Contemplative musicians command attention.

Byline: ELAINE BEEBE LAPRIORE The Register-Guard

Please be quiet while the musicians are playing. Please, for once, don't bellow over beer, whine over wine; just listen for a change.

That's the point of the Sunshine Plague tour, made up of a group of musicians who share a contemplative style.

"Everyone knows that rock acts fare best in club situations, and that audiences often talk through and/or over musicians who favor quietistic forms of expression," says Ben Goldberg of Ba Da Bing! Records, the New Jersey label behind the tour.

"The best way to counter such inattention is to offer an entire evening's program of introspective artists. Which is what we aim to do!"

"Introspective" doesn't mean boring or soporific; the acts on tour combine to form a multifaceted evening of music, the sort that you'll be glad you focused your attention on.

Please, meet the Sunshine Plague Tour:

Greg Weeks' album cover shows the auteur in geek-chic glasses and corduroy jacket, sprawled in snow with a bloody knife, cast as both murderer and victim. Thankfully, the music's atmosphere is less chilling.

On his second CD, "Awake Like Sleep" (Ba Da Bing!), Weeks makes much use of Moogs and Mellotrons, theramin and harmonium. The instrumentation is not unlike Quasi under sedation; the vocals most obviously compare to Nick Drake.

Nonloc, otherwise known as Mark Dwinnell, owes a different debt to Drake in his finger-picking guitar style, as well as to the equally late John Fahey. On hiatus from his psychedelic space-rock band, Bright, Dwinnell will debut his emotive, folky Nonloc material on this tour.

Of the four on this tour, Aroah provides perhaps the most immediately accessible music, inclusive in its intimacy.

The alter ego of Irene Rodriguez Tremblay, a 21-year-old American expatriate living in Spain, Aroah releases music on the Madrid boutique label Acuerela, but don't expect a Latin flair to her folk. Mary Lou Lord comparisons are not far afield, but Aroah has a lighter, defter touch in songs that are accusatory and confessional - and occasionally bilingual.

Timesbold, the final act, is a trio from Brooklyn that records for the cool Belgian label Zeal, something few in the Brooklyn musician glut can claim.

The band's music is at once eerie and distressed, slightly Appalachian on the recent EP "Woe Be Gone." At times, Jason Merritt's vocals have the same quaver as Will Oldham (of Palace projects fame), although he can work through it by applying force.

The Sunshine Plague tour stops at the ideal setting for its ideology, Sam Bond's Garage, at 9 p.m. Wednesday. The cover is $5.

CAPTION(S):

Gary Weeks, left, and Aroah, alias Irene Rodriguez Tremblay, are two of the "introspective" artists on the Sunshine Plague Tour, which makes a stop at Sam's Bond Garage on Wednesday. Sunshine Plague revue