In the middle of nowhere, traveling from Tallahassee, Fla., to Athens, Ga., is a van full of musicians. Head of Femur, an octet from Chicago, is currently touring in support of its latest album, “Hysterical Stars.”

Through the static and random disconnections of a telephone interview, Ben Armstrong, who provides drums, keyboards and vocals to Head of Femur, patiently discusses the large group dynamics of touring and recording, the band members’ odd day jobs and why Head of Femur is exactly like Time Pilot.

Katie Piepel: So are there eight of you on this tour right now?

Ben Armstrong: Well, we kind of lost some of our rank. We started out with eight, and then became seven and now we’ve got six. I think by the time we get to you guys we’re going to be up to eight again, though.

The studio version of the band is pretty unholy compared to the touring version as far as the numbers and people involved, but just for logistical and financial reasons, we’ve got it down to eight for the touring.

KP: What’s it like touring with so many people? Are you all in one big van?

BA: It’s actually a lot better now. We used to do it in just a 15-passenger van with all the gear and all the people and it was pretty tight. We recently got a trailer so that kind of gives us a little more room in the van.

KP: When you’re not on tour, do you have day jobs?

BA: A lot of us just have odd jobs. Some of the guys cater; we’ve all been carnies at one point or another; I used to fix vacuums for a living. Currently I’m a house trim painter.

KP: Carnies, huh?

BA: There’s a company in Chicago that hires people just on like a job-by-job basis, which is pretty much the only way you can work when you’re trying to be a touring musician too, and they send out a crew to various carnivals and schools and just events that need big, inflatable slides and big metal ball cages that’d you roll around in for human bowling. You know like when they set up a little carnival in like a McDonald’s parking lot or something?

KP: Yes.

BA: That’s us.

KP: Why did you enlist so many musicians to play on your album?

BA: When we were writing the songs, a lot of interesting orchestrated parts came to mind and we wanted to try to record that, so in order to do that, we had to hire a lot of different musicians to be on the record, because we don’t all play a whole lot of different instruments outside of the traditional rock band things. So when you want a harp, you hire a harp player you know?

KP: How does your music fit into today’s music scene?

BA: We don’t really fit into today’s music scene at all, but we’re kind of an amalgamation of everything that was happening in 1974.

We fit into today’s music scene like some sort of time travel vessel or something like that. We’re like a time pilot.

Did you ever play that video game? We’re like that. We’re like a little jet that spins around. And then travels through time. That’s pretty good.

KP: That’s cool.

BA: We did start dressing up like Disney characters from the ’90s recently, but that was only when we got the trailer and had more room in the band.

KP: I’m sorry, did I hear that right?

BA: Well I mean, they’re kind of crude, but we have these homemade costumes like ’90s Disney characters that we sometimes bring on tour that we’ve only been able to do recently since we got the trailer, but Mike [Elsener] is the Lion King. We can only do that really in the wintertime though, because it’s pretty warm. We have a Quasimodo and Pocahontas.

KP: And who are you?

BA: Aladdin. That’s me.

KP: Does the band have any other “bizarre” rituals?

BA: We like to eat comedic food.

We’ve been pretty into gourmet hot dogs lately. There’s a great gourmet hot dog store in New York City called Crif Dogs, which I recommend.

Also, did you know that some places in Florida you can get beer by the gallon like in a gallon milk jug? A lot of us got those last night for humorous reasons.