Elvis has thousands of them, Kiss has Strutter, heavy metal has Spinal Tap, and Phish and the Grateful Dead have Ames’ own Hydroplane.

But Hydroplane is more than a typical cover band — it is a band within a band that was created for one purpose, to play Phish and Grateful Dead songs for Ames’ fans.

An idea that originated from T-Ray, the sound man at People’s Bar and Grill, and owner Tom Zmolek, created a new every-other-Thursday-night ritual for Phish and Dead fans — “Something’s Phishy, It’s Dead at Peoples,” featuring Hydroplane.

“I think it was to get more people in on Thursday nights and [they] thought a few bands could cater to that,” guitarist Ross Pinski said.

When developing this idea, Zmolek called the Ames band Floodplane and asked if it would like to perform these covers, Hydroplane percussionist Ray England said.

“[Floodplane guitarist Bill Kearney] called me and said ‘Grateful Dead — two drummers — do you want to do it,'” England said. “I was already a big fan of Floodplane so it was an easy decision to make.”

Adding England to Floodplane created the new cover band —Hydroplane — a band within a band.

Hydroplane plays at People’s every other Thursday night, and since tonight is so close to Halloween, the band will play a special tribute.

Hydroplane members, guitarist Bill Kearney, bassist Joe Leonard, keyboardist Gwen Page, drummer Todd Cumming, England and Pinski will somewhat follow a Phish tradition.

“For the past three years, Phish has played someone else’s record,” England said. For this show Hydroplane is going to play everything off of Europe ’72, a Grateful Dead album.

“It’s not necessarily a Phish thing,” Page said. “It’s mostly because we know all of the songs off of the album.”

Having the same instrumentation as the Grateful Dead, it is easier to play covers, England said. “But we will play the songs as Hydroplane,” he said.

“We are somewhat very faithful to tunes and don’t vary too much,” England said.

“We don’t want to play them like the other bands because they already play them like that, but we are interested in playing their songs the way we do,” he added.

“We listen to a lot of live tapes to get our ideas,” Pinski said. “Songs are always different with the way they jam and the way we jam.”

Although a few Floodplane songs slip in between Phish and the Dead, “playing someone else’s songs takes off some of the pressure,” Pinski said. “This creates a more relaxed feel to the evening.”

The shows usually have a good turnout, England said.

“There are some people who come to People’s who aren’t your typical People’s crowd,” England said. “That speaks highly for us.”

“It’s more of a listening crowd,” Pinski said.

When England and Floodplane are not collaborating, each has an identity of its own.

Floodplane’s current line-up, Kearney, Leonard, Cumming, Page and Pinski, played their first show together May 24, 1997, at People’s. Some compare the band to Phish, but the band members feel they have developed into their own “jam-rock” band.

“We are very vocally orientated and play a lot of improvisation musically,” Pinski said. “There’s no annexed involved — no hate lyrics.”

While Floodplane is jamming on its own, England joins two others forming Ed and Red.

Hydroplane will be playing tonight at “Something’s Phishy, It’s Dead at Peoples,” at 9 p.m.

Floodplane will be playing at The Long Shot Friday night and Ed and Red will be playing at Thumbs Saturday.