,” Jenkins said, slightly embarrassed by his off-base characterization.

“We always stutter and stammer through that one,” Keeling explained.

But forget labels, the guys said. They still know what they like to play, even if they can’t define it.

“I like something edgier and noisier as long as I don’t get arthritis because of it,” Alesio said, referencing the band’s increasing average age.

The three men, who artfully dodged giving specifics of their thirtysomething ages, seem to be a beacon of sustainability in a flurry of young, fledgling bands. The three have had their hands in multiple Lincoln acts, some dating back to the late ’80s like The Returns.

“We’re kind of the exception to the rule,” Keeling said of the band’s success with a younger generation. “But we’re not playing old guy music.”

No, they definitely are not.

The band, which released its last full length album, “ The H is O,” in 2005, is regarded as one of Lincoln’s favorite acts, connecting especially with the college-age group.

The raucous, yet melodic tunes are anything but alienating to young ears, and the group has developed quite a following from playing in Lincoln and Omaha venues.

In the next few weeks, Ideal Cleaners will be playing at newer venues, including the reopened Chatterbox (now called Box Awesome) and One Percent Productions’ The Waiting Room.

Reaching a different and newer crowd couldn’t have come at a better time for Ideal Cleaners, which is finishing up recording its new album “Muchacho.”

No date is set for the release, but the guys said it’s in the near future.

“We work really slow,” Keeling said. “It takes us a really long time, and right at the end we set an arbitrary deadline and get it done.”

But the group has time, and it doesn’t look like they’ll be stopping anytime soon.

“There’s no reason for us to stop, we’re family,” Jenkins half-way joked. “We’re going to be doing this until at least 2015.”

“To be 60 and doing this, it’d be a pretty good gimmick,” Keeling re-plied.

“Yeah, but it’s still a gimmick,” Jenkins said.

Reach Liz Stinson at 473-7254 or at estinson@journalstar.com.