Pedaljets members Mike Allmayer, left, Matt Kesler, Rob Morrow and Phil Wade will perform in Lawrence together for the first time in 17 years. The band formed in Lawrence during the early 1980s.

On the surface, things were going well for The Pedaljets.

Flash back to 1990, and the Lawrence-formed band was on a national label, on MTV and even on “Saturday Night Live” – albeit within a poster montage during the show’s opening credits.

The group found itself on tours with The Replacements, Hüsker Dü and Soul Asylum, as well as enjoying/suffering bizarre run-ins with Prince and GG Allin.

Yet with all that happening, the guitar-heavy, alt-rock quartet was at the brink of a professional divorce. All of it seemed to spring from the band’s just-released second album, “The Pedaljets.”

“We got to the point where we weren’t enjoying it anymore,” says singer-guitarist Mike Allmayer. “The knowledge that we had this albatross of an album around our necks led us to say, ‘Well, it wasn’t meant to be.'”

The musicians had been rushed in the studio, which left them unhappy with the guitar and background vocal tracks. Then the disc was mixed hastily in a 24-hour session and given “a crappy mastering job.”

“It came back and haunted us,” Allmayer recalls. “It was getting good reviews at the time. But when we were touring to support it we noticed that the old Pedaljets fans were like, ‘What is the deal with this thing?’ People wanted something that took us to another level or at least something as good as (the first album) ‘Today Today.’ It was neither. We cringed and toured a little on it, then broke up.”

Flash forward to 2006.

All the members – Allmayer, bassist Matt Kesler, drummer Rob Morrow and guitarist Phil Wade – were living in Kansas City for the first time in years. After much discussion, they finally holed up in a K.C. recording studio with producer Paul Malinowski (of Shiner and Season to Risk fame) with the intention of remixing the loathed project.

“I’d heard the album for all these years, but I hadn’t heard the raw tracks,” says the 46-year-old Allmayer. “When (Paul) began mixing, I was thinking, ‘Dang. It’s starting to sound like it was supposed to sound.’

“The strong part of it was Rob and Matt. Having played on the road all those years, their rhythm tracks were like a machine.”

Not all the parts were salvageable, and guitarist Wade was busy touring nine months out of the year with his bluegrass act, The Wilders. So Allmayer and Malinowski occasionally doubled for Wade, this time without being hampered by “a terrible guitar running through a transistor amp.”

“It’s a different approach because we’re taking something that is rather old and revisiting it, rather than totally creating something new from scratch,” Allmayer says.

So after all these years – finally – the band is back with a new old album in hand and will celebrate the feat by performing in Lawrence for the first time in 17 years.

The Pedaljets’ original label, Communion Records, is long since out of business, so the CD is being put out by OxBlood Records. The label is operated by Robert Moore, host of the “Sonic Spectrum” radio show, and Megan Hamilton, former drummer with the Lawrence band Frogpond.

Allmayer, who graduated Kansas University in 1984 with an English degree (the same year he formed The Pedaljets), admits he’s not entirely sure what to do now that the album has been resurrected.

“We don’t have any giant plans. We’ve all hinted around we’d like to record some new songs while Phil’s off the road from The Wilders,” he says.

“We’ve also been calling a few old friends around the country to see if they want any openers. I suspect we’ll do some more shows after the Lawrence one.”

As for why the music of The Pedaljets has held up after two decades, Allmayer believes that’s for other people to decide.

“My perspective on it is it still sounds like us,” Allmayer says.

“Paul kept saying, ‘There are bands around NOW trying to sound like you guys.'”