Things are good. Nothing much for me to stay. Feeling happier everyday.

— “Fine and Good”

Things are good for the soft-hearted, hard-bodied members of the Zion, Ill., duo Local H.

Singer/guitarist Scott Lucas and drummer Joe Daniels are making an honest living in an industry of sin. They have a firm grip on the cookie-cutter America that once forced the band to leave a high school gig early after a conservative principal pulled the plug on them.

“That fucking dork,” the usually timid Daniels says from a hotel room in Las Vegas. “I bet I make more money than him now.”

In the spring of 1995, with the ink still drying on a contract with Island Records, Local H set out on an introductory tour that sent the duo playing wherever it could for whatever it paid — usually enough to grab a meal and cover gas.

Urbandale High, a preppy suburban school in northwest Des Moines, was the most memorable of the stops.

Four songs into a performance in the school’s gymnasium, administrators ended the show out of fear that the energetic audience was getting out of control.

When the principal climbed on stage and forcefully began unplugging equipment, Daniels lost the usual coolness that covers him like a baggy sweatshirt. He kicked over the drum set he had been mutilating since the start of the show, gave the principal the one-finger wave and stormed out the door.

But this is not the same Daniels who is chilling in Vegas.

Like Lucas, he’s a nice guy — the boy next door. In fact, the best part of Daniel’s rock stardom was buying the Chicago apartment he has been personally renovating for the past six months.

“It’s a fun project,” Daniels says. “It’s coming along nicely, but I’ve still got some stuff left to do.”

Buying Chicago property is a monumental step for the Local H boys. Their three records, “Ham Fisted,” “As Good As Dead” and “Pack Up the Cats,” chronicle the life of a small-town kid who’s hit the big time.

In some ways, the kid is a composite of Lucas and Daniels, who have always been outspoken about the pleasure they felt getting out of Zion.

An hour north of Chicago, the town of 20,000 is home to 35 churches. Zion is also non-alcoholic and without a concert venue of any shape or size.

“We used to have shows at our rehearsal space,” Daniels says. “It was like this 15-by-30 foot room, and we would pack 200 and some people in it. It was so fucking hot. Zion would never let us play there, never. Especially now, after we’ve bad-mouthed them.”

It is the shows, specifically the unusual ones, that turn into Local H songs. “High Fiving MF,” the not-so-radio-friendly first single from “As Good As Dead,” is an ode to the crass, fat-ass concert-goer who “names their grand-prize monster truck.”

“All the Kids Are Right,” the first single off the recently released “Pack Up the Cats,” tells the story of a band that fails to live up to itself on stage. “You heard that we were great,” Lucas sings. “But now you think we’re lame/Since you saw the show last night.”

“Fans have a right to be pissed off when bands just go through the motions,” Lucas told HITS magazine last month. “It’s not right to spend your money on something that sucks.”

Nothing much for me to say.

Aside from a handful of humorous pokes at the music industry on tunes like “Laminate Man,” where “you wear your resume around your neck,” “Pack Up the Cats” is mostly about cats, which Daniels says is a pseudonym for nothing.

“Lyrics weren’t as important on this record,” Daniels explains. “I don’t give a shit about cats. We just wanted to talk about something that meant nothing.”

What is important on “Pack Up the Cats” is the direction Local H takes. Rather than polishing the chrome grunge sound that made “As Good As Dead” a breakthrough hit, the band rediscovers rock as the baby-boomers knew it.

Like Pink Floyd’s legendary “The Wall,” the songs on “Pack Up the Cats” run continuously, each introducing the next via high-valve feedback or Lucas yelps. It opens with “All-Right (Oh, Yeah),” a pounding vocal showcase described by Lucas as his version of Free’s “All-Right Now.”

“Everyone’s so scared to play rock ‘n’ roll anymore,” Daniels says. “We wanted to keep rock alive — make a record that doesn’t have a date stamped on it. When you listen to a Marilyn Manson record 20 years from now, it’ll be a 1998 record. But the Zeppelin and Floyd records, they have a timeless quality to them.”

To capture that element, Local H enlisted veteran producer Roy Thomas Baker, who produced such classics as Queen’s “A Night At the Opera,” The Cars’ “Candy-O” and Foreigner’s “Head Games.”

Baker honed the Local H sound a bit and worked with Daniels to capture the omnipresent drum sound characteristic of classic rock.

“He added a lot to the recording,” Daniels said. “It’s a Roy Thomas Baker record for a younger generation. We get a lot of comments about how great the drums sound, and that was an important thing for us going into it.”

Local H recorded “Pack Up the Cats” in Lake Havasu, Arizona, where Lucas and Daniels passed by some of the country’s pristine golf courses to hang at a local pub.

When the album was released in September, critics were thrilled to discover the band was not a one-hit wonder.

It was the radio success of “Bound for the Floor” that made Local H a household name, not the rock rampage of “Ham Fisted” or the rage against the small-town poetry of “As Good As Dead.”

“That copacetic song,” as radio programmers dubbed it, garnered the band MTV attention, and a lot of record sales and tours with Stone Temple Pilots and Silverchair.

It also went against everything Local H stands for.

“We never thought [‘Bound for the Floor’] would be a hit,” Daniels says. “We don’t write singles; we write records. And I think there are radio people and journalists out there who are saying that as well, which is cool. We’ve established ourselves as a band that can make solid records. Which means, at least we’ll always have a career.”

This time around, as “All the Kids Are Right” follows in the footsteps of “Bound for the Floor,” Local H is going back to the self-promoting tour technique. The band is headlining a month’s worth of all-ages club shows from Albuquerque to Chicago.

“We’re up for some opening slots, but everything’s crap,” Daniels says. “There’s no good bands out right now. Creed called us, and we hate them. We think they read some of the stuff we’ve said about them so they just called to fuck with us.”

Local H is being considered for the coveted Aerosmith opener — a slot that has been occupied by such diverse acts as Spacehog and Kenny Wayne Shepherd.

“We’ll see what happens,” Daniels says. “We just don’t want to go out with the band of the day.”

Feeling happier everyday

This summer, Local H returned to Iowa for the third time since the unplugging at Urbandale. The duo was part of Mancow’s Lazer Luau at the Ankeny Airfield, a 15-minute jaunt from the high school.

The festival included Anthrax, Candlebox, Brother Cane and a few other washed-up rockers who prompted Daniels to ask the question: “What the fuck is this?”

“There were rednecks everywhere,” he says. “We got the hell out of there as soon as we could.”

Daniels did not even care to watch the only other Chicago act on the bill — Mancow himself.

“He’s a prick,” Daniels says. “We’ve been on his show a few times, and he’s a kiss-ass. Last time he asked us on, I wouldn’t go. Actually, I think he’s intimidated by me.”

Mancow is probably near a certain principle on Local H’s shitlist, but chances are, there aren’t many other Chicago natives on it. The city seems to have embraced Local H the same way it has Sammy Sosa.

“It’s really crazy,” Daniels voice rises. “All the talk is about Local H — more probably even than the Pumpkins. When we come home, people want to hang out with us. It’s cool.”

The last time the band played in Chicago, the balcony of The Metro looked like a Local H family picnic. Even longtime road manager Gabe Rodriguez had family conversing over cocktails.

But Daniels insists the families have not become one. “That was probably the first time they met,” Daniels says. “Will we ever spend our Christmases together? Absolutely not.”

However, a new addition to the Local H family has been added. Former Triple Fast Action frontman Wes Kidd is lending his fine-tuned guitar skills to the Local H live show.

Kidd and Lucas are old music scene pals who found themselves bonding on stage when Lucas filled in on guitar during a Triple Fast Action tour last spring. This may explain why Local H is coming close to doing what it always said it wouldn’t — becoming a threesome.

“He’s just doing the tour,” Daniels says. “It’s actually cool. It adds something new — another element.”

Neither Kidd, nor anyone else, for that matter, shows up in the video for “All the Kids Are Right,” which has aired on “120 Minutes” for the past four weeks. It is a typical concert-style video, only Lucas and Daniels play every character, including the entire audience, the roadies, the club workers and even the bathroom occupants.

The video was directed by Phil Harter, who also did the band’s “Bound for the Floor” and “Eddie Vedder” videos.

“As much as you don’t want to, you have to make them,” Daniels says. “The record company wants you to, and because you never know.”

So maybe Local H isn’t entirely classic rock yet.

But if the Zeppelins and Floyds were still around, they’d probably be making videos too — except with a few more musicians in them.

Local H plays at People’s Bar and Grill tonight with The Superjesus and Stanford Prison Experiment. The all-ages show begins at 5 p.m. Tickets are $10.