April Issue: Home | Editors | Features | Columns | Photos | Regional | New Groove Road Trip | Tour Journal | Venue | Levels | Ghosts | Homegrown | Inaudible | CDs | Charts

15 Questions with Ekoostik Hookah

by Todd Justus

Ekoostik Hookah is a hard band to find sitting still.

On the heels of the release of a second live album, Sharp in the Flats, and a successful West Coast run, the band is currently making preparations for another Hookahville festival (this installment featuring Ratdog and Jazz Mandolin Project) and keeping an eye on their June trip to Jamaica, where they will headline High Times' Jamm-aica '99.

In the meantime, they continue to do what they do best: play live to their growing fan base. I spent an hour with the band (Dave Katz, piano, guitar and vocals; Ed McGee, guitar and vocals; Eric Lanese, drums and vocals; Cliff Starbuck, bass and vocals; and Steve Sweeney, lead guitar and vocals) prior to their 3/24 show opening for Banyan, during which the members of the group opened up about the songwriting process, being an independent band, and setting themselves apart to the listening public.

Todd Justus: The consensus among your fan base is that the band seems to have taken things up a notch or stepped up to a higher level. Has that been a conscious decision the band has made, or is it a result of playing together?

Dave Katz: I think the emergence of Ed has been a big part of it. We were pretty much flat before he came in.

Ed McGee: He's being sarcastic. I'd say it's been getting used to the new set-up and it's just that we keep playing. We play so much that if we didn't improve, well we'd be pretty pathetic. If you did anything as much as we do this and didn't improve, you've got some serious problems.

Cliff Starbuck: Doing the same thing, it would be so fucking boring. We have to keep changing it and improving it for it to stay fun for us, you know?

TJ: Does that evolve just through playing?

CS: I'd like to think it's just the way it evolves.

EM: It's like little things everyday, like what can we do this week or tonight that's going to be something different. And then it stacks up eventually and I think for me it feels very gradual to the point where I don't even notice any change. Then someone that hasn't seen us in three months has this wildly different perception of the show and I'm actually like, "tell me how," because I don't even know what it could be that sounds so different.

DK: It's kind of like watching a flower grow. If you see it all the time you don't notice it.

TJ: Do you find that some of the songs you continually play have changed dramatically or evolved into something different?

DK: Some do, some don't.

Steve Sweeney: Backwoods Rose.

DK: (laughing) Backwoods does.

CS: With Walk Real Slow, for example, we decided to make it fast a few years ago and then Steve changed the feel of his guitar part that starts it and that really sort of gave us all a different feel. We just fell into this different kind of groove with it, and it has a whole different feel now. No one said, "let's make this a different feel," it just kind of popped into Steve's head and we all followed along.

EM: Plus, we've been experimenting with new places to throw in segues. We'll have songs where we never really did much other than play that song, and now we like to try to squeeze other songs into parts of songs and we experiment with that a little bit, so that changes things up.

TJ: How much of the setlist is pre-planned and how much is improvisational?

Eric Lanese: It's 100 percent improv.

DK: If anything, we think of songs we're not going to play, just because we may have played that the night before or something like that.

EM: It's like, "what did we play the last time we were here," and we try not to do that.

TJ: You've been widely considered a grassroots, word-of-mouth band. Have you thought about exploring a label?

DK: No.

TJ: What are some of the reasons behind that?

DK: (laughing) Got all night? "No" may be inaccurate. Maybe if we had the perfect deal offered to us, which would mean millions of dollars in support and promo money, and that's realistically not going to happen.

SS: It's artistic freedom also.

DK: So it'd be that and the risk of being married to the label.

EM: And who wants to jump for a label? We have a hard enough time jumping for each other.

CS: It's not even really that necessary anymore. Most bands are independent and people can find them. If someone wants to find a band, they can find them on the internet.

EL: With the technology of the internet's new wave distribution systems, the record companies look to me like they're on their way out.

DK: And I think if record companies don't change the way they deal with bands, then they'll definitely be on the way out. They've got to be shaking in their boots right now with all of the technology that's coming out to let you make your own cds.

EL: The record stores are going to be obsolete.

EM: And it's a great feeling that any reward we get, or any big shows or our Hookahville festival, if there's anything that seems to be a successful object, we can fully glean it as our own accomplishment. There's nobody pushing it out there, it was all us. It's nice to divide up the success between just us and not have to say, "well, those guys did it."

TJ: Cliff mentioned the internet. I know your website has over 100,000 hits and your fan list-serve is very active and popular. Do you have any comments on how your fans are using the internet to stay involved?

EM: A cool thing they're doing is keeping track of the setlists on the list-serve. To some people it's like, "what's the big deal?" but since we do change our setlists all the time, all of these people are really interested and I think this might be the first time it's been so effectively managed. It's created a cool sort of sub-community of friends, too, who've never met each other. I see it all the time. They're meeting each other at the shows or trading tapes and getting rides from each other and all kinds of things that we would like to think are part of the friendly atmosphere we'd like to have at all of our shows anyway, and it's happening outside now because of the internet.

TJ: What about some of the national tours? Have you ever thought of joining one of those?

DK: We've never been asked.

TJ: Is it something that would interest you?

DK: I think it would be cool to do it, but I don't know how interested I'd be personally in doing the first set of every show 45 minutes before the crowd gets there. It seems like sort of a waste of time.

SS: I'd be interested in it.

DK: Most of the bands that I've talked to that've done that slot haven't been real happy with it. It would be good to work with the people that do Furthur Fest and all the bands that play, but it would kill us financially, the fact that you don't get paid much and you don't have much time to play. But you can note that Steve would like to it.

SS: I just think that there are certain tours that it would be good to be on. In a way it kind of cheapens the whole thing, but even if the band doesn't get seen, the fact that the name is associated with that tour or festival, it really puts your name out there.

TJ: You just finished up a West Coast tour that was heavy in the Northwest. Have you noticed a growth in your fanbase there this time compared to last year when you were out there?

DK: This time out was kind of slow for us. The last time out we noticed that it was picking up from the time before, but this time out I think we ran into some bad timing as far as other bands that were in the area.

EM: As an example, the last time we were in Seattle I wasn't expecting much of anything. It was a Sunday night, we were all really tired because we'd just played like 12 shows in 14 days, and then we get there and there's this great crowd, way better than the one we had this time.

TJ: With the Hookahville festivals, where do you ultimately see those going? Is there an end in mind, or are they where you want them to be now?

DK: I really don't want them to change too much. My goal with them is to not have them get too big, personally. I'd like to cap out at a certain number of people so it doesn't get to be a situation where people there can't see the stage, like a Woodtsock thing or something like that. That would be a little out of hand, so it would be nice not to do that. I think they run really well. I don't see why anything should have to change. I don't think we could really improve on anything sound-wise or stage-wise, because we've already got the top of that. The only thing would be to contain the people, and that's the hardest part. We've learned a lot of lessons.

TJ: How did the Jamaica trip come about? I know some of the people from High Times were guests at the last Hookahville, so did it spring from that?

DK: We've been talking about it for a couple of years and the thing with High Times just kind of helped it along. They have the funds to make it happen, because we've never had the money. We had the ambition. They came to Hookahville and had a great time and liked what we were doing and wanted to work with us, so that was something that we could agree upon.

TJ: I know that (guest percussionist) John Polansky is playing with you tonight. Any thoughts of adding another permanent member to the band?

DK: I've thought about it. We've had two percussionists before, but at this point it'd be really hard financially on us. Hell, I'd like to have a horn section. (laughing) The Tower of Power horns, I hear they're looking for work.

TJ: Have you considered putting more muscle into your publicity?

EL: Beating people up to come to our shows?

CS: (laughing) If it works, it works.

DK: Same thing; if we could afford to, we would.

TJ: Can you expand a little on your song writing process?

EM: It usually happens, and "usually" is a bad word for it because it can happen in a lot of different ways, but a certain song that is relatively simply structured can just be a matter of Dave or me bringing it in just like it is, kind of raw, and showing everybody the chords, and everybody's pretty flexible. Sometimes, I might bring a song in and have a vague idea of what I want everybody to be doing, but sometimes not even that. Whereas other times it might be a more complicated song and you've got to get the parts all written out and you sit down with each other in a motel room or try to sneak it into a sound check. So it pretty much happens all kinds of ways. I actually think that songs are like actual beings in that way. They're born with some little idea and then they grow until they're actually being played, and then even after they age and mature they sometimes get completely changed. Sometimes they die, sometimes they come back again.

DK: (laughing) It's kind of like watching a flower grow.

TJ: You've had some new material recently. How often do you write?

EM: The hard thing isn't writing the songs. We have songs that are written that are just waiting in the wings. The back burner is getting pretty big. I'm constantly writing lyrics and little ditties and some songs that I can hopefully get the band to play. It's hard to get everybody together in one room to learn the songs, it's like pulling teeth.

CS: It's something we want to do because we want to have new material, but to get everyone together is sometimes pretty rough.

EM: Particularly Eric.

EL: I'm particularly handsome, yes.

TJ: Where the Fields Grow Green was released at about this time last year. Do you have plans for another studio album in the near future?

EM: We just released the double live cd (Sharp in the Flats), so we haven't really talked about it.

TJ: People talk about the growing number of "jam bands" to the point where the phrase has almost become a cliché. What do you think sets you apart from the other bands out there?

CS: We rock! (laughs)

EL: I think it's the diversity in the types of songs we play. If you've listened to our cds, you can tell there are a lot of different feels and styles. And having two songwriters has been good, as well. I think a lot of bands tend to have one sound. You hear it, and you know it's them. It's not necessarily even the singer's voice, it could just be a certain sound. It's not bad or good, but I think it sets them apart by having that sound. We don't have one sound, so that's what makes us different.

DK: I think we're also, for lack of a better word, pretty real and maybe easy to relate to. We're not really eccentric in what we do and at times it might be because we're just not that way, and other times it may be because we're not able to be. But I think it's pretty easy for a lot of people to relate to us both musically and lyrically.

EM: And when you talk about jam bands, I think those words alone might turn off some of the more mainstream people because they picture endless noodling jams that have really no direction. And I'd like to think that our jams, and we do have them, are not aimless. I'd like to think they're much more crafted and headed in a direction. We're always very conscious about trying to keep it fresh. We might not know exactly where it's going, but we'll try to stay on it together. I think in that sense that some of the people who might be turned off by the endless jamming that's kind of hard to follow or kind of hard to figure out might not have such a bad time with us.

EL: Jam bands is a really vague term, too. We just played with a band called Schleigho and they said that they get classified as a jam band and whenever they are, the people that come to see them and write about them hate them, because they're more of a jazz fusion band. When people hear that you're a jam band, they think (imitating a guitar solo) "leedle leedle leedle leedle" for 18 hours over and over again, and that's not what we do. I think anytime you hear someone called a jam band, you should go hear them and listen to them anyway.

CS: With jam bands, it's a really wide range of possibilities.

SS: We're more of a jelly band. Seedless.

---

Todd Justus studied journalism at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio. He currently lives and works in Chicago.