For arena veterans Hoobastank [ tickets ], the true test of a band is playing clubs.

"There are no smoke and mirrors," lead singer Doug Robb said via telephone from outside of his California rehearsal space. "You put on a good show in a club and everything kind of falls into place. There's no pyros or crazy fancy lights and smoke and mirrors to hide behind."

After spending the summer on the road with Nickelback, Hoobastank--which also includes guitarist/songwriter Dan Estrin and drummer Chris Hesse--will embark on a six-week club tour Nov. 15 in Spartanburg, SC. (All the dates include support acts Agent Sparks and Halifax, except Nov. 19 when Hoobastank performs with Candlebox in Orlando, FL. The itinerary is included below.)

"I'm pretty excited," Robb continued. "We've always been asked, 'Large venues or small clubs?' Honestly, you probably heard it a million times, but [performing] is definitely about crowd interaction and how enthusiastic they are. I'd rather play for 350 totally passionate fans than 35,000 lukewarm fans."

Fans can expect to hear lots of newer material during the upcomng shows.

" The last tour we were on with Nickelback, we were in a support slot," Robb explained. "We only had a certain amount of time to play a certain amount of songs. Although we wanted to play more new songs, we had to play some of the hits. The headlining shows let us have a little more time to play some of the new stuff."

The Agoura Hills, CA, band is touring in support of its gold-certified album "Every Man For Himself," which spawned the ballad and MTV Hits favorite "If I Were You." The song, although a former No. 1 most-added track, hasn't come close to the success of Hoobastank's previous ballad, the title track from its 2004 album, "The Reason." That song was 2004's longest-running rock single inside the Billboard Hot 100, hit No. 1 on Billboard's Modern Rock Tracks, Adult Top 40 and Top 40 mainstream charts, and rose to No. 2 on the Hot 100.

"Honestly, I guess you can never really predict what's going to be special or not as far as radio," Robb said. "['If I Were You'] was one of the songs that the band members really, really loved and felt strongly about. Because we felt so strongly about it, we felt it might translate over to radio. But. for some reason. it didn't as much as we maybe thought it would. You never know. Sometimes later on those things catch on."

He said he hopes the second single--the hard-driving, military-inspired "Born to Lead"--fares better with radio.

"The saying 'born to lead' is about ... everyone is capable of making really important decisions in their lives on their own," Robb said.."They can lead their own lives in their own ways."

For "Every Man For Himself," Hoobastank reunited with Howard Benson, who produced the band's Grammy-nominated, double-platinumalbum, "The Reason." Hoobastank had more time to perfect the songs on the new album, Robb said.

"When we did 'The Reason,' we kind of did it under the gun, as far as time goes," he said. "We felt really pressured and put out a record as fast as we could. For this record, we, for a lack of a better term, wrote and recorded it very organically from the ground up. We took our time and did all the things we wanted to.

"A lot of fans wouldn't want to hear this but I personally--I don't know if 'regret' is the right word--wish I could have done things differently on [the album] 'The Reason.' Just little things that fans would never probably even notice or care about. On this record, we took our time, and every time I got to this point where [I thought] 'I'm not totally sold on this,' I would work on this until I was, because I had the time, and we had opportunity to. In the past, we had a deadline. 'We need to get this in, so this is going to have to do.'"