Quasar Wut-WutSubmitted photo

Friday night at Bend’s Volcanic Theatre Pub, the Chicago band Quasar Wut-Wut — together since forming in 1990 as high school friends near Detroit — will play the second show of its first-ever tour of the West Coast (and second tour, period) after nearly a quarter-century of gigging around its hometowns.

So what prompted this westward jaunt? Are they building on radio success in San Francisco? Cashing in a surplus of airline miles? Simply indulging a sense of adventure?

“No, none of that,” said Matt Schwarz, primary songwriter in this fiercely democratic quartet. “Any of that would’ve made sense.”

In fact, Quasar Wut-Wut is out west because, well, it just felt like it was finally time, Schwarz said. The band will release its fourth full-length album later this summer, and is currently putting out a DVD featuring Buster Keaton’s silent-film classic, “The General,” soundtracked with Quasar Wut-Wut’s original score, penned in 2006 on commission from Northwestern University.

“I was sitting there one day thinking, like, I don’t know why we’ve never done this. And it dawned on me: All it takes is sitting down and doing it,” Schwarz said. “We should’ve done this in our mid-20s. Doing it now doesn’t really make sense.”

Maybe so. But they’re doing it. Schwarz and his fellow band founders, Brent Sulek and Jordan Frank, plus percussionist Tom Giers, who joined a couple years ago, flew to Portland, borrowed gear from friends and family in the area and are kicking off their tour tonight with a Quasar Wut-Wut rock show, featuring the band’s original, off-kilter art-pop tunes. Friday night in Bend, they’ll perform “The General” live as the film plays on a screen for the first time since shortly after they composed and recorded it (see “If you go”).

“The General” is a continuous, 76-minute piece of music composed to match what’s happening in the 1926 film, in which Keaton must rescue his love interest and his beloved train, which has been hijacked by his enemies. The film, which entered the public domain in 1956, is an old favorite of Schwarz and Frank, both film students in college.

“It’s a marathon, man. It’s a beast,” Schwarz said. “Once the movie starts, we take off running and there’s no stopping. There are … little sections of improvisation, but for the most part it’s right on cue with what’s going on on the screen.”

When Schwarz began trying to book Quasar Wut-Wut’s western run, he initially planned only rock shows. But when venue operators got wind of “The General,” they began asking for that show instead, or both. The band hadn’t played “The General” live since 2006, but started practicing the piece.

All of this — the tour, the DVD, the new album (a nifty set of songs called “Digesting Mirror”) — is providing a spark for Quasar Wut-Wut, and at this point, the band’s members are old enough to enjoy the ride and appreciate the interest.

“When there’s money coming in you can usually stretch it out for a few years. But we’ve been under the radar for a long-ass time,” Schwarz said. “When I used to talk about the band I wouldn’t mention (our ages) at all, even a couple years ago. I was kind of embarrassed, like, ‘Man, we’re not young. Our music doesn’t sound old, but we’re getting older.’ And then I started thinking, well, you need to have some kind of human story that people can attach to.

“I guess we’re the story,” he said. “That we’ve actually been able to keep it going for some reason. It’s cool.”

— Reporter: 541-383-0377, bsalmon@bendbulletin.com