Fruit to Be Out of Season : The anything-but-standard band will take off until summer while singer-songwriter Andrew Lowery goes East for film role.

H ow well does fruit keep?

Believe it or not, that figures to be one of the more interesting questions this season on the local pop scene.

Standard Fruit emerged from the recent “Texas Tuneup” competition at Bogart’s as a band worth watching. Contest judges didn’t think much of the quirky Orange County band, condemning it to last place among five contenders in a semifinal round won by eventual champ Trip the Spring. But Standard Fruit’s failure on the scoreboard didn’t diminish the offbeat pleasures of its performance. The five-man band featured likable, hammy singing, an unassumingly engaging look and a humorous stage personality. The catchy pop tunes it played offered strange little character sketches or commented wistfully on failed romance--often doing so with a hangdog chuckle instead of the typical sigh and sob of the Angst- ridden alternative rocker.

For fans in search of something a little different, a little out in left field, Standard Fruit came across as a welcome addition to the clubland menu. The problem is that after performances Saturday night at Mucho Munchies Rock N’ Cantina in Costa Mesa and March 7 at Bogart’s, Standard Fruit will go on the shelf until summer.

Andrew Lowery, who sings some of the lead vocals and writes most of the band’s songs, will head off to Massachusetts next month for three months of acting work on the film “School Ties.” This will mark the major movie debut for Lowery, whose TV credits include his current role on the NBC sitcom “A Different World” (Lowery plays the supporting role of Matthew Foster, a cheeky white drama student who hangs out with the show’s core ensemble of black collegians).

While Lowery is working for Paramount Pictures, playing a pressured prep schooler (“I’ll end up having a nervous breakdown and be naked in the bell tower”), the other members of Standard Fruit will pretty much have to chill.

That kind of delay and separation would be a severe problem for most emerging bands. But as they gathered Tuesday for an interview at their favorite Fullerton watering hole, ordering Coca-Colas in a dark Batcave of a place, Standard Fruit’s members treated the separation as they do most other matters: by letting quips fly.

Lowery, who has the crinkled grin and fresh-faced, mischievous look of a grown-up Dennis the Menace, said he’s not worried that his band-mates might move on while he is gone. “Most of the guys in the band lead such sedentary lives.”

“We’ll just have more naps while he’s gone,” the band’s drummer, Jerry Renek, deadpanned from under a khaki baseball-style cap worn brim-backward.

Actually, Standard Fruit has led a fairly sedentary existence as a band. The current five-member configuration, which also includes lead singer Denys Gawronski (another professional actor), bassist Roger Smith and guitarist Clark Fisher, has been together nine months and played just nine shows.

“It’s ‘cause we’re lazy,” Lowery said. Actually, he added, the band hasn’t been in a rush because it is still learning to work Gawronski’s theatrically inclined baritone vocals into its repertoire. “The thing is trying to get 12 real sturdy songs” to fill out a set, Lowery said. “I’d say we’re about 80% there.”

Among the songs they have mastered so far are “Sofia,” a partly affectionate, partly facetious homage to Sofia Coppola (the song vows undying affection for the neophyte actress, despite the mostly dismissive reviews she received for her performance in her father’s epic “Godfather III”). “Mister Lyndon” exemplifies the band’s offbeat style as it simultaneously mocks and invites sympathy for a protagonist torn by pedophile tendencies. Romantic misfits and tragicomically rejected suitors crop up in a number of songs.

Gawronski brings most of those roles to life with a deep, occasionally hoarse voice and a wide assortment of comical facial expressions and body language.

“I’ve never approached it as an actor. It’s just me,” said Gawronski, 27, whose low-key humor as he sat in the bar contrasted with the pronounced eccentricity of his stage performance. “People say, ‘You’re making these funny faces.’ I’m not aware of making any faces. I’m goofing around and having a good time.”

Gawronski recently began a run in a Los Angeles children’s production of “Androcles and the Lion.” He also appears most weekends at Disneyland as a keyboard-playing android in Transtar, a roving trio that cruises around Tomorrowland performing dance-pop music and movie themes.

Given a career choice between acting and rocking, Gawronski said: “It would definitely be music. It’s a lot more fun, more a hobby than a job.”

Lowery, also 27, takes a similar view of his dual interests. “(Acting is) my job. I like it. You’ve got to make money. The only other thing I know how to do is make pizzas. I like (music) better because it’s something you can do on your own terms. Although if you get into the business, maybe you have to compromise like you do on television.”

Fisher, 25, works for a stage lighting and sound company; Renek, 25, and Smith, 23, deliver parcels for a living.

Renek, Smith and Lowery had played together in various bands before they formed Standard Fruit--Lowery said the name can be taken as an allusion to Orange County, to the giant fruit company known for its domination of Central American economies, or to the Billie Holiday classic “Strange Fruit.” Fisher, who had known Lowery from the drama program at Fullerton College, signed on later as guitarist. Gawronski was recruited after the scratchy-voiced Lowery decided he couldn’t carry the singing load by himself.

So far, Standard Fruit hasn’t done much to push itself along the ladder of success. Contacts with record companies have been minimal, and the band has done little to seek out Los Angeles showcase gigs.

Still, says Smith, Standard Fruit has serious designs.

“We always wanted to make an album. It was always about writing good songs. It was never sloughed off as a lame, weekend thing.”

So far, Gawronski said, Standard Fruit’s accomplishments have been modest, but the members sense that they are beginning to make an impression for being different.

“We’re not the best musicians at this point, but we have fun, and it comes across.”

Standard Fruit opens for Theater of Dreams at 10:30 Saturday night at Mucho Munchies Rock N’ Cantina, 2675 Irvine Drive, Costa Mesa. Admission: $5. Information: (714) 722-2583.