“Hey, are you guys here to see the band?”

“We are the band.”

That’s how my night starts at The Horned Hand when five young guys drift up to the bar looking confused. Apparently, they are Animal Eyes. And, apparently, they are playing a show later.

These guys are inconspicuous, to say the least. Probably because they are all barely 21-years-old and were born and raised in Homer, Alaska.  They don’t look like the types who would rock the roof off a venue but somehow, in a town of about 5,000, they developed a unique brand of worldly folk rock that’s turning heads in Oregon.

“Pretty much no bands come there. I didn’t see one big show in Alaska,” explains Tyler Langham, one of two guitarists and one of three vocalists.

Without a lot of live music, the band was left to discover their own style. They will be bringing their passionate and unpretentious indie rock-and-roll to a second show at Silver Moon Brewing on Friday.

Peter Yarrow, Mary Travers and Noel Paul Stookey sang about "the hammer of justice," "the bell of freedom" and "the song about love between my brothers and my sisters, all over this land," many times as their version of Pete Seeger and Lee Hayes' "If I Had a Hammer" rose to number 10 on the Billboard national pop singles chart.

But one day was different.

This was not the trendy folk clubs of Greenwich Village or the friendly confines of a Northeast coffee shop.

The date was August 28, 1963, and the place was the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in a brimming mall on a balmy, 84-degree day in Washington, DC. where Dr. Martin Luther King was about to deliver one of the most stirring and famous speeches in history, “I Have a Dream.”

Before last week, I was not familiar with the term “Janxta Funk.”

After talking to Brian J, the front man of The Pimps of Joytime, however, I find it to be an aptly descriptive phrase that makes perfect sense, especially when used to describe the sound of this Brooklyn-based band.

First, some background. To understand Janxta Funk you need to have a basic understanding of the types of funk music out there. According to Brian J, there are two primary types of funk: the polished, crisp sound of bands like Kool and the Gang and the more raw sound exhibited by bands like Sly and Family Stone.

You also need to have a handle on the term, “janky,” a word used to describe something that's kinda half-put together, wrapped in duct tape and is always in danger of rattling apart. An amalgamation of janky and gangster, Janxta Funk is a term coined by Brian J to describe the vibe of his band, which has been churning out dance-worthy cuts.

Tony Smiley has always wanted to play rock music, but he doesn’t want to be in a band. He’s been there, done that and the rock band dynamic just isn’t for him. This would be the end of the line for most aspiring rock musicians. Time to clip on the Guitar Center nametag or start giving guitar lessons to Nirvana-loving junior high kids, right?

Smiley is indeed still playing rock music and he still doesn’t have a band. The 37-year-old Hood River-native now based outside of Vancouver, Wash., is making the best music of his career and he’s doing it all on his own with the help of a few loop pedals and an arsenal of instruments ranging from keyboards to drums. His appeal here in Central Oregon has boomed in the past year and he plays one of his most notable shows in the region on Thursday night at McMenamins Old St. Francis School. At this show – and all his shows, for that matter – Smiley is surrounded by a tangle of wires, guitars and, of course, effects pedals, and takes his audiences’ initial confusion and molds it into an all-out raging dance party when he sees fit.

There should be a law, or at least one of those don’t-wear-white-after-Labor-Day social dictums that prevents any human, no matter how merry he or she happens to be, from publicly playing Christmas music until…how about, December 15? Yeah, that sounds about right, giving those who love jingling and/or belling 10 full days of sugary music before the actual holiday.

The current acceptable practice is to begin pumping these glittery sounds through the speakers of stores, restaurants and car stereos about 15 minutes after Thanksgiving dinner has been completed. This is akin to playing “The Monster Mash” beginning in late September until the last mini-Snickers bar has been handed out.