When you have a band with 11 core members, things can get complicated.

Nashville-based Kansas Bible Company’s lead guitarist Mikey Boo “Ruth Tooth” Ruth shed some light on the band’s “odd microculture,”explaining everything from their signature nicknames to how all the members fuse their styles into one sound.

A member since their college conception in 2008, Ruth sees the nicknames as an extended inside joke within the group of close friends.

“There are just so many of us, and we spend so much time together, in the van or living together, that this stuff just happens,” Ruth laughed. “If you just met us, it would be hard to keep track of who each person is because we refer to each other as different things.”

The name of the band itself is also a shared reference between the group. They pulled the name from their favorite movie “Paper Moon.”

“The premise is that it’s set in the Great Depression with a father-daughter duo, and the father is a fraudulent bible salesman,” Ruth explained. “There’s only one or two scenes in the movie where he refers to it as the Kansas Bible Company. It’s an obscure reference to a movie we all like a lot.”

In addition to their inside jokes, the band’s cohesive tastes and interests aid in making musical collaboration a little easier. Ruth said the process generally starts with one member writing a song and presenting it to the group. From there, the members work out their own parts before bringing them all together for the final product.

“It takes a while to develop it into fruition,” Ruth said. “Because there’s three guitars, four horns, two percussionists and this and that, it takes a long time for everything to fall into place.”

Each section of instruments will develop their own part as a group, and then the sections will meld their interpretations of the original melody into the finished song.

“Sometimes it takes six months to get to the point where we feel good playing it live,” Ruth said.

With this much individual creative license going into each song, it is difficult for Ruth to categorize the band as playing one specific genre.

“I think at times an overall style is hard to pin down because we all write collaboratively,” Ruth said. “I think ultimately, every part that’s written by somebody is filtered through their own scope of influences. In a four-piece band, it may be a little easier to pin down because there’s less going on.”

However, the band does have some overlapping idols. Ruth states that The Beatles “obviously” are one of the bands main influences.

“They’re kind of a guiding light for songwriting and production and just experimentation and what can be done,” Ruth elaborated.

The band has also been compared to Chicago many times, mainly due to their incorporation of a horn section in a rock and roll band.

Kansas Bible Company will be performing at Volapalooza this year, and Ruth holds high hopes for the band’s live performance.

“It’s something that we’ve worked really hard on for four or five years now, and we’ve gotten to a point where we feel like it’s really tight and strong,” Ruth said.

Ruth said the band feels honored to be opening for headliners that they “used to listen to in high school.”

“It will be interesting to play for a crowd that’s there to see these huge names,” Ruth said, “and to just try to fit into that concert experience and to provide something positive to people that they like.”