Emo fans have turned these Boys into headliners

Boys Like Girls (from left, Martin Johnson, Paul DiGiovanni, John Keefe, and Bryan Donahue) play for some radio-contest winners on their tour bus. (JOE TABACCA FOR THE BOSTON GLOBE)

NEW HAVEN - She isn't going to leave the tour bus without getting her sneaker signed. So even as a pair of handlers sweep the rest of the young fans - and their mothers - back onto the street, 22-year-old Martin Johnson leans down and scrawls his name across the toe of the girl's bright-red Keds.

"Enjoy the show," he says with a smile.

It's the first night of the first headlining tour for Boston-based emo outfit Boys Like Girls, and everything is behind schedule. Sound check is in an hour; the line outside Toad's Place, a downtown rock club, already snakes around the block. There's a photo shoot in four minutes and a press interview in 15. Near the bus door, pockets of fans are already clamoring for a glimpse of the band. But for Johnson, Boys Like Girls's lanky frontman, it's the smaller stuff that's worth sweating: signing the jackets, and the photos, and the shoes - every last one - and smiling until his face hurts. In an interview later that afternoon, Johnson says that the band's recent successes, which include a best-selling record set for rerelease Tuesday, have only ratcheted up a "tremendous sense of pressure."

"Now that we're able to hire all these people, it makes things easier," he says, pointing at his entourage. "Still, we remember what it was like to haul our gear around to endless shows, to sleep on floors. What's most important is reaching out to people. And you have to work at that."

Oddly, Boys Like Girls's rapid rise, and its emphasis on Internet promotion and touring, has left the band with no real base in Boston. Although Johnson and company play a sold-out show at the Palladium in Worcester on Nov. 23 and were recently nominated for act of the year at the upcoming Boston Music Awards, they are part of a larger emo scene that does little to foster local fan allegiances. Bands are expected to go big - and to get there fast. Only later does a hometown become part of an artist's back story.

"It's a sort of '90s question, isn't it?" Johnson says. "Music isn't really localized anymore. Boston's our home, and we love it there, but our influences come from everywhere."

Boys Like Girls was formed two years ago by four Massachusetts natives, all veterans of the local music scene. Johnson was raised in Andover, a wealthy town 20 minutes north of Boston; he had experienced some success with a rock act called the Drive, but he was writing more songs than he could record.

So in the fall of 2005, Johnson asked two friends and occasional bandmates, drummer John Keefe, 24, and bassist Bryan Donahue, 22, to help him put together a new demo. Keefe roped in Paul DiGiovanni, 19 - who was still in high school at the time - for lead guitar, and the quartet hit the road.

Johnson, who says he never really felt like he was part of the Andover community, turned out to be a pro at navigating the national emo circuit. The band quickly shot to the top of the charts on PureVolume.com, an important website for fledging emo acts and their prospective fans. Within a few short months, Boys Like Girls was PureVolume's top unsigned artist based on fan support.

"They've always been well received," says Alex Gaskarth, whose band, All Time Low, has been a longtime tourmate of Boys Like Girls. "When we first met them, the word wasn't totally out yet, but they were still impressing people with their live show."

Soon, labels began reaching out to the band, convinced they had found the next Great Emo Hope. Matt Galle, who books the supergroup My Chemical Romance, expressed interest, as did famed producer Matt Squire. Columbia Records offered the band a contract, and within a month, Boys Like Girls was ushered into the studio for a session with Squire

"[Galle] found the band on PureVolume, and as soon as we heard them, we just flipped," says Squire, who has something of a magic touch for spotting pop-punk and emo talent. In recent years, he has produced albums for bands like Panic! at the Disco, Daphne Loves Darby, and the Receiving End of Sirens, all of which went on sell thousands of records.

"Martin's voice was striking and unique. The first thing I heard was 'The Great Escape,' and I knew it was going to be a smash right away," he adds, referring to an early and popular Boys Like Girls track.

In July, Johnson told USA Today that unless he's written a killer hook, "I feel like I haven't written a song, I've written a poem." This is as apt a way as any to describe the Boys Like Girls oeuvre, which leans heavily on sugary melodies. The typical track starts slow and ends fast; every chorus soars, and verse is bright and airy.

Boys Like Girls's self-titled debut, which was originally released on Red Ink in August 2006, is a big-hearted thing, stressing raw emotion over lyrical erudition. The conceits are standard emo fare: boy meets girl; one leaves the other; the hurt never goes away; hearts are crossed; smiles are exchanged; bridges are crossed (metaphorically and physically); navel-gazing is indulged; and messy secrets are spilled for all the world to see.

On "Hero/ Heroine," the album's first single, Johnson argues that there's no need to go much further: "I won't try to philosophize/ I'll just take a deep breath and I'll look in your eyes/ This is how I feel/ And it's so surreal."

The song was a smash with emo fans, and Boys Like Girls soon found its way onto the Billboard charts. (The band has remained in the Billboard 200 for 29 weeks, at one point rising to 55.) A few national tours followed - one with Buffalo-based Cute Is What We Aim For - along with a popular video for "The Great Escape."

So far, Boys Like Girls has sold more than 200,000 discs. In a nod to the band's success, on Tuesday Columbia will issue a deluxe edition of "Boys Like Girls," complete with tour photos, performance videos, and remixed tracks by Grammy-winning engineer Tom Lord-Alge.

Johnson is cagey about discussing the influences that drove the album and argues that "music is never generalized or categorized by the person who makes it." He pauses, then adds, "When you're in the situation, you're thinking, 'My influences are across the board.' "

Musicians are usually loath to lump their work into one genre. But in Johnson's case, it's also a bit of a dodge: Boys Like Girls is often written off as being too good at what it does - too glossy, too air-tight, too dependent on the established emo sound.

Some people, Johnson explains, "carry music around in their pocket, like a small treasure. They like it because no one else does. That's fine with me. All I'm asking for is a chance to get my songs to as many people as possible. Because that's all you can do."