Rob Suchan is enjoying his retirement just fine, thank you very much.

He's 27, playing as many as 230 shows a year from Bowling Green to Los Angeles to London with his band Koufax, and pushing the group's new release: "Hard Times Are In Fashion."

For Suchan, who is from Perrysburg, the "currency" of being in a touring band is the chance to travel around the world and get paid doing it.

"You can retire at an older age and kind of live out your wild oats with getting an RV and traveling around," he said in a phone interview from Austin, Tex.

"Or you could do it the opposite and work later in your life. We've basically got a paid early retirement right now, since this is mainly vacation and fun. Yes, we make money doing it, but no one's getting rich by any means."

Along with Sylvania native Jared Rosenberg, Suchan is the creative center of Koufax, a band that changes rhythm sections routinely. The band's sound is an amalgam of influences that never feature the usual suspects, managing to sound like Elvis Costello and the Attractions in their prime mixed in with disparate bands like Supertramp, the Cars, and the Cure.

"Hard Times Are in Fashion" on the Doghouse label is an urgent collection of songs written from the perspective of an outsider whose irony is anything but detached. There are no traditional love songs and none of the personal angst of its predecessor, "Social Life."

"I made a conscious effort ... to try to capture a zeitgeist that was going on and pay attention to social commentary and sing about things that are unique to my perspective," Suchan said.

Because he spends so much time traveling, especially in Europe where the band has a strong audience base, he said his point of view is informed by the rest of the world's often negative attitude toward Americans.

"It's not some brainless Bush bashing. People don't like to hear it, but there is an anti-American sentiment that is continually rising around the world," Suchan said.

While that might make "Hard Times" sound like an overt protest record, it's not. Suchan infuses the songs with the feeling that something is wrong without ever preaching. From the lovely "Isabelle" to the hilariously profane "Stephen James," he works on the edges as a writer, giving the songs a depth that's not common in pop music.

After finishing the band's last tour three years ago, Suchan and Rosenberg took a year off, with Suchan living in Prague for a few months. They got back together and ended up in Lawrence, Kan., because a couple of band members own a studio there.

"Hard Times" was made "pro bono" and the band sunk its own money into the recording and then sold it to Doghouse, rather than working under contract with a record company, he said.

Koufax plans to conclude the first leg of a U.S. tour with a show at Howard's in Bowling Green before going back to Europe for more concerts. Suchan, a Bowling Green State University graduate, said the band just made a video for "Isabelle" that could bring a larger audience like those for bands like The Eels and Modest Mouse, both idiosyncratic groups that don't fit into any easy-to-classify niches.

But like any other retired person, Suchan takes things day to day.

"You kind of want to just plug along, and the currency I get from this is travel and experience," he said. "I'm not foolish enough to think I'm going to get rich doing this."

Koufax plays Saturday at Howard's, 210 North Main St., in Bowling Green. Tickets are $5 and doors open at 9 p.m.

Contact Rod Lockwood at: rlockwood@theblade.com

or 419-724-6085.

First Published August 25, 2005, 12:18 p.m.