BoDeans Are Back : The Wisconsin rockers’ U.S. tour brings them through Ventura for the second time in six months.

Bo Jackson, Bo Derek, Bo Peep, Beau Bridges; and for the sake of alliteration and this piece, how ‘bout those BoDeans, this week’s musical victims?

The band has been on the road so long, they’ll actually be playing the Ventura Theatre for the second time in less than six months as part of the same tour. Probably they just want you to buy a copy of their fourth album, “Black and White.”

“The tour is going great,” said bass player Bob Griffin in a recent phone interview. “Are we rich yet? Not really. The record company’s rich, but we’re not. The record is the best yet--it’s outsold the others. We just released “Paradise” as the album’s second single after the title tune.”

Four albums in five years is pretty fast by rock ‘n’ roll standards unless you’re Black Flag, a band that seemed to put out an album a month for too many months.

Back in 1986 when the BoDeans’ “Love & Hope & Sex & Dreams” came out, it was easy to remember the boys in the band. They all had the same last name. There was Sammy BoDean, Beau BoDean, Guy BoDean and Bob BoDean.

“That was just something the press put on us,” Griffin said. “They just started doing it, but finally, we didn’t want it to go on anymore.”

The BoDeans may be the most famous thing from Wisconsin since the Packers, cheese and beer. The band’s two frontmen, Sammy Llanas and Kurt Neumann, first met in high school in Waukesha and did the old “let’s start a band” thing. It worked. The band’s third demo sufficiently impressed the impressionable at Slash Records to result in a deal.

“Sammy and Kurt started the band eight years ago,” Griffin said. “At first, it was just them writing songs and doing demos with a drummer, but they never had a bass player. I did the bass tracks on the demo and I used to get on their case about getting a bass player for the band.

“A few months later, they got signed on the basis of a four-song demo and I became the fourth member of the band.”

The BoDeans were at first hailed as roots-rock gods who would certainly go far. But after the first album, serious questions arose. Could they overcome the myth that most bands have one good album inside them and nothing else?

Apparently so. The BoDeans’ new album is full of pop rock melodies that’ll survive even after a lot of playing.

“Although Sammy and Kurt are the main songwriters, we’re all influenced by a lot of different music,” Griffin said. “You can tell that whatever sounds good to us, is good. We just play straight-ahead danceable, energetic rock ‘n’ roll. We’re all about having a good time and getting feedback from the crowd.”

Yeah, that and driving around in an endless carousel of rock ‘n’ roll that alights every six months in the Poinsettia City. Hey, it beats working.

“We really enjoy going out and traveling around and seeing the country and playing live,” Griffin said.

Being on tour this long gives the band ample time to learn to spell “Howard Johnsons” and also the opportunity to play with plenty of different bands.

“We’ve played with so many bands, I guess we’d like to open for the Rolling Stones sometime,” Griffin said.

Now for the important stuff--is the Pack really back? Clearly, this is a trick question because the Green Bay Packers have been crummier longer than even Tampa Bay.

“No, the Pack’s not back if they keep playing the way they have so far this year. They couldn’t beat a high school team.”

And Bo don’t know doodly about no ‘Deans . . .