Touring for almost six years may sound like a long time to some bands, but the members of Zuba feel they are just beginning.

“I love playing live especially when the audience knows the music and dances,” Legaliza, lead vocals and lead guitar for Zuba, said. “How the audience reacts makes me play better. The audience creates how I perform.”

Sitting in a friend’s home in San Diego, Calif., band members — drummer Wallace Lester, bassist and vocalist Mike Cykoski, keyboardist and saxophonist Mark Pauperas, saxophonist and vocalist Ben Senterfit and Legaliza — are just beginning to wake up and get ready for tonight’s gig in Santa Monica.

The band has been touring southern California for the past week and is slowly making its way to the Midwest, bypassing the band’s home state of Colorado.

The founding members — Lester, Cykoski and Legaliza — came together almost six years ago after meeting in Telluride, Co., and began to create a sound that appeals to a broad spectrum of music listeners.

“We are soul-rock with a funky foundation,” Senterfit said. “We have two people who can play the sax and that creates a horn section based on a danceable foundation.

“Legaliza lays down a real vocal sense,” he added. “And Mike and I highlight that with harmony. It’s soul-country and psychedelic but the whole under-painting is definitely groove-based.”

The style of music matches the lyrics.

“We don’t play in-your-face lyrics,” Legaliza said. “We like to use a lot of imagery and politics but nothing too obvious. We are trying to focus on becoming more subtle with imagery and not so much literal interpretation.”

Almost immediately after forming, Zuba set a goal to begin touring and to break from the ski resorts.

“We began almost immediately to play ski areas and then Arizona,” Legaliza said. “I just wanted us to get on the road quick. We did and it has been great.”

Senterfit, as a member of a “hip-hop and acid jazz” band, knows too well the ups and downs of using Colorado as a base instead of the East or West coast.

“Colorado is good in some ways,” Senterfit said. “It has a good foundation. You can do a figure eight from the East to the West coast and there are a lot of good musicians.

“But, it can also be hard to get to the coasts,” he continued. “You have to get out of the ski towns. People in ski towns aren’t there to listen to music, they are there to ski. Playing there gets old and monotonous and it’s nice to play in cities and across the country.”

Since the snowy peaks of Colorado, Zuba has been playing in the bars, clubs and venues in the U.S. and Canada, opening for “big-name” bands including Blues Traveler at Red Rock amphitheater, James Brown, George Clinton and Willie Nelson.

“We’ve opened for some pretty heavy people,” Senterfit commented. “It’s great to play next to those guys. It’s a student-teacher relationship and Willie Nelson is the Zen master.”

On the an independent label, “Cool Theory,” the band has also produced three albums — two studio releases (“Zuba Zuba” and “New Cruelty”) and one live (“Live Soundboard ’95”).

However, the band label was almost traded in when Zuba’s music and the band appeared in “Kingpin,” starring Woody Harrelson.

“We got involved in ‘Kingpin’ when we met the director in Aspen,” Legaliza said. “He liked us and brought the producer to see us when we played in L.A. He liked us also.

“They wanted our songs in the movie and they even wanted us,” she continued. “But it didn’t work out because it was already starring an unknown actress and they didn’t want to add an unknown band too.”

Some of Zuba’s music was featured in the movie although Blues Traveler was the main band.

The members of Zuba were not upset about this and they still got to appear as extras in a bar scene. For Zuba, that was not a problem.

Concerns didn’t arise until it was time for A&M to release the soundtrack.

“They wanted us to sign a constigency deal with them,” Legaliza said. “What it basically said was that we signed the line and if the soundtrack was a hit, what we signed became our record contract.

“We kept asking them what was going on and they waited two weeks to tell us,” she added. “They gave us two hours before the deal had to be done to make our decision. We just said, ‘fuck you.’ They were so rude and we didn’t want to do business that way. We learned a good lesson in the music industry bullshit.”

Shortly after Zuba’s appearance in “Kingpin,” the band was named “Stoner Band of the Month” in High Times magazine.

“It really doesn’t mean anything,” Legaliza said. “It just means that the people who read that magazine like us.

“Any press is good,” she continued. “We were excited to be in the issue and we do support the hemp issue. We support a lot of issues. It doesn’t mean we do drugs — it just means we support the use of them.

“I also support abortion, but the people from the ‘Abortion Times’ haven’t called yet,” she added. “I support that it’s your body and you can do with it what you want.”

As for now, Zuba is concentrating on touring and trying to keep focused as an independent band.

As part of Zuba’s upcoming Midwest tour, the band will be making a stop at People’s Bar and Grill on Friday, Nov. 28, at 9 p.m.

Ames’ own Floodplane will open the show.