When Jeff Russo walked into a pool hall one day in L.A., he wasn’t expecting to find anyone — especially his longtime friend from the past, Emerson Hart.

After this meeting, Russon and Hart immediately began writing music together and laying down the roots for Tonic.

Russon and Hart met Dan Rothchild, bassist for “Lemon Parade,” at the Kibitz room in a cabaret-style venue. Later they picked up drummer Kevin Shepard at a club they frequented, Masker’s Cafe.

After recording “Lemon Parade,” Tonic changed bass players for its tour. The replacement, Dan Lavery, explained why.

“He was abducted by aliens, and I was abducted by Tonic,” Lavery said in an interview before Tonic took the stage at Hilton Coliseum Saturday. “Actually, it was just a natural choice. We’d all been friends for a while, and I just kind of fit in.”

Lavery sat in his chair looking as if he and the chair were carved out at the same time. Shepard sat next to him, munching on Doritos and running Funkadelic through the band’s small CD player.

Outside the room, soundcheck was taking place, and everyone was trying to get ready for the show. All of the commotions occasionally distracted Lavery and Shepard. Hart and Russo contributed to the chaos by throwing pieces of trash and taunting them.

But Lavery, who is happy with the success of “Lemon Parade,” tried to ignore them.

“It [the release of “Lemon Parade”] was great if you consider how many labels released CDs at the same time we did,” Lavery said. “There were about 25,000 CDs released at the same time ours was, and it was awesome for us to go platinum with it.”

While as a band, Tonic loos toward rock classics Led Zepplin, The Beatles and Lynyrd Skynyrd as influences, Shepard said he was influenced heavily by James Brown (like almost every musician claims) and ’80s British rock.

Hart and Russo finally decided to join their bandmates rather than taunt them. Russo picked up a magazine and flipped through it casually, not bothering to respond to any questions.

Hart on the other hand was wired. He ran around the room, standing on the chairs with his camera snapping off shots of Lavery trying to answer questions despite all the distractions.

Hart paused to answer some questions, and finally sat where Shepard, who left, had once been. Hart had an aura about him, and he emitted feeling when he spoke about writing his music.

“Sometimes it comes, and sometimes it doesn’t,” Hart said. “It’s not a matter of where you have to be when writing, but where you can’t be. The only thing that stops you is if you’re in the wrong mood.”

Hart likes for people to get their own meanings out of the songs.

Lavery agreed and said that it’s better for people to leave it to their imaginations.

“It’s what makes us different,” Shepard piped up from across the room, before leaving again.

One song on the album has a personal attachment to Hart.

“‘My Old Man’ is about my dad. He was killed when I was young,” he said.

Hart became a little sad when relating the story and began picking at his shoe. He seemed drawn away from his former self, but after telling the story he seemed to have reassured himself and closed it with an uplifting “and that’s that.”

Hart also told the story behind the song “Lemon Parade.”

“I had a dream about this girl. I was riding this big Schwinn Sting Ray, and I rode by her working in a lemonade stand,” he said. “She looked ugly and sad because kids were throwing lemons at her. Then later on, I saw her after high school and was crazy about her. They couldn’t see how beautiful she really was.”

Hart also spoke a little about “Celtic Aggression.”

“I’m really fascinated by old Irish tales,” Hart explained. “That one tells about the move of people from Ireland to America. In Ireland people weren’t allowed to speak or teach their own language. It’s kind of like saying, ‘don’t be a bigot,’ I guess.”

The meaning behind “Celtic Aggression” is similar to Hart’s feelings on becoming a musician. “You have to trust yourself and keep your walls up,” Hart said.

On the road to musical stardom, Tonic has played over 300 shows in under two years. Band members now find it hard to make time for themselves.

“We like it that way,” Hart said. “We wouldn’t know what to do with ourselves.”

Tonic’s fame has landed it on such shows as “Late Night with Conan O’Brien,” “The Late Show with David Letterman,” “Vibe” and the “Keenan Ivory Wayans Show.”

“Conan took really good care of us and was really nice with us,” Lavery said.

“Dave couldn’t have given two shits about us. We got a plate of crackers and had to buy our own beer,” Hart added.

Tonic also has been busy in the studio recording “Flowerman” for the upcoming X-Files soundtrack. Tonic hopes to head back into the studio soon.

“We’ll finish touring this summer and record the next album at the end of the summer,” Lavery said as Hart interrupts him complaining about getting more film for his camera.

Tonic even made room in its tour schedule to play Rock Veishea.

“We’ve heard a lot of cool things about it. We just hope all the negatives have been erased,” Lavery said.

After playing at Veishea, Tonic headed to Jacksonville, Fla., for a show dedicating the launch of M2, a branch of MTV.

“That community was the first to support M2, so that’s why we’re going there,” Lavery said.

Hart isn’t happy with MTV because they play too many shows, and Lavery agrees but feels the network is getting better.

“MTV needs to focus on music more. The best thing about M2 is that it’s all videos,” Lavery said.

As for now, the band members haven’t really decided on what they hope to accomplish through their music.

“World peace,” Lavery kidded.

“We want to be the best musicians we can be, and we’re trying to get chicks,” Hart said.

“That’s really the only reason I started playing when I was 15 — to meet women,” Lavery added.

It was time for the guys of Tonic to finish soundcheck and prepare themselves for the show.

Hart suddenly blurted out, “Love is the grandest thing on the planet. When shit is bad, we can come together, and it fixes the things that make us the meanest.”

Maybe he has stumbled onto the beginnings of another song.