Fuel Show Should Be a Gas After ‘Sunburn’

When Fuel takes to the stage at the Galaxy Concert Theatre on Sunday night, expect the kind of spirited aggression mixed with melody and nuance that marked classic guitar-band music of the late 1960s and much of the 1970s.

The reason, figures Fuel guitarist/songwriter Carl Bell, is that he steeped himself in the 500 rock albums his brother won from a radio show.

“I got to listen to the complete Led Zeppelin and Rolling Stones’ catalogues,” he said of that golden age of rock stars and blustery guitars. “I just inherited this vast library of great rock music, as well as some other kinds of stuff.”

It was a turning point for the Kenton, Tenn.-youngster, who lived in household without a television set and took up music instead.

Add to the quartet’s musical sound Bell’s brooding lyrics and Brett Scallions’ sometimes angst-laced vocalizing, and you have a stylistic combination that has been gaining more and more fans for the band nationwide.

Fuel’s debut album “Sunburn”--released less than three months ago--recently hit No. 79 on Billboard’s Top 200. The “Shimmer” single has gotten considerable exposure in rock radio markets across the United States.

Until Fuel signed a recording deal with 550 Music in May 1997, the band was strictly a grass-roots operation. In 1994, the quartet recorded an eight-song cassette, which they sold at gigs and in stores. In 1995, they moved from western Tennessee to Harrisburg, Pa., figuring that the central Pennsylvania region would be conveniently close to major touring markets such as New York City, Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia.

“We’ve been a do-it-yourself project for a long time,” Bell, 31, said in a telephone interview. “We used to travel with our own full light show and [public address] system. We would go and set up all that stuff before the show. Then after we would play, we would tear it all back down and pack it into the truck and drive back home. Sometimes we would get home at 8 or 9 in the morning.”

Two years ago, the band financed a bare-bones mini-CD. “Porcelain” was distributed and promoted to retailers and radio stations. It sold 10,000 copies.

Yet the major-league success the band craved didn’t happen. Bell was splitting time between Fuel and college. He’d returned to school with the thought of becoming an English teacher.

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“I had decided to get myself another parachute so I could maybe land on my feet somewhere else,” Bell said. “I was back in school actually up until a month before we got signed (to 550 Music). I still had music in my mind, but at the same time I was thinking, ‘Let’s look at reality here.’ ”

The band’s growing popularity in and around the Pennsylvania area eventually captured the interest of major recording companies. One gig at Tramps in New York City was attended by representatives of about 25 different record companies.

Being courted by record labels “was probably the most exciting time of the whole process for us,” Bell said. “We worked so long to make it happen and to get to see the right people. Then suddenly those same people are coming to you. One person said to me at Tramps, ‘How does it feel to be the queen of the prom?’ ”

Part of the band’s approach remains being as cordial and accessible to supporters as possible. Scallions once said that Fuel members are more interested in making friends than fans, an attitude shaped in part by the band’s experience winning followers one club at a time during its do-it-yourself days.

Credit some of that, too, to the rural roots. Bell’s hometown of Kenton--from which Fuel bassist Jeff Ambercrombie also hails--has two stoplights. And Without a TV, he had plenty of time to develop as a guitarist and songwriter.

“It’s easy to sit in front of a TV and let it control your mind,” Bell said. “I would have to find other ways to keep myself entertained. I would pick up a guitar or I would listen to music. . . . My brothers read a lot. . . . I was more into the music.”

Ironically, however, one of Bell’s more memorable moments occurred while watching the band’s video for “Shimmer” on TV in his Harrisburg apartment. He realized he’d written the song on the very couch he was sitting on.

“I saw it go full circle,” he said. “You realize that the song is no longer confined to this room. It’s out there in the world doing its thing.”

* Fuel and Black Lab appear Sunday at the Galaxy Concert Theatre, 3503 S. Harbor Blvd., Santa Ana. (714) 957-0600.