Progressive band Primus rocks on with second leg of tour.(Knight Ridder Newspapers)

Byline: Timothy Finn

Les Claypool laughs like a nervous schoolgirl.

It's a sincere laugh, but it sounds funny when it erupts in the middle of a conversation. Claypool is a thoughtful guy who talks in colorful but organized sentences _ complete paragraphs sometimes _ that have beginnings, middles and conclusions (or great punch lines).

But when something amuses him, especially something he himself has said, he issues a burst of yelps or giddy chuckles, as if someone just poured ice down his shirt or goosed him with cold hands.

Lately Claypool has had plenty to laugh about. As usual, he's involved in more projects than he has fingers to twiddle: Les Claypool's Fearless Flying Frog Brigade, Oysterhead, Col. Claypool's Bucket of Bernie's Brains, plus the occasional collaboration with guitarist Buckethead. And to fill the few spare moments he might squeeze out of an average seven-day workweek, he recently started up yet another project with guitarist Adrian Belew and Tool's drummer Danny Carrie.

Once, long ago, this busy father of two wrote a lyric that went: "Funny thing about weekends when you're unemployed/They don't mean quite so much." As if he'd know about days off or joblessness.

"I tend to pile a lot of ...