Hinder won't hold back on entertaining fans, having fun

Just about every band that Austin Winkler idolizes has members who have spent time in rehab.

The vocalist for the Oklahoma hard-rock quintet Hinder grew up loving hard-partying groups like Aerosmith, Guns N' Roses, and Buckcherry -- the last of which appears alongside Hinder and Papa Roach as part of tomorrow night's WAAF Dirty Summer Circus at the Bank of America Pavilion.

Hinder has followed not only in the musical footsteps of its forebears with the crank-it-up-to-11 wallop of its double-platinum album "Extreme Behavior" -- featuring raunchy growlers like "Get Stoned" and the ubiquitous power ballad "Lips of an Angel" -- but also their extracurricular activities sheet.

Read just about any news about Winkler, guitarist Joe "Blower" Garvey, guitarist Mark King, bassist Mike Rodden, and drummer Cody Hanson and the young group's conspicuous consumption of substances and female companionship are sure to come up. They have even dubbed their summer trek "The Bad Boys of Rock Tour."

But on the phone with Winkler, speaking from an Indiana tour stop, he is reassuring that the four-year-old group has no plans to drown in its success.

"We grew up watching that and always wanted to be a part of it, so we're taking advantage of it, but we're not taking it for granted," the 24-year-old says in a courtly accent that is half Southern charm, half dude rocker. "We have our head on our shoulders. We know our limits."

Mistress Carrie, music director and afternoon radio jock at WAAF, confirms this with a laugh. "Hinder, they come in and they got all the attitude in the world as a rock band, but they're definitely opening the door to the studio for me. It's really cute," she says. "Their moms definitely raised them right even though there's 30 groupies on the bus after the show."

And they're playing a kind of rock 'n' roll that has fallen out of favor in recent years. The Hinder sound is unencumbered by the speedy guitars of thrash, the tortured soul vocals of emo, or the intellectual wordplay of indie rock. Winkler says the band wanted to bring back what he calls "straight-up fun rock 'n' roll."

Hence, tunes like "Get Stoned," in which Winkler proposes to an angry girl- friend, "Let's go home and get stoned/ We could end up making love instead of misery/ Go home and get stoned/ 'Cause the sex is so much better when you're mad at me."

But, Winkler says, as musicians, as opposed to rock stars, Hinder is looking for more than a good time. While there are comic and occasionally knuckleheaded sentiments on "Extreme Behavior," Winkler and co-writer Hanson are serious about their songwriting. If you strip off the macho arena-rock sheen, the four-part harmonies, obnoxiously memorable melodies, and teary break-up scenarios could work for everyone from the Backstreet Boys to Cheap Trick. This is clear when you dig a little deeper into the album, according to at least one fan.

"You can tell that they cared about the record, for sure; the production was top-notch," says Jack Ingram, who enjoyed a hit of his own on the country charts with his cover of "Lips of an Angel." "The song is fantastic, the melody, you can't escape it. As for the rest of the record, I'm not usually a huge fan of that type of stuff, but everything makes sense, everything goes together like a puzzle, the production and the lyrics and the melodies, what they're saying and who they are. The fact that they're a young rock band and they do want to [have sex] and smoke weed, their songs fit that. For me it was like, OK, these guys care about their craft."

"The thing is, is that there hasn't been any melody," says Winkler. "Where's the 'Sweet Child of Mine'? There's no melody in the songs. It just got lost in the '90s, and it's very important to have melody and hooks in a song. . . . We're a rock band, and we want to throw hooks and melodies in there. Why not? It works for us."

To the tune of 2 million copies sold and counting, although critical support has been in short supply. "You know what? It all comes down to the fans, anyway. We write for the fans, and we write for us. We don't write for critics, that's for damn sure. I'm not going to lose any sleep over it, I promise," says Winkler.

One group of fans in particular has Winkler and Hanson working hard on the next album. They opened three shows recently for Aerosmith. "It was definitely like going back to school. It was very, very fun," says Winkler, still sounding a bit awed.

So did the original, now sober, bad boys of rock offer up any pearls of wisdom?

"They just said keep up the good work, so that's what we're going to try to do."