Say No More holds a benefit for a bus.

Afew weeks ago, the members of pop rock band Say No More were barreling across the flat-as-a-board Texas countryside in their 1973 Dodge Tioga, a big van they had nicknamed “Gumby” for its stagnant-green paint job. The band, which began at Salinas High School six years ago, was flush with excitement from performing a great show at this year’s legendary South By Southwest festival in Austin, Texas.

They were looking forward to upcoming performances in Phoenix and Bakersfield as they traveled toward their current home in Los Angeles. But in the small Texas town of Boerne, everything came to an unexpected stop when Gumby’s engine died. The quartet suddenly found themselves stuck in a small community whose biggest claim to fame is having the oldest running German band outside of Germany.

The guys cancelled their upcoming gigs and spent two days waiting for the service station to open. (Gumby had the gumption to break down on a weekend.) They skipped rocks, skateboarded in a Wal-Mart parking lot and made small talk with the town’s female residents. By day two, they rigged Gumby’s engine so that it would start.

After returning to L.A., they decided they needed to get Gumby a new engine – with a CD titled What You Thought You Knew coming out in May on Drive-Thru Records (home to popular pop punk acts like New Found Glory and Hellogoodbye), they are planning a full U.S. tour. They depend on Gumby, who has become the band’s unofficial fifth member, so they organized Friday’s “benefit” in Salinas.

SAY NO MORE PLAYS A GUMBY BENEFIT SHOW 8PM FRIDAY, APRIL 11, AT THE SALINAS VALLEY COMMUNITY CHURCH, 368 SAN JUAN GRADE RD., SALINAS. $10. 449-2500 X103.