Erick Macek is a sporty dude. He’s the kind of guy you want to call by his last name, even when you barely know him.

Like, “Macek, yo, what’s up, dude?”

Or, “Yo, Macek, where the BBQ at?”

“It’s like a sports thing. I’ve been going by my last name almost all my life,” he says with a chuckle. “Even my mom calls me Macek sometimes like a joke.”

Fittingly, Macek’s music is sporty, too. The 25-year-old cooks up the kind of summery acoustic jams you might expect to hear blasting from the lifeguard tower at the local pool. It’s music to grill burgers to, a jammy, folky, Jack Johnson-y joint party that makes your neck do that funky chicken thing.

His foray into music began five or six years ago when, as a sporty college student, Macek was inspired by an embarrassingly predictable source, as far as sporty college music goes. “I don’t totally want to admit to it, but the whole Dave Matthews thing – he was a big influence of mine way early on,” he says with a guilty smirk. “Just seeing him play guitar, I pretty much was just like, ‘Oh, I gotta be like Dave Matthews.’”

His earliest demos (available at www.myspace.com/macek) have DMB’s fingerprints all over them. But over time, Macek learned to embrace a wider variety of influences – from forefathers like Paul Simon to young bucks like Jason Mraz – and adopted an approach that focuses more on the finer points of songwriting and less on the art of “creating a vibe.”

“Everything I hear and everything I listen to influences me. I mean, to a certain degree, you can say that Wu-Tang is an influence,” he jokes. “A lot of people say, when they see me live, ‘I hear John Mayer.’ And that’s fine.

“The thing that makes me feel good is when people can relate to the songwriting. The way that I write songs, a lot of the tunes are melodic-heavy. You catch that riff, and it kind of gets in your head,” he adds. “I want people to really grasp what I’m talking about and make their own story out of it. Everything I write about is part of my life that I’m willing to share with everybody. And people a lot of times come up to me and have been able to relate to something.”

Macek is currently putting the finishing touches on his next batch of songs at Nico Recording Company in Lancaster, home to such venerable mainstays as Altercana and Slimfit. The forthcoming album, which will be released sometime this month and celebrated officially at a CD release party in August, will show a more complex side of Macek’s songwriting, while at the same time will maintain the upbeat pool-party vibe that makes his music charming.

“The new stuff in general is a lot more mature. I think a lot of it just comes with age. It taps into a deeper side of myself,” he explains. “I’m experimenting with different sounds, and the musicians I have on here all have different vibes, and it’s great. To piece it together, it’s like one huge piece of artwork.”

While Macek’s been enjoying a modest following throughout the region over the past few years, he’ll soon be packing his bags and heading off to California to build a new life. And yes, he’s aware that it sounds like a cliché: “Young singer-songwriter heads to Hollywood in hopes for a shot at the big-time.”

But still, sometimes you just need a fresh start. “I’m trying not to be that kid that’s going out there with stars in his eyes, even though you can always get suckered into that. I’m not going there with a tip jar and saying, ‘Yo, I play music! Hire me!’” Macek says. “I sure as hell don’t have any money to head out there with, so it’s definitely a big risk to me.”

I guess you never know unless you try.