It’s a Friday afternoon in New Orleans and Jeff Raines is taking it easy. Well, kind of. He’s playing with some musicians that night somewhere downtown, but compared to earlier that week, things are pretty tame. You see, Raines is only two days removed from Ash Wednesday – three days from Mardi Gras – and given that he plays guitar in Galactic, one of the city’s most hard-charging bands, it’s OK that he’s taking a little down time.

But there is no vacation on the horizon for Raines and his band. Within a week, Raines and the four other members of Galactic will be back on the bus for a month-long tour, doing what they’ve been doing for nearly 20 years – playing some of the funkiest instrumental jams in the business while also accompanying an eclectic array of performers, from rappers to soul legends. Then this summer, like most summers before in the band’s history, the group hits the festival circuit, where Galactic’s distinctively New Orleans roots mix well with the party atmosphere found at such mass gatherings.

Of all the things Tim Bluhm could be excited about, beer doesn’t seem like it would be at the top of the Mother Hips front man’s list. But on a Monday afternoon amidst discussion of the rootsy rock band’s 20th anniversary, a forthcoming box set and a new studio record, he spends some time chatting about brewing.

The following day, Bluhm would be heading from his home in the Bay Area to Chico, the California college town where the Mother Hips originated, to visit Sierra Nevada Brewing Company. This is huge for Bluhm, a self-admitted beer fan, because the brewery is making a special beer for the band’s upcoming Family HipNic music festival in Big Sur.

There’s nothing really Portland about Anita Robinson’s voice, at least the one she uses over the phone. She speaks in a soothing drawl that’s far more country rock than indie rock and reflects her younger days growing up in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. But if you put on a Viva Voce record, there’s not much Southern influence to be heard – rather, the band’s sound is a blistering combination of psychedelic rock coupled with a wide range of high-powered tones that sometimes wander into a folky realm.

While the Robinson’s have found plenty of allies in the Portland music community, including Loch Lomond, with whom they’ll share the Tower Theatre stage, along with Damien Jurado, on Monday night, Anita Robinson acknowledges that they’re unique in their region of origin. And when they’re on tour, they can still identify with the Southern culture.

Tim Coffey has been writing music for the past two years and now is preparing to release his first full-length record. This story sounds similar to that of other local musicians, but here’s where Coffey’s background strays – he’s 55 years old.

Also, it’s worth noting that he’s not new to the world of music, it’s just the songwriting angle that’s somewhat recently become a part of his life. Coffey, you see, spent 20 years as a professional musician, touring the country with an array of bands, playing an array of styles. Most were cover bands, some were lounge bands, and some – he admits – weren’t all that good.

“It was all cover stuff. There were a few originals, but it was pretty standard bar music for the most part,” says Coffey.

By the time he was 36, Coffey had for the most part placed his musical aspirations on the backburner. He ended up moving to Holland for two years, but never really caught on with the live music scene there and returned to Oregon where he became the general manager of a pair of spas. About eight years ago, he relocated to Bend, a place that had been on his mind since he was 19 years old when he came to town with a touring band called Nancy Day and Nancy Night.

“They were bad people, but I learned a lot over those six months,” says Coffey of the experience.”

 

“I get bored so easy. That’s really my blessing and my curse,” says Tom Shimura, the man better known as Lyrics Born, the stage name he’s been using for about two decades now.

It’s his insatiable boredom, Shimura says, that has led him to reinvent himself as a musician not just between albums but on a song-to-song basis. While most know him as one of the leading rappers in the Bay Area hip-hop scene, when he comes to WinterFest on Saturday night, the set he and his band kick out will be far from straight-ahead rap music. That’s because on his latest record, As U Were, Lyrics Born has shifted gears – once again – this time molding his sound into an electro-rock funk machine.