Luke Short, the mind behind Egg Plant, is too laid back of a person to really make much of a thing about his Tacoma homecoming. It's been four years since I've written about Egg Plant, as the band had made its home in Portland shortly before then. While Short had made Tacoma his home, he went south to complete his music project. Also, in 2010, I interviewed The Thermals. Both bands are performing in Tacoma this weekend, four years since last we contacted, but Egg Plant's show carries with it a connection that The Thermals does not, regardless of their merit as a band.

Tacoma is a nurturing womb for bands, it seems. Leave, and you're out in the wild - making it, in the case of some of our countrymen who've found themselves in Brooklyn. If you stay, it's not uncommon to rise so quickly to the top of the crop that leaving seems insane. To return is a momentous occasion, and it's one to be celebrated, even if your new home is just one state away.

"It's been so long and I'm really looking forward to it," says Short. "It seems nuts to me (to be gone for so long). I've been wanting to come back for a while, but my other projects have kept me busy on weekends. ... I don't want to book any (Egg Plant) weekend shows, because the Boy and Bean shows pay my rent. I can't afford to not do some of these things. I can't do very many Egg Plant shows."

For those unaffiliated with Short's Tacoma tenure, he has been primarily involved with two bands: Boy and Bean, his '20s and '30s indebted collaboration with his wife, Amber Short; and Egg Plant, which leans more in the direction of the oddball folkies of the '60s, like John Prine and Arlo Guthrie. Boy and Bean is a band made up entirely of covers of old crooner songs, and is clearly, then, able to find itself in a place where it's a more marketable entity.

"Well, I write the songs in Egg Plant," says Short. "I really like what I get out of Boy and Bean, too, just finding old songs that I want to rework with Amber and Andrew Jones. A lot of the time, the songs aren't ones you hear very often. ... Doing my own stuff, it's certainly a lot more pressure."

While the differences between Boy and Bean and Egg Plant are fine, there's something to be said about the fundamental difference between re-creation and homage. These two bands approach different eras, to be sure, but to cover another band is a far cry from writing in the voice of a genre. Boy and Bean can cover Rudy Valli all they want, and the aesthetic will effortlessly carry over. For Egg Plant to perform the sort of line-walking folk-psychedelia of the mid-'60s is another thing entirely. That Egg Plant ends up being successful in these efforts is notable. Meanwhile, Boy and Bean nail the simple beauty of the rise of popular music.

Egg Plant, to this day, has only one release. They are in the works of releasing something soon (Tyson Griffin, who will also be performing at this show, is working on mixing the album), but there's never any guarantees in the music scene. What I can tell you is that Friday is a homecoming. Get out your dancing shoes and come see some old friends. If you have no idea about the people I've been talking about, then Friday is your chance to learn. We can time travel together.

EGG PLANT, w/ Boy and Bean, People Under the Sun, Tyson Griffin, 9 p.m., Friday, June 20, The New Frontier Lounge, 301 E. 25th St., Tacoma, cover tba, 253.572.4020