One gusty mid-May evening at the Bier Stein in Hubbard, Iowa, Erick “Big E” Jaskowiak hauls band equipment into the archaic small town dive.

An older gentleman sitting at the bar calls out, “What kind of style do you guys play?”

“The blues,” Jaskowiak declares as he sets down his guitar case.

“You sing the blues?”

“Why don’t you hang around and find out?”

Jaskowiak tells the story like it was ages ago, claiming to have dozens more like it.

Truth is Jaskowiak has only been in the band six months — if that. But when you’re a twentysomething singing the blues, it’s hard not to sound like the old guy in a smoky bar strumming Poppa Chubby tunes on your Stratocastor.

Al Clarke, Jaskowiak’s bandmate, is that old guy strumming Poppa Chubby on his Stratocaster. Only tonight, the 48-year-old is not at a smoky bar. He’s kicking back at The Beehive, the official basement rehearsal room of Big E & The Killer Bees — Ames’ only blues band.

Clarke, Jaskowiak, Brian Kohlwes (a junior in transportation logistics) and Brian Van Fleet (a senior in hotel, restaurant and institution management) are gearing up for a big night — an actual gig. Not in Ames, but close. Big E & The Killer Bees will play in the nearby town of Nevada — at another dive by the name of Aces — this Friday.

“We’ve been trying to hit Ames,” Kohlwes says somberly. “But there’s not much of a blues scene here.”

“Ames doesn’t even know we exist,” Jaskowiak adds.

While the boys’ homebase has become a mecca for folk and alternative rock in recent years, you’re more likely to find a cop in an Ames bar than you are a blues band.

“The challenge is you have to be really, really good when you get your one chance with the audience,” Clarke said. “You can’t be pretty good or sort of good; you have to be just a killer blues band for people to remember you.”

The musicians in The Killer Bees don’t have it easy. They have the blues. And they wouldn’t have it any other way.

“This music rocks,” says Jaskowiak, who was inspired by a Stevie Ray Vaughan record he heard while going to school at North Dakota State. “This is the stuff I have in my tape deck at home.”

Clarke interrupts with his explanation of the upside of blues: “If you play a genre of music like we do, then you know it’s good. You may not be as good as you want to be, but you know the music is good. Other bands might not know that. If you don’t have the long tradition behind you, like jazz or blues has, then you’re always going to be uncertain about how good you are. We don’t have that problem. At least we know the music is good.”

Big E & The Killer Bees was conceived out of a meeting between drummer Van Fleet and singer/guitarist Jaskowiak at a local record store where Jaskowiak was working at the time.

The two got to talking and decided to form a band. After trying out bass players for a year-and-a-half, Jaskowiak stumbled into Kohlwes at work.

“Eventually, after about a year knowing them both,” Jaskowiak explains, “I put the two together and formed a three-piece.”

The three Bees played a few open jams at Friends in downtown Ames, where they first met Clarke and managed to sway him into their ensemble.

“Al adds the talent to the band,” Jaskowiak says.

The veteran musician brought some much-needed credibility to The Killer Bees, which has helped in approaching bar owners about shows. Clarke’s presence also brings a classic element to live shows.

“That’s the first thing I hear about after we get done playing: ‘Al is awesome,'” Van Fleet says.

“It’s something we can joke about on stage,” Jaskowiak continues. “Everybody loves Al. We just call him ‘the old guy.'”