Outside Michael Lipton’s East End house, a cold rain is coming down in a steady pour. Inside, Lipton fiddles with the gas heater as his two black dogs, Spike and Winston, wander in and out of his curiosity shop of a living room. They wag their tails and find places to lie down.

“Everybody else ought to be here in a little while,” he says.

Everybody else is vocalist Charlie Tee, bass player Ted Harrison and drummer Jupie Little. Together they make up the Carpenter Ants, one of the mainstay bands of the Charleston music scene.

The band celebrates the release of an advance pressing of their new CD, “Ants In Your Pants,” at the Vandalia Lounge at 9 p.m. Friday, Nov. 4.

The rest of the band shows up, shaking off water and complaining about the cold. Harrison pulls up a chair next to Lipton and quietly plugs in his bass. Charlie Tee and Little sit down on Lipton’s weathered, dog-wallowed couch. Clustered around the clutter, they tell a quick version of where the band came from.

The Carpenter Ants began with Lipton and evolved from a duo he was a part of almost 20 years ago. “We were playing a lot of open mic nights at a place in Saint Albans,” he says. “Jupie and Ted are from Saint Albans and just sort of started stopping by.”

Charlie Tee joined in 12 years ago. “We’ve lasted longer than a good many marriages,” Little says, laughing.

They’ve grown a following over the years and played far and wide, including an unlikely set of shows in Russia.

“It didn’t start that way,” says Harrison.

“There were plenty of nights when we played for, let us say, an intimate crowd,” Lipton adds, cracking a smile.

“Two or two thousand,” Charlie Tee replies. “Don’t make a difference to me.”

Shows with just two in the crowd are less common nowadays. They’re the regular Wednesday night attraction at the Empty Glass and are an integral part of the after-”Mountain Stage” show jams Sunday night at the Charleston club.

Lipton, of course, has a day job playing guitar with the “Mountain Stage” house band. “Well, yeah, that’s helped,” he admits begrudgingly, then instantly counters. “Not that it’s really done us any good.”

The Carpenter Ants style is something difficult to pigeonhole. It is virtually everything but the kitchen sink: rhythm and blues, gospel, country, rockabilly, folk-rock and more.

“Well, about a quarter of what we do is original,” Lipton says, “and the rest isn’t. We’re not all blues, not all R&B, not all gospel. We play a lot of older songs. I like to think we dredge up things that are interesting.”

Lipton is a scavenger and collector of odd things. Religious knick-knacks and paintings share space with a Liberace poster, old trombones, and a pawnshop full of guitars. Obscure CDs and musical gear are scattered around the place and mixed in with magazines, a remote control, and a Supertramp album on eight-track.

Charlie Tee trips over a mysterious cord, catches himself then makes a joke about the clutter. "Local man dies at band rehearsal," he announces, chuckling.

"Let's do that religious song," Charlie Tee says.

Sitting around, the band runs through a song called "Pray On." This is one of Lipton's finds, a song about the cost of salvation. He found it in plain sight: a song nobody else was using anymore.

"It was actually written by a minister who used to live across the street. Reverend Blackman. He's passed on," he explains. "The spirit of the song is pretty amazing, whether you go for it word for word or not."

The Carpenter Ants don't always take themselves seriously. The antics of Jupie and Charlie Tee are part of the act, but spirituality plays a part of what the band is about. Their own personal beliefs are interwoven within the lyrics of their songs. Charlie Tee, for instance, is a practicing Muslim, which is mentioned in passing in the Ants song "Charlie Tee From NYC."

"Well, I'd say that we have different levels of belief," Lipton says and everyone in the room nods. "We have different religious backgrounds, but we're all spiritual people."

That may come as something of a surprise to those who remember Lipton as a writer and editor of the formerly independent alternative newspaper Graffiti. Lipton's editorials and responses to letters to the editor occasionally took a scorched earth policy toward those he disagreed with.

Lipton says that the band came to the spirituals by way of the music and not necessarily because of the message.

"It's rhythm and blues," he says. "The kind of music, the kind of rhythm and blues that I want to play only exists in old songs, in the old spirituals. The new stuff has very little to do with that sound."

The Carpenter Ants are never going to be mistaken for a slick, contemporary Christian group. Bands that play bars don't tend to end up opening for Bill Gaither or going on tour with Michael W. Smith. Along with songs about having a "Picnic with the Lord," they also have the sly and suggestive "Sausage Song," which isn't exactly about breakfast.

The new CD is produced by Don Dixon, who produced the Smithereens and R.E.M.. Still, the band is somewhat guarded about their chances for ending up stars this late in the game.

"Hitting it big would be great," Little says brightly.

Harrison tunes his bass, while Lipton shakes his head and frowns.

"We're past the desire and ability to be giant rock stars," he says. "You know, the economics for playing music are so abysmal. But that said -- once you do it it's hard to stop."

Charlie Tee just smiles and says, "To me, it's about playing music with people I really care about."

"I think we can all agree with that," Harrison says.

E-mail Bill Lynch at primalscreamx@yahoo.com.