This Saturday night’s performance by the Ames rock quartet Lunchbox has been dubbed a reunion show, but not by band members Tony Bohnenkamp and Chad Johnson.

“That sounds so cheesy,” Johnson said. “It’s not like we’re the Eagles getting back together or anything.”

“It does sound funny, but that’s really what it is for us,” Bohnenkamp said. “The biggest thing for us will be seeing everyone again and getting to do something all four of us totally love more than anything in the world, and that’s play music.”

While Bohnenkamp has made a few trips to Ames since he moved to Chicago last summer, this will be the first time he has seen bassist Byron Stevens since the band’s last show.

As for Johnson, he can’t wait to get together and share stories of the band’s “glory days.” “We did everything together,” Johnson said. “We’re leading different lives now, but it’s not like we left on bad terms or anything.”

Plans for the return of Lunchbox to Ames began filtering a few months ago when Johnson was in town for a Nadas show and ran into friend and People’s Bar and Grill owner Tom Zmolek.

“He was showing me around the new theater and as a joke I said ‘so is Lunchbox going to open the first night?”‘ Johnson said. “From there, we started talking about coming back sometime.”

Lunchbox singer Bohnenkamp called back a few weeks later and, as it worked out, all four original members could come back and make the date Zmolek had open.

“For him to come in and let us play on such a big night is just so cool,” Bohnenkamp said. “Tom has always been really supportive. He always let us play, even when we were just getting started.”

With each member of Lunchbox currently living in a different state, practicing for the show has not been easy. According to Johnson, the band has been sending tapes back and forth and has rented a warehouse to rehearse in all day Saturday.

Bohnenkamp has taken the Wayne’s World approach to practicing by reconditioning his voice on the drive to work every morning.

“I have been singing at the top of my lungs to our old CDs trying to get my lungs back in shape,” he said. “If I can still talk after the show, then we’ll know we didn’t play hard enough.”

Although the set for Saturday night has yet to be determined, Bohnenkamp said the band plans to play “balls-out for four hours.”

“We’ve been wrestling with the idea of playing two long sets with maybe an acoustic one in the middle,” Johnson said. “We’ll probably play some old covers from fraternity parties later and maybe some new ones.”

In the past, Lunchbox has been known to cover everything from 311 to Big Head Todd and the Monsters to Phish. But Johnson promises there will be a few surprises Saturday.

“All of us have been hearing new stuff and so our preferences may have changed a little bit,” he said.

Even though Lunchbox has not played together since the band first broke up, each of the members has found a way to keep playing music. Both Johnson and Bohnenkamp have done stage and studio work with The Nadas, and Johnson has also been playing with other bands, including Ames’ Good Things.

“Byron’s studying bass in graduate school so he’s been playing a lot and Chad (Gustafson, guitarist) has his own little recording studio where I know he messes around in a lot,” Johnson said.

As far as ever getting back together for the real thing, Johnson said he hasn’t counted it out. “We’re just having fun and that’s the important thing,” he said.

“I would love to play together more but there’s too many other variables that are beyond my control,” Bohnenkamp said.

The singer/guitarist added that getting together is more about hanging out with friends and having a good time than anything else.

“The type of friendship we have goes beyond calling each other every week,” he explained. “We always know what we’re all thinking and although we don’t see each other a lot, we know we’ll always be interested in the same thing.”

Lunchbox will be playing at People’s at 9 p.m. Copies of the band’s latest disc Left Behind will be on sale at the show.