“We got up at 4:30 am and drove 13 hours to be here. We even put chains on our tires. That’s how much we love you,” announced Ya Ho Wha 13 guitarist Djin Aquarian from the stage at Nectar last night. I for one am glad the California trio made the extraordinary effort.

Playing together for the first time in over three decades, YHW13 sounded robustly psychedelic for dudes who had to be in their late 50s/early 60s. Maybe that’s a testament to their healthy vegetarian diet deriving from Father Yod’s Source Restaurant in Hollywood, as all members looked macrobiotically lean and fit, and not really culty at all.

Bassist Sunflower—who seemed to have breezed in from a Boz Scaggs gig—led the crowd in a kundalini-yoga breathing exercise while drummer Octavius—looking a bit like the writer Harry Crews—pounded out a typical tribal beat and chanted some vowel sounds. Sunflower had us make the star position and breathe deeply 108 times. “The left hand receives, the right hand gives,” Sunflower instructed.

Duly oxygenated, we— approximately 80-100 of us; not bad for a frigid Monday night—received YHW13’s spontaneous musical gifts. The first jam was pretty driving rhythmically, as Djin rubbed and tapped a white implement (that I initially thought was a tampon applicator but after questioning him post-show found out was a bone his dog had retrieved) on his strings, sending shrieking waves of controlled, Sonic Youth-ian guitar skree arcing over the almost funky foundation. Their second track was mellower, more meandering and meditative, although it gradually intensified and became more sinuous.

On one song, Djin sincerely sang, “Bring your love/Bring your light/Be all that I am,” while generating radiant guitar tones like the Police’s Andy Summers. The piece was pretty conventional art rock, if a bit rambling; it actually seemed rehearsed, making me doubt their earlier claim that all of their music is improvised. The set peaked with a tune that paraphrased the beat from Sly & the Family Stone’s “Dance to the Music” and that featured Sunflower’s fantastically addictive, strutting, funky bass line. They followed this with the set’s weakest effort, a ponderous ballad with Djin's vocals sounding washed out and saccharine. YHW13 rallied with their finale, a cruising, motorik freakout that threatened to break into the Velvet Underground’s “Foggy Notion” at any second.

I was fearing the worst from this reunion, but Ya Ho Wha 13 played a fairly rousing, impressive 85-minute set. To show my appreciation, I bought their latest release, Sonic Portation, and it’s very good “still adventurous and out-there old-guys'” psych improv.