Erin McKeown makes classic material her own.

At 28, guitarist Erin McKeown is part of a vanguard of new singer/songwriters who blissfully rummage through America’s musical closet, borrowing from jazz, folk, rock, blues and Tin Pan Alley. Raised in Fredericksburg, Va., she released her first album, 1998’s Monday Morning Cold, while still an undergraduate at Brown University, where she earned a degree in ethnomusicology. Her new self-produced CD, Sing You Sinners, is something of a left turn. Instead of her original songs, the album offers a canny tour through the back pages of the American songbook, from a slow and sassy version of Fats Waller’s “If You’re A Viper” to a hard-swinging rendition of the Anita O’Day vehicle “Thanks For the Boogie Ride.” The Weekly spoke with McKeown from her home in Northampton, Mass.