After The Calling performed on “The Tonight Show” last week, vocalist Alex Band was in for a surprise. Host Jay Leno summoned Band over to the guest couch and pulled up a clip of the rock star’s first appearance on the program  when he was 11 years old.

“Jay walked into a Blockbuster video that was by my house in Hollywood,” Band remembered. “He wanted to find the most delinquent account, what family had the highest amount of late charges. He pulled it up, and of course, it was my family; we were always bad at that. But he also noticed that we were the only people to have rented this movie which Blockbuster had told them was the worst movie that they carried: ‘Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death.'”

“So I got on the phone and he’s like, ‘I hear you rented this “Cannibal Women” movie.'”

“And I’m like (nonchalantly), ‘Oh, my dad made that.’ He’s made all these weird cult movies like ‘Puppet Master’ and ‘Re-Animator.'”

In a coincidence fit for TV, the singer explained to Leno that his father, Charles Band, was the founder of Full Moon Entertainment. The worldwide company has for years cornered the market on low-budget horror and science fiction flicks.

“I pretty much grew up on these sets of bad horror movies,” Band said. “Naked women and all that kind of stuff.”

If that weren’t enough to expose Band to the entertainment industry at an early age, then landing a major label recording contract at only 15 certainly took care of the rest.

“When we got signed, I was in 10th grade and Aaron (Kamin, Calling guitarist and co-founder) was in pre-med at UCLA. The people at RCA made it a point to say, ‘Look, you guys are going to be doing this and that, you can’t be in school.’ So both of us stopped school to concentrate on it.”

Unfortunately, it took another half-decade for the career to fully materialize. During that stretch, the songwriting team of Band and Kamin were essentially shelved by the label, but legally bound so that they couldn’t record for anyone else.

“When this came up, I was like, ‘I’m not doing school anymore, I’m going to be a rock star.’ And all my friends are jealous. Then the years go on, and I’m working for my dad, signed to this major deal without any money coming in. It was so bittersweet.”

Luckily for the musician, this situation didn’t turn into a plot from one of his family’s horror movies. (“Curse of the Corporate Rock Master” or “Assault of the Stifling Contract” perhaps?) Instead, Band and band became a hit. The Calling’s debut album, “Camino Palmero,” arrived in stores last July. And on the strength of the mournful tune “Wherever You Will Go,” the emotional rock act currently boasts the No. 7 song in the nation  one that the quintet has watched become something of a sensation on MTV.

“The real meaning of that song is that someone in Aaron’s family and someone in my family passed away pretty much at the same time,” he revealed. “It’s a song about almost wanting to go with the person once they’re gone. RCA wanted to make the song not so heavy of a topic. So in the video we went with these little teeny girls gettin’ cheated on by their boyfriends. It lightened it up a little bit, but that’s not what the song is. I would have done that differently. But I can only argue so much, because the friggin’ video has been on ‘TRL’ every day. So I can’t say that they didn’t do the right move.”

Band wagon

Despite the industry connections, it wasn’t Band’s father that helped The Calling come together, but rather his sister. When Band was in high school, his older sibling Taryn began dating Kamin. Based on mutual musical interests, the guitarist developed a friendship with “little brother” that ultimately lasted longer than his romantic relationship.

“That ended a good five years ago,” Band recalled while enjoying a day off from touring in Albuquerque, N.M. “They dated maybe eight months. He started playing with me so much that as soon as we got signed, all this stuff was happening with her brother that it was kind of weird for her. I don’t think they were really meant for each other. Maybe their only meaning was for me to meet Aaron.”

When RCA finally decided to commit to the young act, the two songwriters were given full jurisdiction over auditioning the rest of the group, eventually selecting Los Angeles-area guitarist Sean Woolstenhulme, bassist Billy Mohler and drummer Nate Wood.

“The other guys were hired after we’d written this record,” he said. “These guys were brought in like a backup band. But obviously in the last year and a half, we’ve become close to them  so much so that they’re part of the band. They’re never going to be writing with me or Aaron or be the focal point of what has been in the past and what created it all. But please, they’re the luckiest guys in the world.”

Aside from treating the hired guns to an instant record contract, Band soon will offer his tour mates a unique experience when this current U.S. excursion concludes.

“I’m real excited because we’re going to about nine different countries next month after this tour,” he said. “I actually got them to give us three days off at my family’s castle in (Giove) Italy. … My dad has this castle where every year I’ve gone and spent the summer in Europe staying there. It’ll be cool to have my band come there. And it’s all souped up with servants and all that.”

Universal connection

While Band’s road to fame hasn’t exactly been paved with food stamps, he believes his emotional experiences are ones that any listener can identify with.

“Even though I never had to worry about money and I did have contacts, none of those contacts ever did anything to better my career or help me out,” he said. “Growing up in a family that is so ridiculously split apart  my mom lives in Germany, I have five half brothers, my dad’s been divorced twice, I’ve moved 15 times  I’ve had a really (screwed) up life.

“The first time I decided to pick up a guitar and start writing was pretty much the same month my mom decided to leave me and my sister and move to Germany. That was hard enough. Tons of kids can relate to that.”