Tim Howe grew up in Bend, graduated from Summit High School and moved away in 2008.

His musical journey has been long, winding and productive since then. He met some fellow musicians in Portland and played around town a bit during college. Then he moved to North Carolina and formed a band called The Golden Country with his friend Rose Gerber.

Eventually, he moved back to Portland, where he joined a band called Cool American (now Cool Original) and immersed himself in the city’s thriving DIY scene.

“When I moved back, my entire identity and community became musicians,” he said. “My purpose for being here was music — playing shows every weekend, touring, putting shows together at my friends’ houses and in their backyards. That was really how I met all of the people that I still consider my friends.”

In recent years, Howe has made music collaboratively with his brother, Dylan, under the name The Great American Commute, and his old friend Nathan Tucker as First Rodeo. And in the mid-2000s, he started his own project, Vista House, as a vehicle for his songs that didn’t quite fit in anywhere else.

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He has plenty of those. Vista House’s Bandcamp page — at vistahouse.bandcamp.com — features nine releases, each jam-packed with tuneful, twangy songs that live somewhere near the indistinct intersection of alt-country and indie rock, a la early Wilco or perhaps Neil Young at his least cantankerous. “Dad Rock sans Child,” reads the description right under the band name.

“Dad rock” is a term that can be used pejoratively, certainly. But Howe embraces it.

“My college friends had this huge breadth of knowledge of cool music that I just didn’t have growing up. I was a classic rock, 98.3 The Twins guy, you know?” he said. “Me and my parents would listen to Jimmy Buffet cleaning the house every weekend, and I loved it. I loved that music. I still do.”

He continued: “For a while, I was really posing, trying my best to (pretend) that I knew all about, I don’t know, ‘90s Midwest emo or slacker rock or whatever. But really, I was just scrambling, trying to figure it all out, and deep down inside of me, ‘Rock You Like A Hurricane’ by the Scorpions was in my DNA in a way that those other songs were not.”

Howe attributes that to growing up not in a hip big city, but in Bend, where he participated in the Americana Project songwriting class in high school and played in a folk duo called the Flying Knives, but never dove deep into any sort of scene. In part because there really was no scene to dive into.

“I think my upbringing was as much about the kinds of music I wasn’t exposed to as it was about the kinds of music I was exposed to. I basically had to develop those interests and my taste in music in a different part of my life,” he said. “I’m grateful for that as well, because finding a scene when I was older and had more of my neurons connected has allowed me to have those moments of wonder and joy that are often reserved for 16 year olds.”

You can hear that wonder and joy surface in Vista House’s music, particularly on Howe’s latest album “They’ll See Light,” released last fall on two excellent small labels: Bud Tapes in Portland and Anything Bagel in Missoula, Montana. Recorded at The Unknown studio in Anacortes, Washington, it’s an 11-song cycle about seeking (and finding) clarity about yourself, your relationships and your life both past and present, all set to a modern take on country-rock that recalls the work of the late Jason Molina, or more contemporarily, current alt-country buzz dude MJ Lenderman.

“They’ll See Light” also captures Vista House very much in a specific time and space and circumstance — which was the goal, Howe said.

“I wanted it to feel like a weekend with my friends, and I think it does feel that way,” he said. “It’s the piece of music I’m most proud of so far, because I think it best encapsulates the moment we were in.”

If You Go

What: Vista House, with Amargoso and Jackrat

When: 7 p.m. Friday, Jan. 31

Where: Silver Moon Brewing, 24 NW Greenwood Ave., Bend

Cost: $12

Contact: silvermoonbrewing.com