Their Hard Work Pays Off Handsomely

The short life story to date on Orange County pop-punk band Handsome Devil would make most people think the group should change its first name to Lucky.

A few months after forming last year, the quartet played its first major show with Lit at the opening of the House of Blues in Anaheim. The members of Lit were so impressed that they quickly offered Handsome Devil a deal on their new Dirty Martini record label. Less than a year after that career-launching show, Handsome Devil has released its debut album, “Love and Kisses From the Underground,” and is now on a national tour that brings the group home for four Southland shows starting Wednesday at the House of Blues in West Hollywood.

That preternaturally assured debut album abounds with hook-filled songs bursting with punk energy, shredding heavy-metal guitar work and even a dash of rap-rock, all of which sounds like a gold mine for modern-rock radio.

Does upward mobility come any easier?

Handsome Devil frontman Danny Walker has heard that a lot lately while the group has been on the road, but he shrugs it off good-naturedly.

“We get a lot of questions like ‘What kind of credibility do you have?”’ says Walker, who is joined in the band by guitarist-singer Billie Stevens, drummer Keith Morgan and bassist Darren Roberts, who range in age from 28 to 32. “But a first release is not in this case really a first release. Each of us is bringing all the experience he’s had to this group, because we’ve all been in several bands.”

Even though Walker has been writing songs and playing guitar since he was 14, Handsome Devil is the first band in which he’s also been the singer.

Previously, he had focused on his guitar playing and songwriting, which is what first grabbed the attention of Lit guitarist and songwriter Jeremy Popoff.

“Danny was somebody I’d seen play in a club a couple of years ago, and he just blew me away,” says Popoff, who co-produced “Love and Kisses” with the band and Smithereens producer Ed Stasium.

“That was the most impressed I’d ever been by a guitar player in another band. It stuck in my mind, and I was also impressed with his songwriting. He was really talented, so I hit him up one night when he was playing at Club 369 and told him we ought to work together, and that I was a big fan.”

That was in the late ‘90s, when Walker was in Wank, a group that made an album for Maverick Records, then disbanded.

“When Wank ended, I just wanted to press on and try to form the best band in the world,” Walker says. “Handsome Devil is definitely a much better band, and I feel like with this group we have a legitimate shot, that it’s a true rock ‘n’ roll band and we’re not as green as most new bands.”

In “Makin’ Money,” the first single from the album, Walker sings a wittily sarcastic put-down of those who yearn for rock stardom, from the perspective of a workaday musician who ekes out a living through hard work:

I get it, it’s funny

You know I’m making money

Not summer, but sunny

Cool like an Easter Bunny

You get it, I’m on it

I got the milk and honey

You make me laugh--ha ha ha....

The “ha ha ha” tag is one of those instantly unforgettable hooks, the kind the Offspring excels at and at which Walker shows equal skill.

“Samurai” lampoons a high-flying music business executive the band once dealt with; “Sorry Charlie” puts a twist on the view of the outcast loner often lionized in punk rock; and “Hard Living Clean” is a breakneck tempo cowpunk lament about how “sobriety is misery.”

“When I think of great songwriters, I think of Elvis Costello, the Clash and the Beatles, and when I think of great rock ‘n’ roll songs, I think of AC/DC and things that make you bob your head,” Walker says. “The spectrum of influences on this band is so wide. Because we grew up in Orange County, we’ve seen all those bands--we’re big Social Distortion fans. But we don’t want to throw ourselves in any particular box. We try to think of the best things our favorite bands did and mold them into Handsome Devil songs.”

As for his penchant for strong melodies, Walker quips, “My theory is: ‘Don’t bore us, bring us the chorus.’ I absolutely want people to be singing our songs on the way home. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that.”

*

Handsome Devil plays with Hoobastank on Wednesday at House of Blues, 8430 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, 7:30 p.m. $12. (323) 848-5100; next Monday with Good Charlotte at the Troubadour, 9081 Santa Monica Blvd., West Hollywood. 8 p.m. $10 to $12. (310) 276-6168; Dec. 16 with Zebrahead at House of Blues Anaheim, 1530 S. Disneyland Drive, Anaheim, 7 p.m. $15.50. (714) 778-2583; Dec. 30 at the Whisky, 8901 W. Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, 8 p.m. (310) 652-4202.