Fifteen years ago, a handful of local guys with a love of American roots and rock music, playing together just for fun, formed the band Corndaddy. Since then they’ve been steadily honing their craft, to the point where they will play their first headlining show at The Ark Friday night.

Corndaddy has just released its third full-length album, "Heart of the Matter," which they helped finance by raising $3,551 via the crowdfunding Web site Kickstarter.

“I like to say Corndaddy endures,” said rhythm guitarist/vocalist Jud Branam. “We just keep going. What else are we going to do?

“Over time we finally learned to play our instruments,” he quipped.

Besides Branam, Corndaddy is Kevin Brown (lead guitar, mandolin, harmonica, vocals), Jerry Hancock (bass) and Hugh Huntley (drums).

“What’s nice about Corndaddy, what I like about the place that we are, is that you can call it everything,” Branam said. “It used to be called college rock back in the early ’80s when you had the Beat Farmers and Green on Red, the Del Fuegos, REM … then a few years ago it became alt-country and you had Uncle Tupelo and The Jayhawks and a lot of those groups that were awesome and that we loved … then it morphed into being called Americana, and there’s a whole crop of those bands.

“But it all comes from the same place; we refer to ourselves more as country rock out of the Byrds and the late ’60s. We were young in the late ’60s and that’s the musical well we like to draw on. Country rock never goes away,” Branam added.

Although this is Corndaddy’s first time headlining The Ark, the band has played there for numerous songwriting festivals, tributes and benefit shows. Special guests at the show will include Jim Roll, who played banjo on the new CD, and saxophone player Daniel Bennett, who also appears on the disc. Paul Lippens will play mandolin, Kevin Devine will play accordion, and Will Stewart—a founding member of the band—will be there to sing on the album’s title cut, which he co-wrote.

“We’ll play the new record and highlight some of the songs from the other records as well,” Branam said, adding that the new album of originals is “an expansion for us, with the horn parts and some Hammond organ on it. It’s almost got a more Memphis soul vibe to it and it’s more of a rock record.”

One style of music that’s noticeably absent, he said, is country.

“That’s one thing that’s interesting about this record,” Branam said. “There’s bluegrass, an Everly Brothers waltz type of a duet tune and some rock songs and different things.

“This time it kind of went to the rock side of the fence.”