Yet bassist and Campbell resident Hrag Chanchanian says returning to the nest can be bittersweet.

"When you're out on the road—touring, playing and doing what you love—you're missing home," Chanchanian says. "When you're home, and life goes back to normal, you're missing touring."

"But either way," he adds, "the good outweighs the bad."

Guitarist Ryan Hernandez, on the other hand, expresses no ambivalence about coming back to his home in Willow Glen.

"It feels great," he says. "There's no place like home."

Emphasizing that mantra, Strata treated its local fan base on Oct. 2 to the ultimate in rock-show rarities: a free, all-ages, daytime performance at Tower Records in Campbell. The band kicked out a 40-minute acoustic set for friends and fans in between the stacks of compact disks and music magazines.

"I love it here. I love everyone around here," Chanchanian says. "But I'm used to playing to strangers, people who wouldn't recognize us on the street. I come home, and I can name out everyone in the audience."

One reason the band is on a first-name basis with many of its fans is because the members are, quite literally, homeboys. Two of them—Chanchanian and vocalist Eric Valentino—grew up in Campbell. Hernandez and drummer Adrian Robison are from San Jose. And the band's roots are firmly implanted in the Orchard City.

"All our forming landmarks were in Campbell," Valentino says.

Valentino and Hernandez met four years ago at the now-defunct Campbell Roasting Company. The pair discovered they shared a passion for music and discussed forming a band. Then Hernandez invited Chanchanian, his co-worker at a web company, to join the fledgling group. Two weeks later, they found a drummer, who was later replaced by Robison. Within a couple of months, the band released a four-song CD under the band's original name, 'downside.'

Shortly after that Strata became a mainstay at local venues like the Gaslighter Theater, sometimes grinding out three sets in one day. And music fans started to take notice of the up-and-coming group.

In 2001, Strata released its first full-length album, sleep, and an Internet-only album, when its all burning, followed a year later. Then in 2003 the band embarked on its first major tour, breaking out of the Bay Area and looking for recognition nationally.

Touring, being an essential nutrient in the diet of any developing rock band, was a chance for members to travel across country on an unknown adventure. But that required transportation.

They purchased a large, white van—better known as Avril LaVan— which had once been cash in the bank for Robison's college education fund.

"We knew we needed a van to get on the road," Chanchanian says. "The only way to become successful is to tour."

As a rock band, the group has been back and forth across the country six times, according to Chanchanian. Some highlights have included New York—"but you can only stay there for so long," Hernandez says—Chicago and, Hernandez's No. 1 favorite, Panama City, Fla.

Although Hernandez says he appreciated the opportunity to travel, he was a little uneasy when the band first went out on the road.

"It was kind of scary at first," the 24-year-old says. "I lived at home all my life, and this was the first time I really ventured out. But I felt safe because I was with friends, so now it's comfortable."

But, for the time being, Hernandez is happy to be taking a break from his nomadic lifestyle.

"It's nice to take some time off and hang out," he says. "We've been out for awhile, and we don't want to go back out right away."

Valentino agrees that the band has earned some time off.

"This is our dream job come true," he says. "But just because it is your dream job doesn't mean you don't enjoy vacationing."

Although the band's respite from road-tripping might seem like a vacation compared to the rigors of touring, that doesn't mean they aren't working. The band members are using their spare time to generate new song ideas.

"We're always writing," Hernandez says. "It's just what musicians do, whether or not we need to. But there's no obligation—we do it when we want."

Now that the band shares a major record label, Wind-Up Records, with big-time acts like Evanescence and Scott Stapp—the former lead singer of Creed—they are truly professional rock stars who make their living exclusively with music, and their days of 9-to-5 jobs are, for the time being, finished. But music, they say, is still less an occupation than a passion.

"It doesn't feel like a day job," Chanchanian says. "Music will always have its value for us."

But they also insist people outside the music business shouldn't be misled by the stereotype of the hard-partying rock band. The cut-throat and competitive industry requires a strong work ethic, they say, which leaves little time for extreme partying.

"It's been work since the day we started," Chanchanian says. "We haven't really chilled in a while. There's a lot involved: writing, practicing, touring, down to talking to people, promoting ourselves and making our website."

"We lose sleep looking at our website," Hernandez adds.

Strata's website, however, is one of the keys to the band's success beyond the boundaries of Campbell. Through the site, band members can communicate with fans across the country, as well as stay in touch with longtime friends and followers while on the road.

"We know fans personally everywhere," Valentino says.

In fact, the 26-year-old lead singer says the band prides itself in taking the time to stay in touch via the web or to linger after a show to schmooze and sign autographs.

"It would be boring to be a band that cuts itself off from everything," he says. "Then what's the point of making something that people attach to personally?"

One of the people Strata's music has touched is 22-year-old San Jose resident Helen Garcia. An avid Evanescence fan, Garcia was introduced to Strata through one of the Evanescence fan clubs. She listened to a few of their songs and liked what she heard. And when she discovered Strata was from Campbell, she was hooked.

"You never hear about a local band making it," the aspiring singer says. "It really shows you that if someone puts their mind to it, you can do whatever you want."

But Garcia doesn't simply appreciate Strata from afar. Through MySpace.com, she found profiles of the band members and contacted them. And today, she counts them among her friends.

"I was shocked and amazed that I got to live out my dream of meeting one of my favorite bands," she says. "I met other famous people, but I didn't connect with them. But Strata is so local, it's different. They're really open with fans, even though their fan base is getting bigger."

Though Garcia appreciates the band members' amiable personalities, she reserves her most fervent praise for the music they create.

"Strata's music puts you in a place where you are in your own world," she says. "It allows your emotions to come to the surface."

A mere glance at Strata's fans crammed tight as sardines inside Tower Records and singing along to their favorite songs will attest to the band's ability to reach a place somewhere inside the angsty, adolescent soul. But although Valentino says the band tries to relate to its audiences through music, he insists that pleasing the masses is not the band's primary motivation while writing songs.

"Connecting with people is not the goal," he says. "Making music is the goal, then connecting with people comes later. Otherwise, it just seems fake."

And, according to Valentino, the band has had more success carving a niche outside of its home turf, mostly because its songs receive more airplay on the radio. But this isn't a bad thing, he says, because it allows the band to return to a regular life while at home and avoid an insurgence of "Stratamania."

"It's kind of cool to come home and still feel like it's the same place," he says. "I can live in a normal way, and that just happens to be low profile. I'm all over Campbell constantly, and I still like being able to do that. It doesn't feel any different than it did five years ago."

No different, that is, except for one thing—fans who have been with the band since the early days have gotten a little older and a little more musically inclined.

"In the last four years, we have seen so many kids who are now in bands of their own," Valentino says. "We influenced the kids coming to shows, and now they are young adults in bands of their own."