Marcus Horth | facebook.com

A face and guitar style familiar to Southwest Virginia’s jamband fans returns to Martin’s Downtown on Saturday night. But Marcus Horth, a founding member of The Mantras, hasn’t been with that group for a while. Instead, he is playing with doby, a funk/soul/rock act from Greensboro, N.C. Get show details at Top Tickets.

Horth said that his departure from The Mantras boiled down to creative differences. He likes jamband music, and enjoyed playing it with the band, but he did not feel like he was getting the creative outlet he needed.

“I still liked the music they do,” he said. “I  like jammy music, but I’m also into the Beatles and Queen and good sort of classic rock and song-oriented music. I always tried to bring part of that.

“I felt like over the years I got less and less chance to sing and do the songs that I wrote.”

Things were tense after he quit the band, he said, but a year and a half later, he and The Mantras are back on decent terms, he said.

Meanwhile, doby guitarist Tommy Scifres was being pulled away by other projects, and he brought on Horth as a sub. These days, though, Horth is doing most of the band’s guitar work, while leading his own act, The Monkey Mind. We’ll stream songs from both bands — doby covers of Robert Walter’s “Bibi Man” and Rufus Thomas’ “Memphis Train,” and The Monkey Mind’s “All Along,” a Horth number.