So what exactly prepared San Diego's Charlie Imes for a career playing relaxed, Southern California beach folk and rock? Or for epitomizing a lifestyle built around flip-flops, shorts and zinc oxide cream on the nose?
To hear Imes tell it, it was too many years spent working in careers that are generally associated with a jacket and tie.
After a few years in the early '80s living in Phoenix to be near his parents ("It was cool playing golf with my dad"), Imes said he grew to miss Southern California and was ready to move back to his childhood hometown of Redondo Beach.
But a connection led him to a job interview with a San Diego law firm ---- where his interviewer and boss ended up being Calman Hart, now half of the local folk duo Berkley Hart.
Imes worked there for a few years, while also playing alternating Wednesdays at the now-defunct folk venue Drowsy Maggie's. (Imes said he was offered every Wednesday night, but didn't want to play that often; having heard that Hart also wrote music, he offered him the other two nights each month.)
As he became more successful professionally, though, he drifted away from the music.
"I ended up starting my own attorney service business," Imes said earlier this week from his Del Mar home. "Having your own business takes a lot of time, so I stopped playing for a long time.
"I sold my attorney service in the mid-'90s, and I got into financial planning for a while. I started that in '96, got sick in 2001, and while I was healing up from that I wasn't really thrilled about the direction of the country. I volunteered for a while on some campaigns, but my heart's not really in the cutthroat world of politics, either."
While recovering from a bout with cancer, Imes said he decided that life is too short to spend it on things you don't love ---- and he came back to music.
Still, even when he got back into music early last decade, it wasn't performing his own music ---- rather, he went back to the types of cover bands he'd played in as a teenager.
"It took me a long time to have confidence in my own stuff. ... I didn't think anybody wanted to hear my James Taylor-goes-to-the-beach stuff."
But playing in a covers band didn't feel right, either.
"When you're playing in rock bands and playing in bars, how many times can you play 'Pride and Joy' or 'Stray Cat Strut' or whatever?"
In 2007, he said he realized he wanted to play his own songs.
"I decided if I'm going to do any more music, I want to do mine. I started meeting a lot more musicians who would be able to handle the stuff I'm doing. Knowing Calman all those years, I got to know Jeff Berkley, too.
"There's a really deep folk and Americana community here ---- it's incredible."
Only a year into performing his songs, Imes released his first CD, "On an Island."
He said he asked Berkley to produce it, and found the experience incredibly rewarding.
"It was like hanging with a long-lost brother, it was so fun recording that album. He really understood what I was trying to achieve."
Looking ahead, Imes said his health is good and he's hoping to line up a couple of tours to take his music to a wider audience, while also staying busy working on songs for his second album.
But whatever the future brings him musically, Imes said he's at peace.
"I have to stay poor to qualify for county health care. Being a musician kind of works out for that.
"I make enough to get by, and I'm having the time of my life."
Encinitas Concerts, with Charlie Imes and Marie Haddad
When: 6 p.m. Thursday
Where: Encinitas Library, 540 Cornish Drive, Encinitas
Admission: Free
Info: encinitasconcerts.com
Correction: This article has been corrected to reflect that singer Charlie Imes lives in Del Mar, not Ocean Beach
