Rob Hyman of The Hooters called for a phone interview on July 13 from a tour stop in Germany.

He didn’t mention the size of the venue they were playing that day, but it’s safe to say the band was in front of a larger crowd on that same date in 1985.

The Hooters were the first band to take the stage at Live Aid in their hometown of Philadelphia, playing for nearly 90,000 people at John F. Kennedy Stadium and a worldwide television audience that has been estimated at 1.9 billion (OK, JFK Stadium might not have been at full capacity at noon and not every television was watching the charity concert at that exact time, but it’s a larger audience than 99.9999 percent of musicians ever will see).

“We all watched the video recording of the performance on the bus ride,” Hyman said. “It’s amazing to us to watch, and as time goes on it’s even more amazing that we did it, a big day for the band.”

Surprisingly, it wasn’t even The Hooters first time playing the stadium. In 1982, before the band was signed to Columbia Records and released its multi-Platinum-selling album “Nervous Night,” the band opened for The Who, The Clash and Santana there.

Hyman wasn’t sure if that prior experience made Live Aid any easier.

“I guess we were kind of ready, as ready as you can be for that kind of show, but watching it today, it never ceases to amaze us that we did it, and that we pulled it off,” he said.

The Hooters — Hyman, lead vocals, keyboard, accordion and melodica; Eric Bazilian, lead vocals, lead guitar, mandolin, harmonica and saxophone; David Ousikkinen, drums; John Lilley, rhythm guitar, mandolin, dobro and keyboards; Fran Smith Jr., bass guitar and backing vocals; and Tommy Williams, lead guitar, mandolin, mandola and vocals — will be in Youngstown on Friday for the opening show on the I Want My ’80s Tour with Rick Springfield, Paul Young and Tommy Tutone.

On the European tour, the band has been mixing those ’80s hits — “And We Danced,” “All You Zombies” and “Day by Day” — with songs from “Rocking & Swing,” the group’s first album of new music since 2010.

With Bazilian spending half the year in Sweden (where his wife is from), Smith living in South Carolina, Williams in Long Island, N.Y., and the rest in the Philadelphia area, it’s harder to get everyone together to record, Hyman said. But the band was inspired to work on new songs after its annual gig at the Keswick Theatre near Philadelphia, where the band was joined by a horn section.

“We dug into the early roots of the band, which was ska and reggae,” he said. “Only a few years into our existence, we changed some personnel and changed our sound along the way, but I guess a lightbulb went off and we went back to our roots. We went back to the early, early stuff and started writing some things, took some of our old songs and rearranged them, and it came together pretty quick over the winter. It was a burst of energy. One thing led to another and the next thing we knew, we had an album. It felt good. It was fun, a little bit of a detour for the band.”

Hyman was an early adopter of reggae. A family friend owned a little motel in Jamaica, and his family vacationed there in the ’60s and ’70s.

“I’ve been listening to ska and reggae as long as I’ve been listening to the Beatles and Stones,” he said. “I’ve always been into that stuff … By the ’80s — when we were putting this band together after several other bands that did not really happen — we had heard The Police and we heard the Two Tone scene in England with The Specials and English Beat and Madness. We got into that circuit and it felt really natural. This is kind of a return to that.”

When asked how the band would be promoting a new album on a tour marketing nostalgia, Hyman said, “Good question. It’s a little bit of a head spinner. Back in the states, it’s going to be a short set, obviously geared toward the ’80s material, which we still play and stand behind it, mostly from ‘Nervous Night,’ the first national album.

“We were talking about it today on the bus ride, getting a setlist together that touches on all of those songs, because obviously that’s what people want to hear and what we want to play. I’m not sure how much new material we’ll get to. It’s going to be quick, but we’re ready for it and getting excited. It’s our first U.S. tour in many years.”

The guys who will be playing those ’80s hits in Youngstown are essentially the same ones who recorded them. Bazilian, Hyman and Ousikkinen have been together since 1980. Lilley joined the band in ’83, so he was part of the making of “Nervous Night” and was on stage at Live Aid.

Smith has been with the band since 1987, and the group expanded to six members with Williams in 2010.

“It’s a family, it’s a band of brothers,” Hyman said. “At this point in our lives, we appreciate that we can still do it and do it pretty hard. I think the chemistry and personality is a big part of what we have to offer on stage. There’s great camaraderie between all of us. We enjoy playing with each other is the simple answer. We entertain ourselves as well as the audience on stage.”

In addition to The Hooters’ music, Bazilian and Hyman have some hits that many fans might not realize.

Before “Nervous Night,” the pair were recruited by friend and producer Rick Chertoff to be the backing band for an eccentric female singer recording her debut album — Cyndi Lauper.

Bazilian played guitar on Lauper’s “She’s So Unusual.” Hyman played the keyboard and also cowrote the hit single “Time After Time” with Lauper.

A decade later, Chertoff recruited them to do the same thing for another new female singer — Joan Osborne. In addition to playing on the record, the duo cowrote half of the songs on “Relish,” and Bazilian was sole writer credited on Osborne’s breakthrough hit, “One of Us.”

“We’ve been fortunate to have some of those opportunities, and we throw some of those songs into the show as well,” Hyman said.

If you go …

WHAT: I Want My ’80s Tour with Rick Springfield, The Hooters, Paul Young and Tommy Tutone

WHEN: 7:30 p.m. Aug. 4

WHERE: Youngstown Foundation Amphitheatre, 201 S. Phelps St., Youngstown

HOW MUCH: Tickets range from $40 to $145 and are available at the Covelli Centre’s Southwoods Health box office and through Ticketmaster.