All grown up and forced to relive high school. Who hasn’t sweated out that terrifying nightmare? Jackson Wilcox is experiencing it right now, except that he isn’t dreaming. He’s very much awake, standing on a makeshift stage, guitar in hand, as some 1,000 curious faces peer back at him.

“Hi there. We’re A Crowd of Small Adventures, a Gwar cover band,” he announces to the sea of students and faculty, hoping to lighten the grim atmosphere at Las Vegas Academy’s mandatory 10 a.m. outdoor music-appreciation gathering. The attempt at levity backfires. A cluster of darkly clothed metalheads near my vantage point atop the grassy field seizes on the Gwar reference and cheers, right up until the moment the quartet’s folk-pop sensibilities—and Wilcox’s fluttering warble—reveal them to be, roughly, the polar opposite of Gwar, sending the metalheads to their knees in horrified hysterics.

Were life more like a John Hughes script, the entire crowd, tittering cynics and all, would surely rise in unison—won over by nifty arrangements, quirky lyrical phrases and chant-along choruses—and applaud, so loudly, perhaps, that residents of the surrounding Downtown neighborhood would leave their homes to join in. In reality, only a handful of extroverts twirl near the stage, and a few more chime in with the band’s gleeful “oh-whoa-ohs,” but most of the audience remains, in predictable teenage fashion, staunchly noncommittal as the members of A Crowd of Small Adventures bob and sway to their beats.

Afterward, even as a dozen new fans wander up to purchase $8 copies of debut EP The Evil Archipelago, the four musicians remain disoriented. “That was pretty scary,” drummer Mike Weller tells me, shakily descending from the stage. “I couldn’t really tell what people thought of us.”

An hour later over drinks at the nearby El Cortez, the mood has shifted slightly. “I think that went well ... or as well as it could have,” Wilcox says. If nothing else, the experience jolted A Crowd of Small Adventures from a comfort zone it has enjoyed the past several months—a euphoria bred by drawing atypically enthusiastic local crowds (yes, indie scenesters actually can dance when they want to), earning the respect of peers (“a really tough band to follow,” Skooners frontman Blair Dewane conceded into his microphone after having to do just that at the Freakin’ Frog one night) and streaking to the pole position in the next-big-thing-to-come-out-of-Las-Vegas sweepstakes since forming in February.

Those 35 minutes of high-school terror also get me thinking about a better way to learn about the band’s personalities, music and ambitions than sitting around chatting at the El Cortez. To truly know A Crowd of Small Adventures, I resolve, we must set forth—on our own series of small adventures.

I e-mail Wilcox with the concept, selecting a roller-coaster ride as an example, and receive this in return: “I hate, hate, hate roller coasters and have sworn them off, but if you get the green light on this project we will totally ride one and you can tell everyone how hard I cried.”

This is going to be fun.

ADVENTURE NO. 1

ELEVATOR RIDE TO THE STARS

Megan Marie has no problem with heights, so she’s not afraid of what we’ll find at the top of the cloud-tickling Stratosphere hotel-casino. It’s the seemingly simple matter of getting up there that concerns the band’s violinist. “I don’t like tight spaces,” she reveals, and with those words jinxes her chance for an incident-free ride on what’s advertised as “the world’s fastest elevator,” which will carry us some 1,000 feet skyward.

We go up ... and then we head back down, for reasons unexplained by the operator still blithely chirping about the lightning-fast 37-second travel time as we tick past 60 seconds on the way down, and 90 as we shoot up again. Marie’s eyes grow markedly larger, and she begins complaining about inner-ear pressure when, at last, the steel doors open. A few minutes later she’s hovering near the observation deck’s edges, relishing her release.

Marie stands out from her three bandmates, and not just because she’s the only female member. She’s also the youngest, just 21. She’s the lone trained musician in the bunch, playing both violin and viola in the symphony and chamber orchestras at UNLV, where she’s finishing up a degree in music performance and music education. And she is, by no small measure, the Small Adventurer who puts the most thought into what she wears onstage—youthful boutique finds—particularly when her beau, unofficial band photographer/videographer Mike Thompson, plans to be in the vicinity with his camera bag (view his work at myspace.com/acrowdofsmalladventures).

What provoked a fashion-conscious, classically trained violinist who passes days with Brahms and Schumann to spend nights with T-shirted dudes who guzzle Pabst and list The Who and Common as musical influences? Wilcox. “Jack’s been writing songs I’ve liked since we were in high school,” says Marie, who attended Green Valley High with Wilcox and Weller. “He’s so talented ... when he asked me to join the band I didn’t even have to think about it.”

Listen to The Evil Archipelago—self-recorded by Wilcox with an assist from The Robot Ate Me’s Ryland Bouchard in Portland last January—then witness A Crowd of Small Adventures in concert (next live date: December 7 at the Bunkhouse), and Marie’s violin work leaps out as the clearest difference-maker, swathing the music with an epic aura not unlike that of the Arcade Fire. “She’s sooo good,” Wilcox enthuses as he plays me a new full-band version of a track from the EP, “Bang, Bang,” pegged for a full-length album he hopes to have out next year. “I really don’t want to lose her.”

It’s a genuine concern, since Marie will graduate next year and has, on occasion, discussed relocating to her hometown of Denver. Tonight, atop the tallest building in Las Vegas, however, she sounds committed to staying put. “I’ve got a lot of good stuff happening here, so I’m gonna stick around for quite a while,” she says. “This opportunity with the band is something I can’t pass up.”

That bit of good news, which elates Wilcox, still hangs in the air when his phone rings. It’s bassist Joe Wright checking in, and he suggests we add laser tag to the adventuring agenda, shouting, “Tell Megan she’s goin’ down like John Denver!”

ADVENTURE NO. 2

ATTACK OF THE BLOODTHIRSTY OSTRICHES

Little-known fact: Las Vegas has a zoo. It’s on Rancho Drive, down the block from Texas Station, and among its modest animal collection are brother and sister lions, a chimpanzee and an alligator. None of those seem to worry Wright especially, but a flock of docile-looking flamingos has him looking like he might run for cover. “Large birds frighten me,” he admits, backing away from the exhibit. “I mean, what if a group of them were to suddenly charge me? I’d be pretty freaked out, wouldn’t you?”

Probably, but the flamingos appear quite secure behind their fencing, as do two ostriches that have Wright squirming even more uncomfortably. “I used to live near someone with ostriches in their yard, and they would just peck-peck-peck over the fence all day,” he explains. “They’ve always scared me.” Still, a little anxiety can’t stop A Crowd of Small Adventures’ resident cutup. Wright sneaks up behind Wilcox as the band’s frontman studies one of the gangly creatures at close range and, pardon the pun, gooses the hell out of him, sending Wilcox airborne and eliciting a chuckle from the nearby Weller.

Wright is 22, but he acts more like a big kid, unceasingly wide-eyed and fun-loving, whether he’s posing for a goofy camera-phone photo with an alligator or hatching a plan to scare Marie by wearing a gorilla costume to the next band practice in his garage. Onstage, he’s exactly the same, grinning ecstatically as he paws at his bass guitar, unleashes cheery vocal harmonies and prods audiences to join in on the action. “I’m the hype man. I try to hype it up when I’m onstage,” says Wright, whose official duties on the group’s MySpace page are listed as “bass/clapping.”

Last September, Wilcox approached his childhood friend—the two once served in the same Boy Scout troop—at a Muse concert at the Hard Rock Hotel (where Wright works as a bartender) about forming a musical partnership. “Joe and I have known each other forever, and we’d jammed together a little in high school, so when I needed a bass player, Joe came to mind,” Wilcox says.

Wright, who’d already witnessed a solo performance by Wilcox at Balcony Lights, did a bit more homework before committing. “I was always open to being in a band, but it had to be the right thing, not just playing a bunch of covers with buddies,” he says. “When I listened to Jack’s stuff, I got excited.”

As the conversation turns to the band’s future, I realize Wright has a serious side, one that led him to pursue a business degree at CCSN, book shows for one-time Henderson venue Rock N Java and produce several styles of A Crowd of Small Adventures T-shirts for the band to sell on its tour up the Pacific Coast this past summer. “I look at everything from a business perspective, and I think we have the commercial appeal to make it pretty big,” Wright says. “Now, it’s a matter of how we can get to that next level.”

ADVENTURE NO. 3

FACING THE DREAD SEA URCHIN

It’s really unique,” Weller assesses after chewing up a piece of spongy Japanese sea urchin at Sushi Mon restaurant. “It tastes like the ocean ... or maybe the way water might taste when it’s out of a really rusty faucet.”

Across the table, Wilcox looks like someone just sucker-punched him in the stomach. He’s also just finished his portion of sea urchin, and isn’t the least bit happy about it.

“That was really upsetting,” he says. “I don’t think I want to eat anything else.”

Weller blocks out his friend and continues trying to identify the lingering sensation in his mouth. After all, we came here to test his sense of culinary adventure—he’s the one wary of strange foods—and he’s come through exactly as I expected: analytically. “It’s not that bad,” he concludes. “I would probably get it again, if somebody else would try it with me.”

Weller is the quietest member of A Crowd of Small Adventures, not that the magnetic Wilcox or the boisterous Wright provide much competition for that distinction. When the band’s drummer opens his mouth to say something, it’s typically concise and purposeful, such as, “I’m going to order some ice cream,” which lets us know his brief dalliance with sushi has come to an end, and we’re on our own to finish what’s left on the table.

That Weller is the drummer for A Crowd of Small Adventures is, in and of itself, his own giant-size adventure, since he’d never played drums before joining the band. By trade he’s a singer/songwriter/guitarist like Wilcox, talented in his own right, if haunting solo recording “I Feel Much Better Now” (newly posted at myspace.com/hungrycloudmusic) is any indication. But after he and Wilcox briefly attempted to write songs together at the group’s inception, he graciously took a backseat—literally—and began learning his way around a drum kit, in characteristically deliberate fashion. “I was living with someone who had a drum set, so I started messing around with it,” says Weller, the band’s elder statesman at 24.

“Then I started researching drumming and trying different techniques with a practice pad, and now, I think I actually enjoy drumming more than singing and writing. It’s a lot more free.”

Weller’s even-keeled demeanor seems well-suited for the position of musical anchor—“He’s not flashy, but we wouldn’t want him to be,” Wilcox says—though he’s also capable of adapting on the fly, as he demonstrates by ad-libbing a nimble backbeat for a mellow Wilcox composition at a recent practice session.

As for hard feelings over sacrificing his creative side for the group’s greater good, Weller insists there aren’t any. He and Wilcox are fast friends, so close in fact that they not only work day jobs at the same Starbucks (Wilcox does double-duty at Linens-N-Things) but also live together, at Wilcox’s parents’ home in Henderson. “My parents are great,” Wilcox says. “They were in a bluegrass band when they were my age, and they put on an annual folk festival in the mountains of Utah, so they’ve always supported me and my music.”

Sure enough, Steve and Denise Wilcox show up to see A Crowd of Small Adventures at the Bunkhouse on a Sunday night, sticking around to bounce on their barstools well past midnight (okay, Denise bounces; Steve sits in place looking rather flummoxed). “We’ve known Joe and Megan for years, and Mike lives with us now,” Denise says, sneaking a swig from her son’s PBR can. “It’s so cool that they’re all together now.”

ADVENTURE NO. 4

BARREL ROLLS AND LOOP-DE-LOOPS

Stephen Jackson Wilcox (no one calls him Stephen; it’s Jackson or Jack) can accomplish remarkable feats with a singing voice that strains and crackles in the current indie-rock tradition of Wolf Parade’s Spencer Krug and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah’s Alec Ounsworth.

He can go from frenzied to hushed and back to manic without warning, as on “See Her,” a favorite among jig-inclined fans of the band. He can push into an upper octave so severe you’ll swear he’s permanently damaged his larynx, only to produce a perfectly mellifluous tone seconds later, as during “Gemini,” a tune featuring the unforgettable couplet, “Open up your skin, and we will crawl into your marrow/Cry out all your tears, and we will swim, swim, swim to freedom.” And he can produce a sound so disquieting it will wash over you like unrelenting sorrow, until he unleashes an even more disconsolate pitch in the next verse, as with the heart-wrenching “Bone City” and its brutal “We are going to bury our wives here!” chorus.

I’m eager, then, to learn what noise his voice will make as he blasts through the double-loop of the Canyon Blaster, the centerpiece of Circus Circus’ Adventuredome, the final stop on our journey. “I haven’t been on a roller coaster since I was 5,” he says as he marches toward his fate. “It was an old one made of wood, all rickety, with the paint peeling off. I swore I wouldn’t get on one again.”

He’s now 23, and his shaky nerves are so evident as we queue up, I half expect him to bolt, more so when Wright begins razzing him. But he soldiers on. And after squeezing his eyes shut for the first few seconds, he decides—as all great adventurers must—to embrace his trial, openings his lids and, yes, screaming as we drop, loop and roll our way through the faux mountain range and come to a rest at the finish. “That was fun,” he proclaims. “I’ll definitely be riding more roller coasters from now on.”

That’s only fitting, since Wilcox’s best compositions resemble roller coasters in their structure, taking listeners in one direction and then rocketing them in another, often contrasting über-poppy melodies with dark lyrics of melancholy and despair. Even the band’s name—a borrowed phrase from Jean Paul Sartre’s Being and Nothingness, a treatise on existentialism Wilcox insists meant little to him otherwise—reflects that daredevil spirit. “It was just a line at the end of a sentence, but it reminded me of the way I feel about music,” he says. “I try to make every song a little different, a small adventure for the listener.”

“Death of an Idol” begins light and airy—“Jedi Mind Tricks is in my car,” Wilcox twitters, a whimsical pop-culture reference within a pop-culture reference—before turning deadly serious with the repeated line, “Till death has come to claim me, I will have won.”

Or how about “The Visit” for a thrill ride? One minute, it’s a tear-jerker about a lost loved one (“It’s been about six months now, the cancer took your brain away”), the next it’s an addictive sing-along, and the band’s current send-them-home-humming closer of choice. “You can come up and dance to it if you want,” Wright tells a crowd one night at the Frog, to which Wilcox appends, “Yeah, it’s about death.”

“I like to keep people guessing, but I don’t want them struggling to keep up, either,” Wilcox says. “I have a digital recorder packed full of ideas for songs, and I’ll listen to them from time to time and see what might work for the band.”

Right now, A Crowd of Small Adventures is learning a new Wilcox creation, one he predicts the group’s regular fans “probably won’t like.” Its rehearsal version sounds both like a significant departure, heavier and with stretches of built-in instrumentalism, and clearly identifiable as a Wilcox original, by way of bits and pieces that remain lodged in my brain long after I’ve driven home that night.

The band’s latest practice is also notable for the presence of Corlene Byrd, who might fill the vacant keyboard slot previously held down by both Jacob Smigel and Kristin Mason (guitarist Joe Kendall also served in the pre-Marie incarnation of the band for a time). Byrd’s own sometime band—The Corlene Machine, featuring both Wilcox and Weller—once opened for The Killers at the Hard Rock, and her presence could prove a significant boon to A Crowd of Small Adventures’ lineup, providing the band the necessary firepower to work up live versions of “The Hungry Dead” and “The Summer,” two ultra-catchy, as-yet-unperformed cuts from The Evil Archipelago.

But that’s a story for another time. Right now, Wilcox is still beaming from his roller-coaster rediscovery, which, his prediction to the contrary, most definitely did not bring him to tears. Nor does he seem the least bit distressed when I ask the sort of question most artistic souls dread: How far do you think A Crowd of Small Adventures can go?

“I want to be big, like really big,” he replies. “Not ultrarich big, but comfortable enough to keep making albums and see the world. Music is my life, so my goal is to go as far as we possibly can.”

Sounds like Wilcox’s real adventures might only be starting out small.

Spencer Patterson is the Weekly’s music editor.