There’s no glamour for The Red Hot Valentines – at least not yet.

Instead, drummer Eric Humbert is a pizza delivery boy, guitarists Jeff Johnson and Tobin Kirk are textbook store employees and bassist David Gerkin works an office job for a real estate appraisal firm.

“We’re by no means high class,” Gerkin said, calling from the Urbana-Champaign, Ill., area, and responding to some 70 unanswered fan e-mails.

The band tries to practice at least once a week, with conflicting job shifts occasionally getting in the way.

But for the most part, the employers have been understanding enough to let the guys take brief breaks from work. RHV embarked on a week-long tour with Ultimate Fakebook last week, its longest ever.

“Apparently we have jobs that are extremely gracious,” Gerkin explained.

Kirk and Johnson have worked long enough to get vacation and personal time.

“They’re pretty much a fixture where they work, so they don’t have too much trouble,” Gerkin said.

The guys of RHV, all in their early 20s, weren’t always working stiffs; Johnson and Kirk messed around with a guitar and mini-keyboard at the Lincoln Christian College, forming the core of RHV. And then, after adding Humbert, Gerkin and former keyboardist Jason Searby, class lost its appeal.

“None of us has graduated,” Gerkin said. “We all just dropped out.”

There was no mass exodus from the university; slowly the members realized the band was the focal point of their lives.

“It was mainly just being sick of school, sick of homework,” Gerkin said. “It’s just one of those things that’s not quite for us.”

Instead, the band works with the goal of making its girl-tinged, guitar-and-moog pop more than a weekend escape. “One guy said we sound like Superdrag meets The Cars,” Gerkin said.

“It’s not necessarily a fame thing, as long as we can do well enough to live off the band comfortably,” Gerkin explained. “We may want to be famous after that – that’d be cool – but I don’t think we could really list that as a direct goal right now.”

Even though the band does not yet lead the rock star lifestyle, the members have been able to avoid some of the struggles many other bands at RHV’s level face.

“We’ve got this friend, Dan [Suh], who books shows at the U of [Illinois] student union,” Gerkin said. “He just seems to have contacts everywhere.”

About a year and a half ago, Suh was on the lookout for local bands to book, and he saw RHV for the first time.

“I was really kind of blown away by their set; their songs are really great,” said Suh, Web master for Ultimate Fakebook. “I thought they were a huge band already.”

When he learned no one was really helping them out, Suh started booking them shows in Champaign.

“Things have kind of snowballed since then,” Suh said. “I’m really good friends with Ultimate Fakebook, and they’ve hooked us up with a few shows here and there.”

And Saturday, RHV is coming to the Maintenance Shop to open for Duvall, a band made up of former Smoking Popes members. Mike Felumlee, drummer for Duvall, will be releasing an RHV EP on Double Zero Records in May.

For now, the band is still promoting its self-released, self-titled album, sans Moog player Searby, who left last fall.

“It would be good to have a Moog and someone who plays keyboard,” Gerkin said. “I think generally the way our songs are, we can squeak by without it.”

Rather than being sidelined by the lack of a keyboardist, RHV plans to keep working, building a fan base and playing shows with more established bands.

“It’s really cool to play with a bigger band,” Gerkin said, “because then you know the kids are going to show up and hear you whether they like you or not.”