Breaking records and expanding their fanbase with a two and a half year Wednesday night stint at the famous Cabooze Nightclub in Minneapolis, jam band The Big Wu is now road tripping across America in support of its latest effort, “Tracking Buffalo Through the Bathtub.”

With memories of a Halloween costume that consisted of a hula skirt and coconut bra, Wu bassist Andrew Miller speaks of jam bands and the danger of having “Wu” in the band’s name.

What does the label of “jam band” mean to you?

I think that’s a pretty wide and undefined term, because a lot of the bands that get classified as jam bands, they don’t all jam. It’s not like they all improvise and noodle and turn songs into 15-minute adventures. Some of them will take one riff, like Disco Biscuits, and turn it into a 45-minute opus, and it doesn’t really necessarily mean that they all play anything that would ever sound like the Grateful Dead in a hundred years.

So, sometimes, the ethic that they take from bands that influence them doesn’t always come out sounding like their music. I think the word jam band also allows for a lot of different genres all in one band. You say heavy metal, you’ve got a closer grip on what it’s going to sound like than a jam band, because a jam band can have 20 different influences of music in it — anything from bluegrass to techno to freaked-out psychedelic rock to whatever. And it all just comfortably fits. Maybe it’s a name for what you don’t have a really good description for.

How does your sound compare to the music of such bands as the Allman Brothers, Phish and the Grateful Dead — all bands to which you have drawn comparisons?

To tell you the truth, I think the comparison comes from not the very sound itself, but from the ethic, where anything and everything goes. And anything can go. We’re just in the middle of a song that 99.9 percent of the time we play as a five-minute song, we can just go off, just do whatever, just do what comes naturally and completely improvise off it. A lot of those bands have that same ethic.

Some things you can pick up on, like I think the Dead writes exceptional lyrics. You know, they don’t write a lot of love songs, typical pop fare. It’s just a little bit more interesting. I think it’s dual guitar lines. The only other band I know that does double guitar riffs as much as the Allman Brothers might be Iron Maiden. Not that that’s an influence on the band, really. I mean it is on me, and I know that Jason used to pump to Iron Maiden. They have harmony guitar riffs all over.

What type of music did the band start out playing, and how has that sound evolved since you and Al joined the band?

This will definitely help answer the question before. We played a lot of Dead. That’s where the comparison is going to come in. In some ways I like to think — outside of the Dead just being a great band — when I joined the band, I really didn’t listen to the Dead. I went to a couple shows, but I really didn’t know any of their songs. I kind of thought of it like boot camp for being in a band, like boot camp for songwriting. They just had a certain level of songwriting. You use it as a measuring stick for your own composition.

Jam bands have gained increasing popularity over the past few years, with the massive success of Phish ushering in a new jam band era. What events or trends in the music industry or the world in general have affected this?

Well, there’s at least three. Number one, I think people really like the idea of going out and doing something fun over the weekend like a festival, where there’s no need for safe security, because they just want to go out and have fun, not some hell-raising type deal. If you take that, some folks are getting really bored, especially as they’re getting into college or out of college, getting past high school, with what’s on the radio. They just want to hear something, anything different.

The bands that are considered jam bands are really offering that; they’re free to play whatever they want. It’s not like they’re R.E.M., and they have to make an R.E.M. song. You can make a song of whatever you like, bluegrass or rock or a ballad or a long jam. It’s just whatever you write. I think people really respond to that, because it’s fun, it’s not packaged.

The third thing, definitely, is the demise of the Grateful Dead. That has definitely opened up doors for other bands to go out. There’s a void there. Where there’s a vacuum, there’s going to be a reaction.

Jam bands, or at least their fans, seem to be for the legalization of marijuana. What is the band’s feeling about drug use, both in general and related to music?

I think pretty much every rational person I know is for the legalization of at least hemp. I would say pretty much everyone in the band is pro-legalization, or at least decriminalization of marijuana. It’s just not a crime. Everybody in the band has done plenty of experimentation in their laboratories with chemicals. People should really make up their own mind on this stuff. Think for yourself, and you’d be an awful lot better.

I heard you were a ’92 candidate for mayor in Northfield. Do you or the band have any future political aspirations?

To tell you the truth, if I was older, I think I wouldn’t mind working on the Senate or something. That’d be fun, something different. Running for mayor of Northfield doesn’t take any more talent than just showing up and doing it. Literally, all I did was pay five bucks, went out, made the fliers and went door to door, to every Carleton and St. Olaf party I could and just stood there at the keg and handed out fliers.

How does the current tour compare to festivals you’ve been in, like H.O.R.D.E. and the High Sierra Music Festival?

They’re just two different animals. The cool thing about festivals is that it draws a lot of people who want to hear a lot of different kinds of music. Maybe if there’s 30 bands on the bill, they’ve probably heard the names of 25 of them. They really want to see 10 to 15 of them. Even if they don’t know the band between band B and band C, they’re not going to get up and leave. They’re all ages shows. People are there with their kids; there’s all sorts of stuff going on. It’s really cross-generational.

Certainly a lot of the clubs we’ve played are around colleges. Now you’ve narrowed the field quite a bit. That makes a difference right there. It’s not like we go out of our way to play a club set versus a festival set. We’re not that smart.

I have to ask, where did the name come from? It is linked to the Wu-Tang Clan in any way?

No, it’s not linked to the Wu-Tang Clan. Although, we’ve gotten hate mail from Long Island, like if we show up, they’re going to kill us. But I don’t think it’s from Ol’ Dirty Bastard.

It’s from the movie “Joe vs. the Volcano.”

So there’s no chance of a collaboration with Method Man?

I don’t know. He could call. Yeah, why not?