There’s a long, mixed history of rock-and-roll side musicians stepping into the spotlight to make their own albums and lead their own bands. Some, like Sheryl Crow and Eric Clapton, achieve a high degree of artistry and popularity. Others, like Steve Van Zandt and Clarence Clemons, record a couple of good songs and never really find their own place in the public’s heart.

Two sidemen with deep Boston rock roots have just taken the plunge with new solo CDs. Warren Zanes, the blond-haired guitarist from the Del Fuegos, has just released Memory Girls (Dualtone), a dozen love songs as romantic and catchy as the heart tuggers in his former band’s catalogue. And keyboardist Phil Aiken, best known as a member of Buffalo Tom and Delta Clutch, has just issued Don’t Look Down (Blackberry), a leap of faith that exercised his established chops as an arranger but required him to grow into the roles of producer and singer. Those two albums are joined by Cigarettes and Cheap Whiskey (Twangtone), the work of another ex-accompanist, Stan Martin, who’s made a place for himself in Boston’s small country-music scene and is slowly reaching out to a national audience.

For Zanes, Memory Girls marks a return to the stage after a decade and a half away. After leaving the Del Fuegos, whom he’d joined at the tender age of 17, he moved to New Orleans, where he wrote songs and spun his wheels as he searched for a new life. For a while he played once a month in a garage outfit called Lady Costume to raise his rent money — all of $100 a month. When his then-girlfriend suggested he take a few college courses, Zanes enrolled and found his path. Today he’s a PhD teaching the history of photography at Manhattan’s School of Visual Arts.

" After five years in the Del Fuegos, which were poignant years of adolescence, I realized I had fed a lot of rich food to one part of my mind, but another part was starving, " he says over the phone from his Brooklyn home, which he shares with his wife, the singer/conceptual artist April March, and their child. " When I went to the university and another part of my mind got fed, it felt good, so I stuck with it. "

More or less. When a tape of the songs Zanes had been writing for his own amusement made its way into the hands of LA production team the Dust Brothers, whose résumé includes Beck, the Beastie Boys, and the Rolling Stones, they offered him a deal with their Ideal Records label. Zanes was right in the middle of his dissertation. " I had to go to my PhD advisers and say, ‘I got a record contract. Could you guys give me a year to make a record?’ So we all trudged over to the dean’s office. As it turns out, he was in the process of helping his daughter find her way in the music business, so he was sympathetic. I walked out of there with a leave of absence and the dean’s daughter’s number in my pocket. "

Zanes assembled some friends, including Boston star drummers Billy Conway and Billy Beard and former Boston songwriter/guitarist Angelo Petraglia, in a Nashville studio. " They’d really encouraged me as a songwriter — for years. After I quit the Del Fuegos, I’d made a demo tape with them and [guitarist] Stu Kimball. When they heard my stuff, they were surprised. They asked the natural question about why my songs weren’t used in the Del Fuegos. The reason I’d left was because I had no space as a writer. To be fair, it was my brother Dan’s band, and he said no. From that time on, Angelo always said, ‘You should be doing something with your songs.’  "

Finally he has. Petraglia, Conway, and Beard drafted more friends, including Nashville-based multi-instrumentalist Daniel Tashian, son of Barry Tashian of the ’60s Boston rock band Barry & the Remains. Tashian in turn invited revered country singer Emmylou Harris in for backing vocals on " Scrapbook, " the melancholy tale of a relationship’s slow arch of ignition and meltdown. Throughout the disc, Zanes’s melodies, hooks, and deft turns of phrase are supported by the same flair for arranging that Petraglia has brought to albums by Kim Richey and other artists who straddle the line between roots music and pop. Shimmering psychedelic guitars slip in and out. Strings and reeds sweeten the mix, especially on " Hey Girl, " where a theremin-like keyboard snaps a simple love song into something sharper. The catchy, piano-driven " Sidewalk Sale, " with its catalogue of abandoned possessions (baggage from a break-up that’s about to be shed), and " Do You Recognize My Love? " , which gets a kind of Parisian street-café treatment, are also standouts.

Of course, as with all things record-business, there was a complication. Ideal’s parent company, Disney, pulled the plug on the label after Memory Girls was finished, and Zanes had to wait until the, uh, Dust Brothers settled before he could get the album to Dualtone. But it’s off to a good start. He’s just completed a tour with the Wallflowers and is planning a spring date in Boston, where several stations are spinning the CD.

If the disc has a weakness, it’s Zanes’s tenor-leaning regular-guy voice. He has a narrow range that strains for the high notes, and he seems to have trouble maintaining power on long phrases. But he’s nonetheless easy on the ears.

SINGING IS ALSO A SORE SPOT on Phil Aiken’s Don’t Look Down. His vocals are a bit whiny, and on " Rear View " his struggle for intonation is audible. But what’s just as evident is his gift for writing solid pop songs and his taste and abilities as arranger and producer. The mesh of guitars and keyboards on " Missouri Arcade " seals his lyrics in a formidable wall of sound; " Lose Yourself " shows a command of melody and forceful dynamics that conjures Buffalo Tom. The playing is top-notch, and that’s not surprising when you consider that Bill Janovitz (Buffalo Tom’s guitarist), Ed Valauskas (the Gentlemen’s bassist), Paul Kolderie (producer, bassist, and guitarist), Jimmy Ryan (mandolin wiz), and other stalwart local musicians appear. Aiken himself contributes energetic piano playing that balances power and melody.

Aiken explains that his pop instincts were developed " lying in bed at night listening to a.m. radio in the ’70s and, I guess, just keeping my ears open. I’m pretty firmly grounded in classic rock . . . the Stones and Beatles and stuff. " Yet his songs have an edge that’s contemporary.

As for the trail to the front microphone, it’s been a lengthy one. He spent years writing songs that others sang. His band the Ground Swells broke up in 1997, whereupon he placed an add in the Phoenix seeking musicians to play with. To his surprise, one of his callers was Janovitz, who was looking to expand Buffalo Tom’s sound with keyboards. " It wasn’t until the Buffalo Tom call came that the idea of playing in someone else’s band had occurred to me. "

Janovitz and Aiken meshed, and Aiken began a fruitful tenure in that band. Later he joined Delta Clutch, and he also plays in Crown Victoria with Janovitz. But he never stopped writing his own songs. Eventually the itch to record and perform them developed. At first, he thought he’d go into a studio and scratch it until he had a solo CD. But he purchased an eight-track ADAT recorder so he could do overdubs and other parts at leisure in his home and then add them to the album project’s master tapes. Home recording soon became an obsession, and Aiken purchased more and more gear, until he’d built his own studio in his Stoughton basement. And that’s where the bulk of Don’t Look Down, which is available via www.philaiken.com, was mixed and recorded.

The CD sounds first-rate. " I’m pretty proud of the production end of things, " he says. " It was my first foray into that. That said, I feel like, with my pool of songs to draw on, I could probably pick stuff that suits my voice a little bit better next time. I’ve actually learned to write differently, writing for my own voice instead of others’. And I’m confident that I’ll continue to improve. "

He’ll have plenty of opportunity. He’s already started two more CDs: a rock record and a quieter collection of songs built on the piano-keyed sound of the trio with which he recently made his debut as frontman at Cambridge’s Kendall Café. " I had quite a case of stage fright, which I’d never had before and never expected, " he confesses. " It wasn’t so much about singing as having to come up with witty banter. "

ALTHOUGH HE’S BEEN FRONTING his own band for years, Pepperell’s Stan Martin also got his start as a sideman — playing rhythm guitar in South Boston clubs with his vocalist mother’s country and bluegrass bands. The title of his new Cigarettes and Cheap Whiskey evokes the flavor of his gritty honky-tonk music, and the songs and performances prove he’s the finest country performer to hail from these parts in ages. Martin’s singing ranges from a lonesome, near-yodeling bawl in " Crying over You " to a smooth croon in the two-stepping " I’m Leaving Town " and tough-but-sweet contemplation in the acoustic " Not on Me. " Full of fiddle, pedal steel, and the simple but rock-solid rhythms that distinguish the best traditionally rooted country, Cigarettes and Cheap Whiskey goes down smooth as hifalutin Scotch.

When we spoke last week, Martin had just returned from a showcase at South by Southwest, where his performance convinced the crowd at the legendary Texas roadhouse the Broken Spoke that there’s a little Lone Star in his state-of-the-art roots country. " Actually, I feel like a fish out of water here in New England, " he admits, " and what passes for country music here . . . well, I don’t know. I’m not alternative enough for the alternative market and way too country for the market up here. A lot of performers around here do tongue-in-cheek country, and I’m not tongue-in-cheek. I like the Bakersfield sound " — he means the hard, guitar-propelled approach perfected by Merle Haggard and Buck Owens in the early 1960s.

Perhaps being an odd man out has fueled Martin’s craftsmanship, if not exactly rewarded it. After all, it isn’t easy to develop that high-and-lonesome sound without getting a little high and feeling a little lonesome.