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Though Ekoostik Hookah has the two-guitars-and-a-keyboard setup of many jam groups, Hookah's music seems to have more in common with progressive rock like Yes and maybe even Rush than the ganga shuffle of "Truckin'." "Its funny that you say the Rush thing, because so many bands are like, 'You're the Dead,' all the Dead connotations," Polansky explains, "And when I first heard this band I thought they sounded more like a Yes or a Rush kind of thing than a Dead. I think the way that comes about is we all listen to such vastly different music. Its like if we each picked 10 bands and you came up with 60 bands we listen to, four to 10 would cross that we would really like, and 40 would be like, 'I can't believe you listen to that!' We have a sound that comes from such vastly different areas." | |||
| Talking to Polansky after a show at the Brandy House in Atlanta, the percussionist says that despite the band's rep with "jam band" afficionados, he actually dislikes the term. "I really dislike it. Its not one of my favorite terms because every band is a jam band! If there's one solo its a jam band! I really like to call this genre 'improvisational rock,' because you've got improvisational jazz, improvisational blues. I really like 'improv rock' because it does bring in some of the bands that have preceeded us out of that genre of the Dead. If you went to see a Yes concert in the late `70's, early `80's, those guys were improving as much as anybody." | ||||
| Though Ekoostik Hookah has been around for 10 years, the band is still new to many markets. The band has appeared in Atlanta a handfull of times, yet a show at Smith's Olde Bar, which holds about 400, was sold out, and a second show at the Brandy House was healthily attended. Johnny Polansky says that 2001 has seen a surge in the group's popularity. "Actually its really weird because I don't know if we just didn't notice it in the fall, but all of a sudden we took December off, then started up in the late part of December, and just about all of our holiday shows were sold out in theaters. I really feel like there's been a real big shoot-up. All the shows, Baltimore, Philadelphia, were pretty much packed to the brim. I think we've been seeing an upsurge due to our hard work of going out there and bringing the music to the people constantly and saying, 'Hey, we're not going away. You might as well come out and see us, because we're not going away!'" |
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| If you've missed their live show
it has been preserved for you on a CD called Sharp
in the Flats. The disc was recorded
in 1998 at a show in Cleveland, Ohio. Polansky says a new
studio disc is on the way. He can't reveal the title, he
says, but, "Its got a nice watery theme!" Oh,
something nautical, like a seaside thing? "A watery
theme!" Pick up any one of Ekoostik Hookah's six CDs and read more about them at www.Ekoostik.com. |
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