Like the NFL’s 1972 Miami Dolphins and the NCAA’s 1976 Indiana Hoosiers, the Vermont musical quartet Woods Tea Company has a perfect record.

“There isn’t an audience yet that we haven’t been able to crack,” says the band’s vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Howard Wooden.

Formed in 1981 by Bruce Morgan and Rusty Jacobs, the Woods Tea Company – currently composed of Wooden and fellow vocalists/multi-instrumentalists Mike Lussen, Tom MacKenzie and Patti Casey – use original music along with takes on Irish classics, bluegrass ditties, folk songs and sea shanties to win over audiences. Between songs, the quartet makes sure to get the crowd in on the act. “We are very audience-oriented,” Wooden says. “It’s a very informal dialogue we have with the audience as the night goes on.”

The band’s arsenal includes versions of numbers like the comic pub story song “The Old Dun Cow” and “Where Am I To Go,” which features vocals as rich and layered as a slab of Black Forest cake. On “Glencoe Schottische,” the metal pings of a dulcimer dance with the woody bellows of a flute.

The traditional songs that Woods Tea Company chooses must achieve one of two goals. “The songs themselves have to engage the audience in some way or tell a story,” Wooden says.

But he also notes that the Woods Tea Company does original songs influenced by traditional music genres. MacKenzie’s “Silver Caravan” is an ode to Airstream trailers over music inspired by vaudeville. Casey’s “Down From Canada” is an acoustic folk song about fleeing our northern neighbor on horseback, in which the songwriter’s clogging resembles the sounds of the narrator’s horse hooves hitting the trail.

Before joining Woods Tea Company, Casey had played with Vermont’s Bluegrass Gospel Project for seven years and been one of 10 finalists at the 2007 Telluride Bluegrass Festival’s Telluride Troubadour Contest. She has also won the Kerrville Folk Festival’s New Folk songwriter’s competition and has appeared on NPR’s A Prairie Home Companion.

Wooden says that Woods Tea Company is currently working on a new CD, which should be out by the end of the year. In addition, the band plans to release a limited-edition run of a new Woods Tea Company holiday CD.

Having toured for nearing three decades, the Woods Tea Company has performed at New York City’s Lincoln Center twice and done three shows at New York State’s Chautauqua Institution. Doing from 100 to 120 shows annually, the folk quartet has traveled to all 48 lower states for performances. “It really was just time,” Wooden says. “It was not intentional.”

With the upcoming semi-retirement of Lussen, the Woods Tea Company might finally make it to Hawaii and Alaska. Wooden reveals why. He says: “Michael doesn’t like to fly.”

WOODS TEA COMPANY play 7:30pm Friday, Oct. 23, at CSUMB’s World Theater, 100 Campus Center, Building 28, Seaside.

$40/gold circle; $30/general public; $25/seniors and military w/ ID; $20/CSUMB faculty, staff and alumni; $15/non-CSUMB students w/ ID and children 13-17; $10/CSUMB students and children under 12. 582-4580. A prix fixe All-American Yankee menu for $19.95 will be offered before the show at the adjacent Otter Bay Restaurant. Dinner reservation can be made at 582-4580.