It’s not like Eufórquestra needed another reason to head back to Central Oregon. The Colorado funksters have been fans of the area since their first visit, in 2011.

Add in a chance to help people and raise money for a good cause, and Eufórquestra couldn’t say no. The six-piece band will return — this time at DiamondStone Guest Lodges in La Pine — to headline the Main Stage on Saturday at the fourth annual Newberry Event Music and Arts Festival to Defeat MS. As the name suggests, the festival raises awareness of multiple sclerosis — a disease that disrupts the nervous system’s ability to communicate — as well as funds for the Oregon chapter of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society.

“It just sounded like a really great reason to come out to Oregon and play music,” Tallman said. “It seems like a great event with the charitable side of it, and it’s also an excuse for us to travel out to a beautiful spot in Oregon and do what we do. It seemed like a slam dunk when they called us.”

Last year’s festival raised close to $3,000, according to festival co-organizer Gloria Watt. Watt, who was diagnosed with MS at age 24, started the festival with her husband Doug Watt at DiamondStone, which the couple opened 25 years ago.

“When life gives you lemons, make lemonade, and that’s what this Newberry Event kind of is,” Gloria said. “You got something bad, and you try to turn it into something good.”

The Watts are once again aiming to raise at least $10,000 this year. And new research — including a drug called ocrelizumab that earlier this year received a Breakthrough Therapy designation by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for treating primary-progressive MS, according to the National MS Society — has Gloria excited and hopeful for the future of MS care.

“There’s a ton of drugs that treat the early form of multiple sclerosis, which is relapsing, remitting, where you get a symptom or an exacerbation and it causes malfunction and then it goes away, because your brain is amazing and the human body is a miraculous, self-healing body,” Gloria said. “… And oftentimes it leaves a remnant, and so over time you get eventually worse. But finally there’s a drug now that allows you to heal those damaged nerves and possibly get better.”

This year’s Newberry Event runs today through Sunday and features a younger, hipper slate of bands than in past years, with Andy Frasco & The U.N., Joseph Israel and The Jeruselum Band, Zahira, Lil Smokies, Yak Attack and New Breed Brass Band among the more than 25 acts slated to perform on three stages throughout the weekend.

Eufórquestra (a portmanteau of “euphoria” and “orchestra”) fits the modern bill with its mix of soul, rhythm and blues, reggae and Afrobeat influences. Since forming in 2003 in Iowa City, the band has become a touring force throughout the Midwest, especially on the summer festival circuit. Most of the band’s schedule at the moment consists of festival dates, including the Newberry Event (the band’s lone Pacific Northwest show).

The band even has its own festival, Camp Euforia in Lone Tree, Iowa, which it has curated for the last 14 years. This year’s festival, held last week, included Motet, Sam Bush, The Travelin’ McCourys and That 1 Guy.

“Summertime is great for that kind of thing,” Tallman said. “… Festival season is cool because you end up bumping into a lot of your friends that you don’t see. Friends that are also touring musicians, when you see them at a festival it’s great because you don’t cross paths that much when you’re both on your own touring circuits and things.”

With its liberal show-taping policy and extended funk freak-outs, the band often gets lumped in with the jam band scene. But on last year’s “Fire,” the band’s first studio album in five years and first with keyboardist and primary songwriter Matt Wright, the arrangements are tighter, with the longest song only breaching the six-minute mark.

“When (Wright) joined the band, once he got warmed up to how we worked, he kind of took off as a leading songwriter for us,” Tallman said. “So some of the change in the ‘Fire’ album is just due to the fact that the band is playing Matt Wright’s music and using that as a driving force.”

Producer Kyle Hollingsworth, best known as keyboardist for The String Cheese Incident, also helped shape the songs. A longtime friend of the band, Hollingsworth created a comfortable atmosphere for the band to work in, Tallman said.

“He had just gotten out of sessions with The String Cheese Incident where they were working with Jerry Harrison of The Talking Heads as a producer,” Tallman said. “So he had just come off of something that was really inspirational for him — he’s a die-hard Talking Heads fan. … He tried to channel some of that for us as well.”

The band continues to bash out new material live and in the studio. Its most recent release, the single “That Woman,” is a collaboration with Soulive drummer Alan Evans that grew out of his “Free Funk Fridays” social media challenge.

“Basically on Friday mornings he would get up and go into his little studio and record a drumbeat and then post it online, and he asked people to do something with it,” Tallman said. “… Matt Wright, our keyboard player, wrote a whole song over it — verses and choruses and things. And we kind of took our time with it. I was acquiring some studio gear last year, some vintage analog equipment, and once that tune was done and written we started recording it. We put Alan’s original drum track into my tape machine and then overdubbed all of our individual parts there, so it’s got a super vintage-y, old-school sound.”