Jeremy Bloom and Connell Thompson of the band Tipsy Oxcart have a surprising favorite venue.

"We play a lot in subways as part of a program to bring music into the subways," says Bloom. "It can be chaotic, but there's no performance that I enjoy more. It's the biggest, most diverse audience you could ever find. ... And no matter where we play we try to eliminate that boundary between the band and the audience. My least favorite place to play is a concert hall."

Appropriately, there's a party feeling to Tipsy Oxcart's music — but a party that might be happening in Macedonia or Turkey or Bulgaria. The quintet combines traditional Balkan folk music with rock and jazz. Bloom, who plays accordion with the group, says that even growing up in a cultural melting pot like New York, Balkan music wasn't something he just ran across. He first heard the music while he was an exchange student in Turkey and fell in love with it.

When he moved back to New York City he began seeking out other fans of Turkish music and discovered a small but healthy community of enthusiasts.

"I was at a house warming party with friends and Connell (who plays clarinet and saxophone) was the only other person my age there. It turned out that he had just gotten into the music as well."

"I grew up in New Hampshire," says Thompson. "I started on saxophone and clarinet and when I went to college it was about jazz and a little bit about punk. And in my final semester a friend heard me playing clarinet and said, ‘You should check out this Bulgarian music!' When I heard that music, the clarinet player is like a rock star — shredding and really cool. So I said, ‘I'm gonna start doing that!' "

Unfortunately, after that chance meeting, Bloom had to return to college and Thompson lost his best-bet to play music with. A friend from the Balkan music community invited Thompson to jam with him and a young violinist named Maya Shanker.

"Immediately me and Maya could tell we were on the same wavelength," says Thompson. "We loved this traditional music, but wanted to incorporate other elements and make it more electric. So we started working and then we waited it out until Jeremy could join us."

Bloom graduated and joined Thompson and Shanker in New York.

"Then we found our bass player on the Missed Connections page of Craigslist," says Bloom. "We were riding the subway one day and there's a guy with a bass who caught our eye and we were able to reconnect with him through the power of the Internet."

"And through him we found a drummer," says Thompson.

Ayal Tsubery, bass, and Dani Danor, drums, both grew up in Israel and had never specifically heard Balkan music. However, the folk melodies of the area cross cultures from Eastern Europe down to Israel and even farther south.

"There were a lot of songs that they knew as pop melodies in Hebrew rather than as folk songs in Turkish or Macedonian or whatever," says Bloom.

The melody to the song "Homecoming." which Bloom knew as a Turkish folk song, Tsubery and Danor knew as the theme song from a 1990s Israeli sitcom.

"They knew it instantly," says Bloom. "There are all sorts of situations like that."

The band recently released its first album, "Upside Down," and has begun more extensive touring. The two say the band has a challenge finding just the right balance between traditional music and rock.

"I think we're always trying to bridge that divide," says Bloom. "Our hope is that we'll appeal as much to people who love Balkan music as to people who have never heard it. Hopefully, they'll catch on to the festive party atmosphere of what's going on. We always have people who've never heard this music before but really dig it and then we get people who are immigrants from the Balkans and start crying when they hear it. I don't think we'd be happy without having both sides of the equation."

Tipsy Oxcart

With: Plankeye Peggy

When: 10 p.m. Saturday, July 18

Where: Barley's Taproom & Pizzeria, 200 E. Jackson Ave.

Admission: free