Franchot Tone. – Photo by Ben Moon

By Max Sullivan

It’s been a little more than five years since South Hamilton native Franchot Tone started down the road to becoming a lead singer. Now, with one solo album under his belt and another in the works, the reggae/surf/pop singer is on tour with Nick Hexum, lead singer of 311. The tour includes one show at the Sinclair in Cambridge this Sunday night.

Tone has played with plenty of high-profile musicians. He plays lead guitar in the California-based Culver City Dub Collective, a group that has opened for artists like Jack Johnson and Toots and the Maytals. Johnson even recorded with the group on one of their albums.

What’s different with the Hexum shows is that Tone gets to open as a solo artist, something that is still relatively new to him. He did not release a solo album until 2012.

Tone became friends with Hexum while living in Topanga Canyon in Los Angeles. The friendship led to an opening slot last October for Tone at two of Hexum’s dates at the Hotel Cafe, a small but hip club in Los Angeles. Hexum’s sold-out audience gave Tone a warm reception.

“It was packed,” Tone said. “It was sold out, and everyone was there for my set, and they were supportive and enthusiastic. It was cool.”

Aware that Tone has family and friends on the East Coast, Hexum invited Tone to open for him at four East Coast shows: Jammin’ Java Music Club in Vienna, Va., The Stone Pony in Ashbury, N.J., Gramercy Theater in New York and, finally, The Sinclair this weekend.

Tone has more than just the tour on his mind. He’s currently putting together material for his second solo release. Tone doesn’t know for sure when it will be finished, but he hopes to have it done by this summer.

According to Tone, the new material will be darker this time around than it was on his first release, both musically and lyrically.

“Just exploring darker sides of an individual’s psyche,” Tone said. “Like hopelessness, depression, those kinds of things, not just feel-good, smiling, happy times, like the other side of the spectrum.”

Despite his ability to tear up his Fender Telecaster and Gibson Les Paul, he kept the lead guitar to a minimum on the first album. Keeping in mind that guitar solos are not common place in today’s pop music, he avoided them.

“It seems like a modern thing to stay away from guitar solos,” Tone said. “It seems like, unless you’re in a very specific genre, it’s not about the guitar.”

It was last June that his Culver City Dub Collective band mate Adam Topol took note of what a crowd pleaser Tone’s guitar playing can be. Topol has toured as Jack Johnson’s drummer and played on six of Johnson’s albums, and Tone respects his professional opinion. It was Topol who helped push Tone into his singing career and stood by Tone as co-producer on his first album.

“He was like, ‘Bro, when you started rocking out, you started ripping guitar solos, the audience responded,’” Tone said. “So I’ve been trying to write some Hendrix-y type riffs, some bluesy type riffs, and working on that angle. The guitar will be loud, blasting out the left side Cream style.”

When Tone first started singing, nerves often got the best of him. Today, he’s shaken that fear.

“I’ll sing anywhere, anytime, you know what I mean? I’m not embarrassed,” Tone said. “Super intimate gigs where people are sitting right here, staring into my face, staring at me, listening to every note, and I’m comfortable in that situation, too, which is nice because that was the biggest thing at first. It was like, ‘Oh, dude, I’m so embarrassed, I’m so self-conscious, I’m so uncomfortable.’”

A big help for him was taking one 30-minute voice lesson with Seth Riggs, who once coached Michael Jackson, Ray Charles and Madonna, among other Grammy award-winning artists. Riggs helped him explore his voice, taking him beyond the sounds he made on his first album.

“He just got me to approach my voice in a new way,” Tone said, “Sometimes it’s hard to listen to my first album. I’m very critical of the voice, but I feel like I sort of I am learning to be more aggressive with my voice, you know? It’s a different side of my voice as opposed to the light, delicate, natural sound that just came naturally at first, which I explored in my first album.”

Tone will be opening for the Nick Hexum Quintet this Sunday night at the Sinclair in Cambridge. For more information, go to http://www.sinclaircambridge.com/event/426487-nick-hexum-quintet-cambridge.