‘It’s Good to Be Back Out There’ : Hooters, Awaiting Release of New Album, Decide to Tour

As a rule, rock groups generally hit the road to drum up support for their latest albums; almost nobody tours just for the fun of it.

Yet here are the Hooters, about two years after the release of “One Way Home,” on tour with Stevie Nicks. Granted, the band’s new album “Zig Zag” is due out in early October, but playing songs nobody knows yet hardly helps the Hooters now.

“Yeah, we’re in that limbo state of mind,” said Hooter Rob Hyman over the phone from a Syracuse, N.Y., hotel room. “But we didn’t want to sit home and wait. We were offered the tour, and we would just as soon be out and be playing, since it’s been a while since we did that. We spent a while working on the record; some people even thought the band broke up. So it’s good to be back out there and let people know we’re still ticking.”

It isn’t as if the Hooters have been sitting on their hands for two years, either. “One Way Home” was considered something of a disappointment after the band’s platinum debut, but Hyman noted: “It was still a gold record in the States, but after a platinum album, I guess the record companies want more.” It was nonetheless a smash in Europe and Japan.

“We had our first really big hit in England, with ‘Satellite,’ ” he said. “It’s funny how it’s just different markets. We really believed in those songs, and they never happened here; you start to think, ‘Are we totally off-base?’ ”

Aggravating those doubts was a sense that the band had been rushed through the making of “One Way Home.” Hyman pointed out: “We had a tour that started even before the record was finished. . . . It was a really tough period for the band.”

So the Hooters decided to take their time making “Zig Zag.” “We really did a lot more writing,” Hyman said. “We even did some local club gigs, just trying out new material. In one place, we did a whole set of new material; it was a little too demanding, I think, for the audience and for us. People just stood there, trying to take it all in. But we learned a lot.”

One of the things the band learned by playing clubs was that “Mr. Big Baboon,” one of the songs on “Zig Zag,” really came to life in live performance.

“It’s actually an older song that we’ve been kicking around for a while,” Hyman said. “A few people were really not keen on us doing it; they thought there was a lot of better stuff. We said, ‘Well, we want to lighten up a little bit.’ Because there is that side to the band.”

The song, which offers an amusingly oblique allegory on global politics, may seem fairly serious on record. But, said Hyman, “Live, it really has proven itself. It’s getting reaction. It’s just one of those funny things.

“Really, the same thing happened with ‘All You Zombies,’ ” he added, referring to the band’s first radio hit. “That was a throwaway song in our early days. We used to do that first in the bars, just to get it out of the way. And one day, we did a live radio show in Philly, and the DJ started playing it, and it got requests. It just turned into this monster song for us.”

Naturally, the Hooters are hoping for similar success with “Mr. Big Baboon.” But the band isn’t going to lose any sleep if that success doesn’t come. As Hyman sees it, “You really can’t predict anyone’s tastes. You can’t predict any trend or fad. We’re always influenced by what we hear, but when we get into the studio, we just do what we feel is the right thing for the band.

“We’re trying to find our spot, just what’s comfortable for us,” he concluded. “You’ve got to live with it. And that’s one thing we’ve managed to do with our music--we’re living with it pretty well, and we stand by anything that’s out there.”