Driving Another Rock Route : Brian O’Neal has shifted from Bus Boys memories to the Jimi Hendrix-influenced Black Bart band.

These past 15 years in the pop music business have taught rocker Brian O’Neal some important life lessons. As the singer and songwriter of the now-defunct Bus Boys, O’Neal saw both wide acclaim and, finally, commercial disappointment before the band broke up in late 1990.

“When it went away, it was painful at first,” O’Neal says, sitting in his West Hollywood apartment, surrounded by tape machines, guitars and an upright piano. “But it really helped me to firmly and forever rediscover that I’m into it because I love music. I am as happy in this room with this stuff as I can possibly be.

“I have to remind myself to go to sleep sometimes.”

So it wasn’t difficult, he says, to finally leave behind the Bus Boys, whose history included rave reviews for their 1980 debut album from the likes of Rolling Stone magazine, screen time in the movie “48 Hours” with Eddie Murphy, and continuing popularity on the live circuit. The Bus Boys were also able to, at least temporarily, break through a barrier to black musicians in a local rock scene then dominated by white players.

What has replaced all that now for O’Neal is a new band called Black Bart, which performs Saturday night at FM Station in North Hollywood.

With Black Bart, O’Neal has moved on from the Bus Boys’ roaring bar-band rock to a heavier sound, influenced by his memories of Jimi Hendrix and other ‘60s players. “It just came out differently,” he says. “I was aware that it wasn’t going to be an extension of the Bus Boys. That was fine with me.”

O’Neal chose to name his band after the notorious Western outlaw after discovering that the original Black Bart, despite his grim moniker, actually robbed stagecoaches without ever firing a shot. In fact, says O’Neal, he was rarely armed, and usually made his escapes on foot, after leaving scraps of poetry for his baffled victims.

“Something about the spirit of what he was doing, and the poetry, made sense to me,” says O’Neal, who expects his band to be busy in the coming months playing local clubs, before embarking on a tour of the Midwest and East Coast.

“Brian’s great, very musical,” says Black Bart guitarist Stefan Kennedy. “He’s even expanded my own look at different kinds of music. Black Bart is a rock ‘n’ roll blues band and Brian’s blues singing is what adds a special flavor to the band.”

Black Bart--which also includes bassist Sean McNabb and drummer Steve Felix (another Bus Boys alum)--has also just released “Bootleg Breakout” on O’Neal’s own Rattlesnake Venom Records. The opening track, “You Don’t Know,” documents O’Neal’s reaction to increased scenes of violence in pop music and elsewhere.

He remembers how much he looked up to his musical heroes as a child--people like Sly Stone, Stevie Wonder and Hendrix--and worries about the impact of today’s glamorizing of gunplay. “It’s just gone too far--for my taste,” says the songwriter, who grew up in the South Bay, and attended schools in Compton, Gardena and Carson. “I don’t even want to see John Wayne shoot somebody. Enough already. There’s too much of that in our streets already.

“When you’ve gotten to a point where the coolest thing a person can do is shoot you, it sickens me, it hurts me. If you want to impress me as a man, build something, nurture something, grow something, be there for something.”

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WHERE AND WHEN

What: Black Bart, featuring Brian O’Neal.

Location: FM Station, 11700 Lankershim Blvd., North Hollywood.

Hours: 11 p.m. Saturday.

Price: $10.

Call: (818) 769-2220.