HUNTINGTON — Live music fans, if you’ve been “Stuck in the Snow,” “Tumblin’ ” and looking for some “Ohio Grown,” just letting you know that you can “Slipjig Through the Poppy Fields,” this Saturday at the V Club.
There’s a “Big Ole Freight Train” coming back here to the hills to help you “Sail Away” and make a “Descent Into the Maelstrom.”
Ye, who figured out the code talk in the first sentence rejoice — ekoostik hookah, the Columbus-based band of long hairs that have been filling ears and souls with a delicious blend of funked-up, jazzy bluegrass and psychedelic rock ’n’ blues, is back here for the first time in several years.
Show time is 10 p.m. Saturday at the V Club, 741 6th Ave. The Tri-State’s own Genuine Junk Band bring the funky jam to open.
Cost is $13. The show is 18 and up.
Keyboardist, vocalist and founding member, Dave Katz, said the group has always had a great fan base in West Virginia and is stoked to get back to Huntington, where it used to blaze a trail to the old MonkeyBar.
“There’s one fan that always apologizes to me every time he sees me,” Katz said chuckling. “That MonkeyBar stage was about two inches off the ground and somebody bumped him and he spilled a beer all over the piano. But we’ve always had good fans down there through the years who always come up and see us in Ohio.”
There’s been good reason to go north for hookah.
The band, which just hosted Hookah in the Hills last weekend on Poston Lake near Athens, has hosted Hookahville, a home-thrown festival outside Columbus since 1994 on Memorial Day and Labor Day weekends. The events have drawn as many as 15,000 fans to see a wide, wide range of such acts as Ratdog, David Crosby, Arlo Guthrie, David Grisman, Dickey Betts, Willie Nelson, The Wailers, P-Funk, Robert Randolph, Little Feat, Ralph Stanley, Ricky Skaggs, Blues Traveler, Yonder Mountain String Band and Leftover Salmon.
“The festival thing has been a great way to go,” Katz said. “It’s always been a gathering place for the fans, and our fans are always the No. 1 thing for us. The people have a chance to come from all over and meet up with their friends and get together. They can really connect, see some music and hang out, and then see some more music.”
Although it is being done sans bonfire and hula hoops, Katz said hookah still loves creating that magic bond that happens with the fans in the intimacy of a club or theater.
“All we can do is play the music and then it’s all about the fans and the people who come to see us,” Katz said by phone from his home outside Cleveland. “We have to ask them to show up and make a party out of it.”
That music has never sounded so original and so good, especially since vocalist/guitarist John Mullins is back in the fold after nearly 10 years away from the group that has sold more than 100,000 copies of its eight releases.
With Mullins back, the group has recorded a double CD, “Under Full Sail: It All Comes Together,” that revisits nine numbers of its debut album, “Under Full Sail,” and adding four additional tracks (“Tumblin’,” “Water Bear,” “When the Sun Goes Down” and “Carousel”) that were never recorded or are brand new.
“We had our differences and our problems way back in the day and the worst thing that ever happened was that we had to part ways with John,” Katz said. “Therefore, the best thing since then is that we are now back, and the reasons why is his songwriting and his vocals mesh so well with my songwriting and my vocals and that has always been the way is should be.”
Katz said the band, which also features lead guitarist Steve Sweney, bassist Cliff Starbuck and drummer Eric Lanese, is rolling like one with everyone even keel, no egos and just enjoying sharing the music with each other and the fans.
That bond with the fans shines forth on Hookah’s latest CD as seven songs were cut live with 200 fans at The Cave at Atlanta’s TreeSound Studios.
“Some of us like to be in the studio more than others, so we got to do the studio work which satisfied that end of it, and then we got to record live with really nice equipment,” Katz said. “It was really cool doing the older songs because it was almost like this theme with John back, and these were the songs that really got us started. They are even bigger and better. Hopefully, we are a little bigger and better.”
Katz, who was home with his newborn son, said he also hopes the group is a little wiser by not falling trap to “incessant touring.”
The band, which has played in more than 30 states at such renowned venues including New York’s Wetlands Preserve, Chicago’s House of Blues, Atlanta’s Variety Playhouse, Boulder’s Fox Theater, LA’s Whiskey a Go-Go and San Francisco’s Great American Music Hall, is really picking and choosing its gigs.
And like it did with its multiple shows in Jamaica (1999, 2002 and 2006) and the Netherlands (2003), the band is also hitting some way-out spots it always wanted to play.
The group played Alaska for the first time earlier this summer and will play Hawaii in February.
“We’re picking places here or there and maybe some for people who don’t get to see us all the time,” Katz said. “We like to give people a reason to go some place, like we used to do with Jamaica. We figured Hawaii might give people a little extra incentive to go there. Like The Dead playing Egypt way back in the day, that same sort of thing, where you give people a reason to go to some place that’s really cool.”
If you go
Who: Ekoostik Hookah
When: 10 p.m., Saturday, Oct. 20
Where: V Club, 741 6th Ave., Huntington
How much: $13
What else: Ages 18 and up; the Tri-State’s own Genuine Junk Band will open.
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