Few bands are lucky enough to have a name as self-descriptive as Everything. Listen closely to the band's debut, "Super Natural," and you'll hear all sorts of influences swirling through the band's music, from swamp rock to be-bop, Afro-Cuban to country and western.

But rather than try to be everything to every listener, what the band ultimately aims for is a sort of sonic stew, one that boils those elements down into something flavorful and new.

Maybe that's why singer and guitarist Craig Honeycutt compares the band's creative process to kitchen work. "It's like New Orleans cooking," he says. "You take a lot of different ingredients and a lot of different things, and you cook 'em in a pot. And it takes a while for all those flavors to get together.

"But once they do, you have this meal that's unique unto itself."

Because the Virginia-based sextet perfected its recipe while opening for the likes of the Dave Matthews Band and Phish, some critics have taken to calling Everything a jam band. But the jam-band tag leaves a bad taste in Honeycutt's mouth.

"I think 'jam band' is a really negative term," he says. "Because with the resurgence of the neo-hippie movement, there are bands out there that have all this improvisation going on, but it isn't necessarily that good."

Everything is hardly averse to improvisation, but that's not the group's focus. "We're a song band," says Honeycutt. "We write songs." So even when the band cuts loose instrumentally, Honeycutt and his bandmates keep the focus on the song, not the playing. "If you're going to have a solo, you should ask yourself, 'Is this essential to the song?' " he says.

At the moment, the song Everything is best known for is "Hooch," a slyly infectious number built around the chorus: "Who got the hooch, baby?/Who got the only sweetest thing in the world?"

What is hooch? "The hooch can be anything," answers Honeycutt. "We kind of left it up to the listener to decide for him- or herself. Really, it's just that unseen thing, that thing that's going to bring you to that place that you want to get to.

"It comes down to intent," he adds. "Words kind of shift around, and we wanted people to create their own thing with it, to keep us off the hook about defining anything. Because who wants to do that? I think it's more fun to find out what people think."

Well, most of the time, anyway. Some listeners think the band is singing about booze, "hooch" being a synonym for liquor. But Honeycutt demurs. "That has nothing to do with it," he says. "It wasn't until after [we recorded the song] that somebody brought that up. We just try to let everybody know that it's not it for us."

Everything

When: Tonight at 8

Where: Bohager's, Fleet and Eden streets

Tickets: $15

Call: 410-481-7328 for tickets, 410-563-7220 for information

Pub Date: 03/04/99