When the sun is long gone and the street lights do their best to hold onto little pools of light, the regular people are tucked inside, and those left wandering belong to a different breed.

Chris Sherman, also known as FreeBass of the Cincinnati based band Shag, is one of these people. As a self described “freak,” Sherman said he seems to do most of his living between the hours of late and really late.

“The night operates by different rules. After midnight, things change in the air. It definitely makes you feel a little anarchy.

“The night life has a David Lynch, “Twin Peaks” feel. There is a more colorful crew of people out. You get a vampire vision of life. I like it. I like the night people,” Sherman said.

In fact, Sherman likes it so much he said he feels more at home in his night-time personality, because it’s at night that he gets to be up on stage.

“I’m a different person on stage. It’s strange, my on-stage personality is closer to me than the person I am right now,” he explained.

“It just feels more natural,” he said as he sat sipping his first cup of coffee, trying to wake up, at the early hour of noon.

One of the reasons he feels more comfortable up under the lights, is that up there you don’t have to have a lot of social skills. You get to do your own thing.

But, when the crowds go home and you can’t just shut your eyes and make music, you are expected to have some social skills.

Sherman points out the irony in this.

“A musician is forced into being a social person, but being a musician means you don’t get social skill practice,” he said.

Sitting in a loud hotel lobby, conversing on the phone, Sherman didn’t seem too short on the social skills side of things. Discussing the trickier points of being an on-the-road vegetarian, he gave out pointers on vegetable pizza and baked potatoes from Wendy’s and his vitamin pill habit.

Don’t mistake him for a complete good boy in wacky clothes, though. He does like J„germeister shots, but only after the performance, thank you very much. Being drunk and making funk is not a good combination. In fact, making funk is even better than being drunk.

“The music almost has religious aspects to it. When you play the music you know if you’re going to be funky that night or not. When it’s happening you enter an altered consciousness,” Sherman said.

You can get down with Shag, the freaks of funk, Dec. 19 at People’s Bar and Grill for a mere $3.

Opening up will be the Bent Scepters at 9:30 p.m. Because it’s finals week, and you have had lots of practice being smart, no one needs to tell you that you must be a card carrying 21-year-old to get through the door.