For Bob Chonka, rhythm guitarist/vocalist of Splendid Roadfish, being a musician had never crossed his mind while growing up.

He was the typical jock in high school until the day he heard about The Beatles.

Chonka experienced his enlightenment while watching a film of The Beatles playing a show.

“Some buddy of mine was a big Beatles fanatic and was playing some music, and I said, ‘Hey, this is pretty cool stuff,'” Chonka said. “He looked at me like, ‘Man, you don’t even know who these guys are,’ and I really didn’t know who they were.”

Self-taught on a $25 guitar with the help of a book of chords, Chonka quickly became invigorated and couldn’t put his new weapon down.

“I played ’til my fingers would bleed. I got so hooked,” he said. “It got bad. I had just started going to college and I got kicked out of school cause I’d go home, and I’d play my guitar and wouldn’t do any school work.”

Chonka went on to form Me And The Boys with some friends back in the late ’80s. Members were Dave Albert on lead guitar/vocals, Mike Cowman on lead vocals/bass and Brian Porizek on drums.

“Brian graduated a semester early from high school so we could go on the road as a band,” Chonka said. “We were just four young pups. We hit the rock ‘n’ roll scene and found out it really is sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll out there.”

Me And The Boys toured extensively for four years straight, literally traveling from state to state within a day’s time. The band even took its show overseas to Hawaii and South Korea.

The guys got burned out fast from playing five to six shows a week and eventually broke up to get some time off.

In 1996, Chonka felt it was time for the band to get back together, so the group reunited in Des Moines to start jamming old-school style.

While fiddling around in the studio, the band wasn’t pleased with playing the same old songs as before, so Chonka shared some material he and Cowman had recently written with the rest of the group.

“We were literally just jamming and hit ‘Record.’ We played it to quite a few friends, and they were all like, ‘Wow, this is great stuff. This is what you hear on the radio right now,'” Chonka said.

His friends were right. The roots-rock sound the band was playing compared immensely to that of Matchbox 20, The Wallflowers and Hootie and the Blowfish.

Due to the encouragement of their friends, the band members were inspired to start concentrating on music again and go for it. Chonka said at this point, the band felt ready and had more direction and focus.

With the sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll behind them, members of the newly-named Splendid Roadfish began to focus on music and play the best they could.

The band picked the new name because of all of the time they spent on the road. Chonka said the group used to call themselves “roadfish” because of the exhausting schedule the musicians used to have.

The band got “Splendid” from all the splendid memories they had made thus far.

Songwriting is a strong foundation for the band’s musicianship. Chonka and Cowman, who do most of the writing, focus on matters that touch people’s lives, such as homelessness and alcohol and drug abuse.

“We write about stuff that we feel is important to us — stuff that happens in our own personal life and the things we see going on in the world,” Chonka said. “We try to put a little ray of hope in there because there’s so much crap out there.”

Chonka cited the song “Magic Man,” which is featured on the band’s debut album “When Mary Came Down,” as a good example of how the band writes a song.

“Cowman and I were digging something to write about, and we started talking about the news and how this world is so screwed up,” he said. “You read about people leaving their babies in trash cans, and we sat there going, ‘It’s not supposed to be this way.’ We wished that we could change it quickly.”

Chonka said the response to the album has been great. Splendid Roadfish played the CD for Des Moines radio station STAR 102.5, and they selected “When Mary Came Down,” a song about a woman dealing with alcohol addiction, as a single.

“They loved it,” Chonka said. “They spun that thing like 500 times in four months, which is a lot in the radio biz.”

Splendid Roadfish has now started shopping for a record label to represent and distribute its music.

“The industry is changing. The big almighty labels are not the way to go anymore,” Chonka said. “A lot of independent labels are starting to become just as effective.”

Chonka cited the recent major label merger as a result of that change. He said, due to the merger, indie labels are going back to basics and focusing on letting artists develop and mature, while the major labels are struggling for power.

Splendid Roadfish has set its goals high. The band is determined to go national by the end of the summer if everything works out.

“Our ultimate goal is to put Iowa on the map,” Chonka said.

Splendid Roadfish play at the Taste of Veishea Stage Saturday at 6:30 p.m.