Something about the Family Groove Company is pretty funky.

Though their official designation is “groove-informed jazz rock,” the band is heavily influenced by funk, said pianist/vocalist Jordan Wilkow before the band’s show Friday at the House Café, 263 E. Lincoln Highway.

“It’s not funk with a capital F. It’s not like [Parliament Funkadelic] or James Brown or something like that,” Wilkow said. “We like a lot of the jazz-funk crossovers, like Herbie Hancock’s ‘70s stuff.”

The Family Groove Company’s funky sound can be heard from the complex bass rhythms carried by Janis Wallin in conjunction with percussionist Mattias Blanck to the sweet scratches of Adam Lewis’ guitar working playfully with Wilkow’s gooey piano.

“It’s pretty groovy,” Wilkow said. “It’s pretty funky.”

A jam band in nature, the Family Groove Company fuses together multiple influences into extended tunes with plenty of improvisation and spontaneity.

Almost paradoxically, most of its songs maintain a traditional format, Wilkow citing The Beatles, Steely Dan and The Grateful Dead as inspiration.

While some songs maintain more of a conventional vocal base and build with organ textures and guitar solos, others are more radically instrumental. The incredible amount of layers on basic funk rock rhythms makes the Family Groove Company sound like Incubus’ less grungy uncle.

With the precision that its members execute they’re jazzy improvisation, it’s no surprise that the band is almost 10 years old and studied music together at the Musicians Institute in Los Angeles.

After relocating to their current Chicago base, the Family Groove Company released their most recent album “The Charmer” in 2006. Though it remains unsigned, the band draws in quite a crowd – Wilkow said Friday’s audience of 200 was on the small side.

What brought them to DeKalb was the people.

“What’s most important to us is just the crowds we draw here are a lot of fun to play for,” Wilkow said. “We really look forward to doing this room and this town.”

Catch The Family Groove Company at the Castle Theatre in Bloomington on Oct. 23.