“Inbred” would be one word to describe the Athens music scene. Let’s face it: Everyone knows everybody and the average musician is in four different bands.

But one event in Athens separates musical families and reassembles them to form a whole slew of new ones – and all for a good cause.

This Friday, the sixth “Face/Off” will take place at the 40 Watt Club. Prominent Athens musicians – including metal-heads, pop stars, musically inclined journalists and club-owners – have been randomly sorted into three-piece bands and were given a month to put together ten minutes of music.

“The cool thing about this Face/Off thing is, it’s 20 bands in one night that are all playing their first and probably last shows,” Jeff Tobias, local musician and organizer of all six previous Face/Offs, said.

“The two-fold goal of Face/Off is to organize musicians to help benefit our community and also to just be a catalyst for more creativity,” Tobias said.

For the past three events all proceeds have been donated to a local charitable organization. This event will support the Food-2-Kids program, which provides food to local public school students in need during the weekends when they do not get food at school. The past two events raised $500 and $750 respectively.

Although Face/Off pairings that lead to long-term projects are rewarding for Tobias, he says for the most part, the event is about getting musicians to put themselves in an unfamiliar situation and to try to make something new.

“[Musicians] take the opportunity because it’s going to be kind of a lark, sort of a one-time shot thing. They’ll play an instrument that most people might not know that they play, you get a lot of swapping instruments around, and of course there are complete disasters sometimes,” Tobias said. “But those are kind of fun too.”

Team two: Snake Chaps

The players: Melissa Colbert (Creepy): bass/vocals, Scott K. (Vincas): guitar/vocals, Wilmot Greene (owner of Georgia Theater): drums/vocals

The sound:

Greene: “We’ve been slack, we’re gonna have to cram, but we have got together twice and we have some pretty good ideas that I’m sure we’ll develop. The stuff we’re working on is kind of like soul, rhythm and blues kinda stuff which is strange, but it’s cool. Melissa got this kinda soulful voice and it just worked out that way.

The dynamic:

Greene: “Scott has kind of been our unofficial group leader just cause he’s had the most ideas and is most excited about it and had a practice space and whatnot, so he just kind of took the reigns. And he’s playing guitar so that kind of makes sense. I’m enjoying my role of just being like, ‘Oh I’m the drummer.’

I’ve always wanted to say that, it’s been great. I’d kind of met both of them and they had familiar faces, but we didn’t know each others names. I think there’s about 1 percent weird and 99 percent cool and different. There’s a hint of weirdness, but I think that’s kind of the whole point. Scott and Melissa and I probably never would have formed a band had we not been kind of stuck together, but it’s cool and each of us has something to bring to the table, it’s neat, it’s a neat thing.

Team 14: Reefah McIntyre

The players: Austin Darnell (Deaf Judges): Harmonica/percussion/vocals, Coy King (Timber): upright bass, Gordon Lamb (Flagpole writer): guitar

The sound:

Darnell: “It’s not completely solidified yet enough that I can say. I think we’re probably gonna end up doing some different sounding things, probably each of us do something and the others play with him, but it’s not solidified yet, we’re going meet up a couple more times and see what feels like it’s working and that’s what we’ll do . I actually want to not rap at all in this. I play bass and guitar and harmonica and I used to sing, so I’m actually interested in doing something that’s not rap at all this time, because I don’t get to do it as much.”

The dynamic:

Darnell: “(Face/off’s) always been great because it’s such an interesting collection of cool different people approaching with different styles kind of thrown together, the cool thing about it too is that most of the people involved kind of know each other already from seeing different bands around town, and if you don’t then you get to meet a bunch of people who are doing something different then what you are. So it’s always interesting to see what happens or if it doesn’t come together at all as the case may be . For us, It’s difficult to meet up, we all have other agendas, we all have other groups that we’re working on at the same time, but it’s gonna come together and it’s gonna be great.”

Team 17: The New 97.1 The River

The players: Rob Thomasen (Chrissakes): drums, Meghan Morris (Mouser): trumpet/vocals, Jason NeSmith (Casper and the Cookies): guitar, keyboard

The sound:

Thomasen: “We’ve had a few practices, it’s starting to come together pretty well. (The sound) varies throughout the whole set, I think we’re possibly going to try three different songs, and all three of them are completely different sound, I don’t think any of which would be expected of any of these people in their normal bands.”

the dynamic:

Thomasen: “I think most, unless there’s some magical ability that people are such gifted musicians that they can just immediately come up with something amazing, which is one in a million, it’s usually a lot of dead ends, and kind of running into road blocks, and not coming up with anything for a good while,which is what happened to us of course. But if you just keep messing with things long enough and trying different things you eventually find where you all link up.”

Team eight: Turpnentine

The players: Asa Leffer (Holy Liars, Chase Park Transductions): electric guitar, Allen Owens (Pride Parade): electric guitar, Davey Wrathgaber (The Visitations): acoustic guitar/vocals

The sound:

Leffer: “We’ve got one ten-minute song together and we want to try to get another five minute song together before the show. It’s like, psychadelic, with spacey guitar.

The dynamic:

Leffer: “It’s just a good exercise to see what you can come up with people that you would not normally necessarily pick out to be band mates, and it’s always been pretty entertaining to watch so I figured it’d be fun to participate. It’s great, they’re great guys, we’ve definitely had fun with it so far. I’ve known them for years before this, I’ve never played with them before, but I’ve seen their other bands play.”