Sister 7 frontwoman Patrice Pike is scrambling.

Her bandmates have just left to grab a bite to eat and it is her first chance to be alone all day.

Pike grabs a pen and notepad and goes to work.

An hour later, guitarist Wayne Sutton, bassist Darrell Phillips and drummer Sean Phillips return to the room.

Pike sets down her pen and looks at her notepad to find she has jotted down only a few notes, not nearly enough to transform into song lyrics.

“I’m going through a deal where I am writing less,” Pike explained. “I need to spend my time wisely, but then again, I’m not going to force myself.”

Welcome to the life of Sister 7, where 250 to 300 days out of the year are spent on the road.

Six years of living out of the same van, doing the same thing, scrambling to find enough time to write song lyrics.

“You’re living with seven different personalities — literally living on top of somebody every day,” Pike said. “Not even married couples go through what bands do.

“Married couples go to work from nine to five and come home to each other. We are together every minute of the day,” she added.

Which could explain why it took Pike a few years to get used to touring.

“I didn’t like it at first,” she said. “But you begin to cultivate with people.”

Pike said touring provides her with the opportunity to learn valuable lessons about life, such as being tolerant and courteous with others.

“We’ve grown way beyond where we would be as individuals if we weren’t on the road,” Pike explained. “There are not many 27-year-olds who have gone through what I have.”

Pike said she believes musicians don’t get the respect they deserve from the challenges they take on by touring.

“It’s difficult keeping your sanity,” she said. “There is a lack of stability on the road. You have to find a sense of who you are in this total chaos. It’s difficult to find an anchor for yourself.”

For Sister 7, the anchor has been its music. From the band’s very first show, an impromptu jam at a Dallas club, to its current Midwestern tour, Sister 7 has been driven by the desire to be creative.

The band, which formed in Dallas but now calls Austin, Texas, home, flirts with a variety of styles from melodic hard rock to funk to hip-hop, yet manages to create its own sound as unique as Pike’s charismatic vocals.

Pike had gone to high school with Darrell Phillips and met the other musicians through the Dallas music scene. The four members united in 1991 under the name Little Sister.

The band released the live E.P. “Free Love and Nickel Beer” soon after, behind a “premature” record deal with EMI.

When the label president resigned later that year, Little Sister choose to release its follow-up on the indie-label Rhythmic Records.

It was in 1995, touring in support of its sophomore release, when Little Sister discovered it was not the only band with that name.

“We discovered there were five other Little Sisters in the country,” Pike said. “There was one in the U.K., which made us the seventh. We wanted to keep Sister so we tacked seven on that and the situation kind of renamed the band.”

But band names mean nothing, Pike insisted. In fact, “they suck.”

“The name is good if the band is good,” she explained. “Led Zeppelin would be a stupid name if they didn’t rock. Same with the Foo Fighters.”

With the new name etched in stone, Sister 7 hit the road once again, this time stumbling into Steve Schnur from Arista Austin records.

The band later signed a deal with Arista and released its latest disc, “This The Trip,” earlier this year.

Sister 7 went on to play on ESPN’s “X Games Xperience Tour” and at “Blockbuster Rockfest,” the largest-ticketed music event of the year.

Sister 7 played on VH1’s second stage at the show, along with Third Eye Blind, Matchbox 20, Soak, Sugar Ray and Jackopierce.

The band will play tonight at People’s Bar and Grill at 9 p.m. Central Iowa’s KKDM will be broadcasting live from 8 to 10 p.m.