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Joe Felts works the lead guitar for Hit By a Bus during a recent rehearsal before the band set off on the three-month Extreme Tour throughout the West. Felts likes to call the band's hardcore sound "energy rock."

Galen Clarke/Tribune

Hit By a Bus rehearses in a back room of Heights First Church of the Nazarene in the Northeast Heights. Gio Urbina (left) plays keyboards and shares vocals, and Joe Felts (center) plays lead guitar.

Galen Clarke/Tribune

Jonathan Anderson packs a box full of spare parts into the trailer the band is using on its three-month road trip as part of the Extreme Tour. Anderson founded the band nearly 10 years ago to play a talent show at his high school.

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The band members of Hit By a Bus slept on the floor of a church in Fernley, Nev., on Sunday night. Ah, the glamorous life of rock stars on tour.

The veteran Albuquerque band loaded up a van and a trailer a week ago and set out on a three-month odyssey as part of the Extreme Tour that is trekking all over the West this summer.

The tour will hit a lot of church venues and skate parks. While the Extreme folks help with food, laundry, lodging and gas, it's not necessarily four-star accommodations.

Keyboardist/singer Gio Urbina said the first two nights on the road were spent in motels, but then it was to the sleeping bags and air mattresses for the Spartan church accommodations.

But the band did get a home-cooked spaghetti dinner that night, she said. And band members brought care packages along, courtesy of family and friends back in Albuquerque.

Nonetheless, Urbina said, "We're getting used to being hungry in the morning."

And then there is one of the most important guidelines for this road trip she'll share in close quarters with her four male bandmates:

"Rule No. 1 is we're going to all have Ziploc bags," she said. "And all dirty socks go in the Ziploc bags."

Hit By a Bus has been together in some configuration for nearly 10 years. It was founded by guitarist/vocalist Jonathan Anderson, who said he and two high school pals got together to play for a talent show.

Anderson figures 23 people have passed through the band. Nate Allen, for instance, is the eighth bass player. Others in the lineup now: drummer Joshua Salinas and guitarist Joe Felts, the youngest member of the band.

And all five of them quit their jobs to commit to this tour. Urbina worked a year-and-a-half for PNM, and Anderson handed in his notice at a delivery service. The other three had jobs in the food service industry.

They figured it was time to see whether they could make it full time as a band.

"Our goal is to play music," Salinas said. "We don't have to be big, famous rock stars. . . . Basically, if we have enough to pay our phone bills and food and rent, that's pretty much it."

The band has done tours before, as far east as Milwaukee, where they opened for Trapt at Summerfest. (For that gig, Urbina said, they drove 22 hours straight from Las Cruces; last week they drove 19 hours without pause to get to Nevada.)

Hit By a Bus is getting airplay, locally on hard-rock outlet KTEG-FM (104.7) and on college radio stations elsewhere. Songs from the latest disc, the "Detonator" EP, have gotten spins.

"It's kind of cool when you turn on the radio and hear a couple of songs and then your song comes on," Anderson said.

Their sound is, for lack of a better term, hard rock. Maybe nouveau hardcore. Felts, the guitar player, likes "energy rock."

At the Hyperactive Music Festival last month, Anderson said, they submitted their music for a critique, and the SubPop rep flagged it as metal. But that doesn't work, he said.

"Metal bands would make fun of us," Anderson said, "because we're not metal enough for the metal people."

"Our goal is to be different," Salinas said. "We don't want to stick to one genre."

Anderson and Urbina write most of the lyrics, but the others collaborate in the studio and during rehearsals.

"By the time we're done, it's a completely different song; it's changed so much," Salinas said. "Hopefully for the better."

"It's a slow process," Anderson added.

Anderson and Urbina are Christians, which informs their songwriting. The others add contrast.

For instance, Anderson's mostly positive, uplifting lyrics for "Greatest Generation," the ballad of a soldier, were tweaked during rehearsals. Felts, like Lennon would do to McCartney, brought a dark edge to the song with the line, "You're a waste of time, a waste of space."

And they do have songs called "Charcoal and Razorblades" (with Urbina shouting quite devilishly) and "Ann Taylor Must Die."

The band doesn't bill itself as Christian, and Urbina said the others in the band are cool with the mix and with the theme of the summer tour.

"It's kind of a statement, too," Urbina said, "that the five of us get along, considering our differences."

When Hit By a Bus returns in the fall, the band plans to return to the studio to flesh out "Detonator" into a full-length disc.

The band's first LP, "Outside the Van Door," was recorded at Stepford Studios in Santa Fe. "Detonator" was produced by Sylvia Massy, who has recorded such superstars as Tool and System of a Down at her studio in Weed, Calif.

Anderson was proud of the fact that the mixing console they used with Massy was the same one used for Led Zeppelin's "Coda" album. Those classic rock gods are the common denominator when the band's influences are listed. But more modern bands come up, too.

"There's always a band that sparks something in your head when you're a kid," Urbina said. "For me it was Smashing Pumpkins." And you can hear that in the song "Pumpkin."

Other influences cited by band members: Radiohead, Bjork, Tool, System of a Down, Mudvayne, Blindside, Muse and Metallica.

Anderson said an Epic Records A&R guy once chastised them during a critique for hopping from genre to genre, often from minute to minute to minute in the same song.

"He said, `You're going to be eaten alive!' " Anderson recalled.

The Extreme Tour passes through New Mexico - Albuquerque, Glorietta, Espa¤ola, Santa Fe and Madrid - in late July and early August.

We'll check in with them along the way to see how they're surviving on the road.