AP file photo

Singer Adam Levine and guitarist James Valentine — along with the rest of Maroon 5 — will hit Blacksburg next week.

| Amy Matzke-Fawcett

amy.matzke-fawcett@roanoke.com, 381-1674

BLACKSBURG -- On a short, 13-stop tour visiting only colleges and universities, Grammy-award winners Maroon 5 will come to town next week.

The band -- best known for the catchy tune "This Love" from its debut album, "Songs About Jane" -- will perform Tuesday at Virginia Tech as part of its "Back to School" tour.

The tour is getting back to the band's roots, keyboardist Jesse Carmichael said.

The members started out playing parties in their hometown of Los Angeles.

"In the early days, those were our most fun shows when we'd set up at somebody's after-party," Carmichael said. "That was kind of our college experience."

Along with Carmichael, the band is made up of singer Adam Levine, guitarist James Valentine, bassist Mickey Madden and drummer Matt Flynn.

Flynn joined the group in 2006 when original drummer Ryan Dusick left because of an arm injury. Dusick had been with the band since the beginning.

The band released its second album, "It Won't Be Soon Before Long," with Flynn in 2007.

"We've had a couple more years, and everything is always getting better," Carmichael said. "That's basically the band motto."

After the tour, the band will travel to Switzerland, where the members have been working on an album due out early next year.

That recording will be more like the band's earlier music on "Songs About Jane" than "It Won't Be Soon Before Long," Carmichael said.

"In the second record, we did more of an exploration of synth [synthesizer] and drumbeats, like Prince- and Michael Jackson-inspired music," Carmichael said. "Now we're just doing exactly what came naturally to us.

"It turned out to be us being real," he said.

All of Maroon 5's lyrics are written by Levine, and the band collaborates on the music, Carmichael said.

After the album is finished, the band will plan a longer tour to promote it, he said.

The band is trying to engage college students by offering $15,000 to a major fan in the "Starving Student Contest."

College students -- whether the band comes to their school or not -- can upload videos of themselves singing along to their favorite Maroon 5 songs. The band will review the videos and choose the best one.

"We're excited to see what people come up with," Carmichael said. "It's always nice to encourage people to be creative."

Having a tour focused on colleges and universities is a great opportunity for students, said Laura Bedenbaugh, assistant director of student programming for University Unions and Student Activities at Virginia Tech.

The show is being sponsored by Virginia Tech Union, Student Government Association and Hillel at Virginia Tech.

"This is a really great opportunity for the students running the show and working it," Bedenbaugh said. "Because it's student-run organizations, they can say, 'I booked Maroon 5.' "

Working together, the three groups have been able to bring a show that none could have brought individually because of shrinking budgets, Bedenbaugh said.

"This wouldn't have happened without co-sponsors, because together we have a lot more," Bedenbaugh said.

The show will also be part of the eighth Daniel Pearl Music Day. Pearl, a Jewish journalist, was kidnapped and slain in Pakistan in 2002. Later that year, Pearl's family started the music celebration to encourage peace and understanding through music, according to the Daniel Pearl Foundation's Web site.

"This year the students saw the chance to support the Maroon 5 concert as a way to reach out to a broader base of students -- bridging the communication and doing a highly visible concert," Hillel's executive director, Sue Kurtz, wrote in an e-mail.

This is the fourth year that Hillel has participated in the celebration, Kurtz wrote, supporting performances by Matisyahu, Balkan Beat Box, and Gogol Bordello as part of the celebration at Tech.