Handclaps in pop songs provoke some to dance. They made Blues Traveler keyboardist Ben Wilson take his penis out of his pants in a recording studio.

“Well, we did a clap track and sure enough, I whipped it out,” Wilson said. “I don’t think I’ll whip it out on stage. You can get arrested for that. You can do it in a studio with the guys to get a laugh.”

The band will play tonight at the Georgia Theatre.

“I hadn’t seen the ad for it until I looked in the newspaper and I was pretty excited,” said Tommy McGahee, a junior from Athens and the digital archiving director at WUOG.

“I like the fact that there’s a place downtown that’s trying to bring larger bands.”

“Blues Traveler was, I think, one of the first bands I really listened to when I was younger,” McGahee said.

Blues Traveler, best known for a number of pop music hits in the mid-1990s, is to release “Cover Yourself,” a greatest hits album where songs picked by fans are re-worked into new acoustic versions. The album comes out Oct. 30.

“For (the band’s) 20th anniversary, we expanded to getting fans involved, having them take a poll of what they wanted to hear,” Wilson said.

The album was produced by Jim Eno, bassist of the band Spoon.

The band’s anniversary is significant for all of its members, including Wilson, though he joined in 2000.

“Everyone thinks we must be 65-year-old men, but we’re still relatively young. These guys got pretty famous at a pretty young age,” Wilson said of original members Popper, 40, guitarist Chandler Kinchla, 38, and drummer Brendan Hill, 37.

“It’s just a great thing to be a part of a band that’s had so much success for so long,” Wilson said. “Twenty years and a Grammy award and some number-one hits and 15 million records sold. I think that’s something to be proud of.”

Wilson said of their achievements, he most wanted to stress the band’s 20th anniversary and its new album.

“And keep that cock thing on the down-low,” Wilson said.