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Back in the insecure days before Jimmy Eat World was appearing on Saturday Night Live, MTV and Top 10 lists, before it was the subject of record-label bidding wars and long before it was selling millions of CDs, the Kelly temporary service was guitarist Tom Linton's only hope. Linton remembers a time when playing in a major-label rock band didn't guarantee a life of privilege and when, between tour dates, he'd spend a week here and there in the employ of the world's most famous temp service.

"The first couple of records we did, we'd go on tour for, like, three weeks," Linton, 29, recalls. "Then, I'd be home for a week. So I'd call Kelly after a tour and work for a week at some trashy job, then go out on tour again. It was pretty rough. I had one job for a plastic company where I'd have to count out 50 pens, stick them in a bag and then throw them in a box. I'd do that all day."

Linton, who also sorted bagels at a bagel shop and mail at the post office, sorts no more. Jimmy Eat World is a full-fledged, major-label success, largely thanks to "The Middle," the relentlessly catchy single from the band's 2001 album, Bleed American. The CD eventually sold more than 1.3 million copies, and both it and "The Middle" appeared on many critics' year-end albums and singles lists, including those published by Blender, Spin, USA Today, People and Rolling Stone.

But when an album captures such attention, a band can endure many sleepless nights when attempting to produce a comparable follow-up. Linton says he and his bandmates were conscious of trying to repeat their success while recording their latest CD, Futures, though they didn't let it consume them.

"We definitely felt some pressure," Linton admits. "But every record we do, we try to beat the last record. So with this record, we worked really hard, and we were just happy with how it turned out."

The members of Jimmy Eat World -- including vocalist-guitarist Jim Adkins, bassist Rick Burch and drummer Zach Lind -- never allowed commercial considerations to interfere with the creative process. "It's not something we think about too much, as far as whether the song is gonna get played on the radio," Linton explains. "It's hard for us as a band to judge what song will get played on the radio. We try not to think about it."

Certain elements of Jimmy Eat World's sound seem tailor-made for commercial playlists -- the sleek, punky guitars, the dancing vocal melodies and the sensitive-boy lyrics that get the band lumped into the emo ghetto, though it rocks in a more straightforward manner than many of its peers. Yet Jimmy Eat World's music possesses one element that is both refreshing and seemingly counterproductive to commercial success: guitar solos.

While the band has dabbled with guitar solos before -- "The Middle" had one -- Futures contains a preponderance of them, which is rare in modern rock. For this, we have the band's new producer, Gil Norton, to thank. Norton has worked with the Foo Fighters and the Pixies, and marks a departure for Jimmy Eat World, which employed Mark Trombino to produce its prior two CDs. While Trombino contributed to the group's success, the band members felt a need to go in a bigger, lusher direction. Norton is known for his stark sense of dynamics and for being at home with the dense, layered sound that Jimmy Eat World desired. Norton gave Futures a dimension beyond those of the band's previous efforts.

"It was a big difference for us to have someone new come in," Linton recalls. "We worked with Mark on the last record, and we wanted to try something new by getting a different producer in there and hearing his ideas. [Norton] did the Pixies, and there were a lot of other bands he did that we really liked. He brought a lot of stuff in -- a lot of arrangement ideas and different guitar sounds, drum sounds, keyboard sounds -- a lot of stuff that was new for us."

Linton and crew spent five months recording Futures, longer than they had ever taken before. While the band recorded in Los Angeles for about a month, most of Futures was recorded in Tucson, Ariz. Linton says that being able to record close to home -- the band hails from Mesa -- gave the process an additional sense of clarity. "It was just nice to be close to home and far away from the L.A. setting," he notes. "It was great for us to be away from the label and all that stuff. It was nice."

Of course, recording in a major city has its advantages, too. When the band was working on the album in L.A., Liz Phair swooped in for a two-hour session and contributed background vocals to the song "Work," and former Beach Boy Brian Wilson was recording in the next studio. "I don't know what he was working on," Linton says. "The rumor was that he and Paul McCartney were gonna get together and do some stuff. We just saw him walking down the hall. He was a pretty nice guy."

Linton, Lind, Adkins and a fourth musician, all of whom had been friends since kindergarten, formed Jimmy Eat World in 1994. After the band released several EPs on a local imprint, Capitol signed it in 1995, about the time that Burch joined the group. The group released two CDs -- Static Prevails and Clarity -- on Capitol. Although club audiences were catching on to its punky sound, the band sold few units, and after Jimmy Eat World recorded its third album for Capitol, the label ditched the record and dropped the group.

Instead of immediately shopping for a new label -- which would have been tough anyway, considering the sales figures -- the band decided to self-finance a European tour and recorded a new album with the proceeds. The resulting Bleed American attracted several major-label suitors, and the band soon signed to DreamWorks. Retitled Jimmy Eat World after Sept. 11, 2001, the CD, which featured "The Middle," was a huge success, selling more than a million copies. But just when things seemed secure and the band was toiling away on a follow-up, DreamWorks was absorbed by Interscope. Luckily, this produced no problem for Jimmy Eat World, and its new label released the CD.

Now that Futures is in stores, the band plans to spend the next two years promoting the hell out of it on the road, reintroducing itself to old fans and procuring new ones. The band wants to expose as many people as possible to its rock-tinged show, not only to turn people on to its music but to prove that its sound transcends emo. This is not to say that Jimmy Eat World rejects fans who appreciate its sensitive component, just that it believes what it has to offer is so much greater.

"We try not to put a label on ourselves," Linton argues. "It's kind of a weird thing, emo. I think every band has emotion to it. We get asked about it a lot, but we don't consider ourselves an emo band. But we don't mind."

Jimmy Eat World will perform 6:30 p.m. Friday at Revolution, 200 W. Broward Blvd., in Fort Lauderdale. Elefant and Reubens Accomplice will open. Tickets cost $16. Call 954/727-0950 or visit www.jointherevolution.net.