four books, three careers, two continents and one Drugstore from where he started, The Molenes’ front man finds his center

“It’s guitar porn,” says Dave Hunter dryly. “That’s what I do now.”

Hugh Hefner he’s not, but Hunter has indeed written the kind of books that many a teenage boy is likely to pour over lustily. Dude, tone is everything, OK? Now put that Dave Hunter book back under my mattress.

The handsome and unassuming 44-year-old is probably best known in these parts for fronting the roots rock band The Molenes, but his day gig is writing for California’s Backbeat Books. He’s written four titles for the publisher (and edited several others), including the stunningly detailed and beautifully put together “The Guitar Amp Handbook.” Most recently, he flew to London to film a DVD which will accompany the upcoming “The Totally Interactive Guitar Bible.” It’s a book which promises to reach new levels of guitar geek obsession. In the process, Hunter made his motion picture debut trading guitar techniques with none other than Dave Gregory of XTC. Hunter seems as though he can hardly believe it still.

“That’s a trip, because he and I are demonstrating guitars on this DVD in this studio with nice lighting and a film crew. It’s freakish!” he says. “You know, it’s little bits with me saying things like, ‘In 1952, the Fender Telecaster...’ and blah blah. It’s not like anything I’ve ever done before.”

Guitar smut, indeed.

Hunter will be performing at the ArtSpace concert series Thursday, June 29, in Vaughan Mall in Portsmouth. The show, sponsored by RiverRun Bookstore and The Wire, runs from 7-9pm and is free.

Like many high schoolers who get bitten by the music bug, once Hunter discovered all the wonderful noise he could make with an electric guitar, it was all he wanted to do. Writing books was just a way to pay the bills on the path to headlining at Madison Square Garden.

“I never wanted to write books about guitars,” says Hunter, who lives in Portsmouth with his wife Jess and two small children. “I always wanted to play guitar and write songs. But it’s not a bad way to make a living. I can pick up the guitar in the middle of work and pretend I’m working and my wife doesn’t know,” he jokes. “‘I’m just reviewing this for Guitar Player, honey!’”

These days, he’s likely to be working on a roots rock song for The Molenes. Growing up in suburban Ohio in the 1970s, his taste leaned more toward Aerosmith, Led Zeppelin and The Who. But his father was one of those guys who could pick up any instrument and play a little of anything on it, and his mother’s Kentucky roots meant bluegrass was never far off. With a few guitar lessons at school and a band he formed with a couple of other kids from the neighborhood, music hooked him.

Through high school and beyond, as he attended Ohio’s Kenyon College, Hunter played guitar in bands at parties, school and bar gigs.

“I was never one of those virtuoso, sit down and learn everything note by note guitar players. I didn’t have the patience to sit down and do that,” recalls Hunter, amused. “There’d be a party, and a bunch of girls would say, ‘Play a song!’ I couldn’t pull that off at that point. I’d tell myself, ‘Let’s go home and learn a Paul Simon song,’ just something that you could play and be cool.”

But instead of learning that Paul Simon song, Hunter got distracted by other things, namely electronic gadgets and the desire to open them up and see what made them tick. Then there were the “build it yourself” kits, ordered from the back of guitar magazines, including one of those Peter Frampton talk box things. “It worked,” he says. “It blew your teeth out.” That casual interest would eventually serve him well, but at the time, he was just fiddling.

“It was the usual take apart a TV, or a guitar, kind of thing,” he says. “I was just kind of curious, just kind of finding out, and I never really learned to do it right until later when I started learning about the inside of guitar amps and how to build tube amps and stuff. I’m lucky I didn’t kill myself.”

Junior year in college gave Hunter an opportunity to study abroad at The University of Exeter in southwest England. He met his future wife there, and after a few years of traveling back and forth across the pond after school, they got hitched and moved to London. Hunter got a job as a local journalist and really worked at achieving the brass ring musically.

“I became the guy who was in one band after another that was doing well and gonna become the next band that was gonna do something and then it would just implode. For like eight or 10 years in a row,” he says.

Finally, Hunter co-founded a trio in the early 1990s called Drugstore, and things started to change. The band put out a few singles and got reviews in 12 countries, got play on the “cool late night BBC shows” and opened some sweet shows for larger acts coming through London.

“The best show I remember,” Hunter says, smiling, “was opening up for The Flaming Lips. The place was packed of course, and you’d see all the other people from all the other various bands up front, and I thought, ‘Shit, this is cool.’”

Labels started courting Drugstore, and they eventually signed with Go! Discs, home to The La’s and Billy Bragg, among others. But by that time, when all the moons seemed to align, Hunter decided to move on from the band. Their sound was changing and it started to become “one of those jobs where you get the sweats and you think, ‘I’ve gotta get outta here!’”

Disillusioned, Hunter put music on the back burner while he and his wife started a family. That’s when his technological curiosity and his journalism chops paid off—Hunter landed a gig as editor for England’s The Guitar Magazine in 1998. Four years later, he parlayed that experience into his latest career, writing instructional guitar books. He now works from home, where he can enjoy a slower pace than he did writing for magazines and enjoy the chance to watch his children grow up.

“I think about it now. I’m in the best place I’ve ever been musically I think, and life-wise and career-wise, which is great to be able to say because a few years ago I never would have thought I’d be saying that,” he says.

The Molenes are recording their first album in Hunter’s attic with some purchased gear and, of course, some stuff that Hunter assembled himself. Sometimes you head out in one direction, and lo and behold, you end up somewhere else that’s better than you could have imagined. Hunter says he laughs when he thinks about how he actually got a job that relates to his college English major. “It’s the biggest disappointment of my life,” he jokes. Kidding aside, he seems to be a contented soul.

“It feels like I know why I’m doing it now, and I’m writing the kind of music I wanna write, playing the kind of music I wanna play. Even though it’s not the career musician thing, it’s been as good as it gets.”