The word "weird" gets thrown at Les Claypool a lot.

His noodly, noisy music, solo or with the famed East Bay band Primus? Weird.

His "Electric Apricot" mockumentary about aging Northern California jam band hippies? Weird.

His book, "South of the Pumphouse," about two brothers' drug-fueled fishing trip? Definitely weird.

The bassist's heard it a million times, and he doesn't mind the categorization per se, but still ...

" 'Weird' is such a subjective term," Claypool says with a sigh, on the phone from a tour stop near Houston.

"Sure, if you compare me to people on mainstream rock radio, I'm pretty out there, but I think I'm actually pretty tame," says Claypool, who brings the weird tonight to the Grove at the Radisson.

Whatever your definition of strange, Claypool is inarguably busy.

There's the recently completed Oddity Faire tour, a mini-festival composed of Claypool-picked bands and friends. There's the musician's winery, Claypool Cellars (sample vintage: Purple Pachyderm 2007 Russian River Valley Pinot Noir) and, of course, his latest solo album, "Of Fungi & Foe," a raucous collection of noisy loops and beats and surreal singsong stories released on his own Prawn Song label.

The album, Claypool's latest proper solo effort, is a sonic departure from previous discs that coiled and snaked with seemingly endless jams.

Claypool started working on the 12-track disc after he finished composing music for a sci-fi video game about a mushroom man and a small indie film about a 3,000-pound killer pig.

"The imagery (in the game and film) was pretty dark and moody; as I recorded it, I became very attached to it," he says. "I just started adding lyrics and more instrumentation."

Claypool insists he had no preconceived notion of keeping the songs shorter and more tightly focused than on previous albums.

"It's all just very casual – these (songs) are like me having conversations with myself," says Claypool, who produced and recorded the album in his Sonoma home studio. "It's very spontaneous – I don't sit down and do multiple takes, I just try to get a vibe going and expand upon emotions or whatever button I've pushed groove-wise."

While putting out his own records has its financial limits, Claypool says that being out from beneath the thumb of the corporate music industry makes for a good life. Although Primus hit it big in the '90s with its kooky blend of funk and rock on radio hits such as "Jerry Was a Race Car Driver," there's very little the 45-year-old musician misses about being obligated to such deep pockets.

The splintering, increasingly decentralized, ever-changing industry is a "huge thing," Claypool says.

"Nobody quite knows what will happen next, we're all just waiting for the dust to settle … but it's easier for me to just have my own label – I like to do what I want to do," he says. "I can make whatever I want and it's very liberating."

Claypool is currently at work on a new collection of short stories. After "South of the Pumphouse," which published to mixed reviews, he finds the shorter medium much easier.

"Writing short stories is easier – it's like writing an album. A novel is like a big mass of unshaped dough," he says.

Of course, he adds, the term "easier" is relative.

"You're talking to a bass player – I'm not a literary icon by any means," he says. "But I've always been a storyteller when it comes to my songs; I like to write about characters."

Claypool also exercised his storytelling muscle, writing, directing and starring in "Electric Apricot," a 2006 mockumentary that gave the Northern California jam band scene the "Spinal Tap" treatment.

Although pleased with the final project, Claypool found making the film, which also featured Claypool's longtime actor friend Seth Green, "one of the most painful experiences I've ever had."

"It was like clinging to Mount Everest wearing nothing but a Speedo and losing appendages to frostbite," he says, citing a Murphy's Law-worthy list of mishaps including one involving a production assistance who disappeared for three days with all the film's footage.

The assistant eventually showed up – film intact – and now, bad experience or not, Claypool still finds inspiration in the project.

"At some point I'd like to write the story of making the film – it'll be more interesting than the film itself." And that's sort of the beautiful, well, weirdness of Les Claypool's life.

"No matter how you slice it as an artist, why not have (the ability) to make those choices for yourself? It's a double-edged sword – you can make great decisions and you can also make poor decisions – either way, it's very liberating."