ON MICHAEL PENN'S ROAD SINGER SURVIVES HIS FIRST SHOT OF FAME.

Byline: Fred Shuster Music Writer

Singer-songwriter Michael Penn takes his early-'90s success with a grain of salt.

Penn, older brother of actor Sean Penn, is perhaps still best-known for his song ``No Myth,'' which earned him a best new artist trophy from MTV in 1990 and landed at No. 13 in the charts. For Penn, it was a strange period.

``I was part of a cycle where the label (RCA) had to put out new product to see what might stick,'' Penn said. ``Someone decided to pull the switch on me, and they promoted the song to MTV and radio, and the thing took off. It was a slow build. I lucked out.''

Married for two years to fellow singer-composer Aimee Mann, whose songs play a pivotal role in Paul Thomas Anderson's acclaimed film ``Magnolia,'' Penn knows too well the ebbs and flows of the pop music world.

He finished his fourth and latest album, ``MP4 (Days Since a Lost Time Accident),'' last summer but had to wait for the label to decide whether to release it. If Epic hadn't put it out, Penn says, he would have sold his next album on the Internet and at shows.

``The business is all about the bottom line,'' Penn said. ``Record companies are like cat breeders who find a breed they can make some money off of, in-breed it until it's sickly and dying off, and then move on to the next breed.''

New York-born Penn, 41, was reared around show biz. His mother, actress Eileen Ryan, worked on stage and screen while his director-actor father, Leo, was blacklisted during U.S. Sen. Joe McCarthy's notorious reign of terror in Hollywood.

Penn began playing in a cover band as a teen-ager; by the mid-'80s, he'd joined up with keyboardist Patrick Warren in the post-new wave group Doll Congress. His solo debut, ``March,'' which spawned the folky hit single, led to relentless road work.

He developed his songwriting skills on ``Free-for-All'' and honed his ability with his third disc, ``Resigned.'' In 1997, Penn drew enthusiastic crowds on a summerlong tour with Sheryl Crow and around that time scored two well-received films, Anderson's ``Hard Eight'' and ``Boogie Nights.''

These days, he's about to embark on a co-headlining tour with Mann and is co-producing the next Wallflowers album with Andrew Slater, the band's manager. A Los Angeles date on the Mann-Penn trek is expected but has not been announced.

``We work separately, but we do run ideas by each other,'' Penn said of life with his wife. ``It's nice to have someone so understanding of what we do so close. We've never written together because we are so similar, we cancel each other out.''

The new album, which Penn produced himself, looks at desire, love and loss, from the track ``Perfect Candidate,'' a song about somebody searching for that one person who'll make everything right, to ``Bucket Brigade,'' a vignette about a relationship in flames. ``Beautiful'' muses on appearance and artifice, while ``Don't Let Me Go'' deals with the complexities of need.

``I've always loved working in the studio,'' he said. ``I can point up nuances and detail in songs that I can't live.''

To back his own guitar and bass, Penn worked with longtime pals Warren and Victor Indrizzo on drums. Mann and Penn's brother Christopher, also an actor, sang harmony vocals, as did Grant Lee Phillips (of Grant Lee Buffalo), Buddy Judge (the Grays) and Rage Against the Machine producer Brendan O'Brien.

Asked about the importance of radio play, Penn counters that airplay is never a consideration when writing and recording.

``To get a song on radio requires an enormous amount of money and cooperation,'' he said. ``The company has to have a regime in place willing to go to those extreme lengths for you. And that regime has to be connected to you in a way where they will get credit if you are a success.''

Penn grew up in Los Angeles listening to the Beatles and at Santa Monica High School began writing what he once called ``earnest, downbeat'' songs. After ``March,'' the success of ``No Myth'' and the completion of his next two albums, Penn started hanging out at Largo, a Hollywood club with an imaginative booking policy open enough to include nearly all genres.

Mann and Penn frequently shared the Largo stage with comedians, prompting the pair to include some comedy in their current tour.

``It's great for us, because we can have a show while we're up there,'' Penn said. ``Between-song banter has never been Aimee's or my own strongest suit, so it's great to have people we like and enjoy do some of the talking for us.''

Despite the ups and downs of the record business, Penn insists he is pleased to be able to make a living doing the thing he loves.

``I really enjoy getting to make records,'' he says. ``I get to do something for a living I really love doing. How many people can say that these days?''

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Photo: no caption (Michael Penn)