Toadies’ Jump Up Charts Built on Months of Touring : Pop Beat: Band discovers that landing an album with a major record label is no quick ticket to Easy Street.

A word of advice for indie bands: That long-held dream of deal with a major label isn’t a free pass to Easy Street.

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Consider Toadies. Interscope Records released the Ft. Worth quartet’s major-label debut album, “Rubberneck,” in August, 1994. But by the start of the new year the album had not even entered the charts. The first two singles earned almost no radio or MTV airplay, and plans for a third were in limbo. To the band, sweating it out in a tour van, it looked as if Interscope had given up on the album before it even got started.

“We were doing everything we could do, and the label kept pushing things back and changing things around,” says singer-guitarist Todd Lewis, during a recent tour stop here. “So we were about ready to . . . move on to work with someone else.”

More advice: Be patient.

Fourteen months after its release, “Rubberneck” is a hit. It’s made a steady climb to the Top 10 on the college/alternative charts with the help of an extensive tour schedule and a dark alternative hit called “Possum Kingdom.” (The band’s on the White Zombie bill at Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre tonight and the San Diego Sports Arena on Sunday.)

The pattern isn’t unusual, especially for a hard-rocking, metal-oriented band like Toadies. Major-label debuts by the likes of Blind Melon, Alice in Chains, Soundgarden and even Pearl Jam have followed similar paths.

“Just like with Pearl Jam, the band has had to tour for over a year and build a fan base before it could sell records,” says Rob Tarantino, the national radio promoter for Interscope and a key force behind the album’s success. “And like Pearl Jam, as well as Soundgarden and Alice in Chains, they had to make it on rock radio before they could cross over into alternative radio.”

It took one station in particular to get Toadies’ hit started: Tampa, Fla.’s WXTB, which started playing “Possum Kingdom” heavily around the end of last year without much urging from Interscope.

“Possum Kingdom,” which takes its name from a Texas state park, spread to other rock stations, then crossed over to alternative stations in the summer. The video recently moved up to MTV’s coveted Buzz Clip bin--again, months after it debuted.

The band’s manager, Tom Bunch, has a simple explanation for the payoff: “Toadies have a hit record because the Toadies have worked their butts off [touring],” he says.

The question of what’s next for the Toadies is a confusing one. Though the record has finally become a hit, the band has already done its fair share to support it by touring for more than a year.

Meanwhile, stations that have been playing “Possum Kingdom” for a few months have been scrambling for a follow-up. Most have started playing “I Come From the Water,” but it is still unclear whether the song and an accompanying video will be officially released--the album is more than a year old, after all.

“Not many bands have gone the route we have, that we know,” Lewis says, adding, “some day I bet this will all be funny.”

* Toadies play with White Zombie tonight at Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre, 8800 Irvine Center Drive, Irvine, 8 p.m., $21.50. (714) 855-4515. Also Sunday at the San Diego Sports Arena, 3500 Sports Arena Blvd., San Diego, 7 p.m. $23 in advance, $24.50 at door. (619) 224-4176.