The People Upstairs: Casey Buckley, Gabe Rangel, Chris Prestia, Jose "Weasel" Rangel, Tony Rangel

The name of The People Upstairs’ second album is not just some attempt to pay tribute to one of the United States’ greatest presidents.

Calling the LP For the People By the People is about as apt a description of this particular album-making process as you can get.

Five years after they released Synchrofunkinicity through Hoot Recordings, a record label started at Florida Atlantic University, the group decided to take over the recording process fully.

“In these times, it’s great that you can get a record made by doing it this way,” said lead singer Casey Buckley.

The group is celebrating For the People By the People’s release Friday with a show at Lake Worth’s Bamboo Room.

Though the group has built one of the most fervent fanbases in the area, The People Upstairs have recorded very few of their songs since Synchrofunkinicity came out.

“We hadn’t recorded in five years, except in small doses,” Buckley said. “But these are songs we’ve been playing for live audiences.”

Starting last fall, the group – Buckley, drummer Gabe Rangel, bassist Tony Rangel and guitarist Chris Prestia (A fifth member, Jose “Weasel” Rangel, is considered “on leave” from the band, Buckely said.) – began kicking around the idea of recording an EP. But it was only once they were able to nail down the right studio – West Palm’s Saturn Sound Studios – that the group was truly able to get their project underway.

“Once we got in contact with Rob (Norris, managing partner at Saturn), he offered us this studio, which is where we did our first demo about 10 years ago,” Buckley said. “They’ve taken good care of us, and this is becoming their flagship CD.”

For the People By the People does have the reggae-influenced sound the group first became noticed for, but this album mixes a lot of flavors in with that. For example, the song My Friend has much more in common with the Latin style of Santana than the reggae style of Bob Marley – one could almost see a couple tango to that kind of beat.

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Other songs like Cruise Control and the album’s lead-off track Gondola jump right into pure funk territory behind the basslines Tony Rangel lays down.

“This is the stuff we play every weekend, so this album’s for our fans, but it’s also for people seeing us for the first time,” Buckley said. “For example, a song like My Friend, when we play it live, we see a lot of our fans who are signing along to every word, and we’ve never laid it down until now.”

Part of the reason the group retains a solid sound while adding new ideas to the mix is that the members have all known each other for a long time. They all had taken part in marching band in high school at Atlantic High in Delray Beach – in fact, the band still uses some of Buckley’s drumline cadences.

“(Casey and I) both played drums and it felt natural to work together in a band,” said Gabe Rangel.

And having it all come down to a date at the Bamboo Room is a real dream come true for The People Upstairs.

“The Bamboo Room has always been one of the coolest venues around – I always thought it’d be a great place for us to play,” Buckley said. “So I was dumbfounded when I got the call that we’d be playing there.”

If you go:

THE PEOPLE UPSTAIRS: 9 p.m., Friday, Bamboo Room, 25 S. J St., Lake Worth. Information: (561) 585-2583