QUITMAN — Big things are happening for Ninja Gun.

The Brooks County-based band recently returned from two months of playing its second West Coast tour.

This past week has seen the release of Ninja Gun’s second album, “Restless Rubes,” on the Suburban Home Records label.

And if fortune smiles further, who knows, maybe the royalty check has finally arrived for the television show “Friday Night Lights” using two Ninja Gun songs last season.

Back home for a while in Brooks County, Ninja Gun frontman-vocalist-guitarist-songwriter Johnathan Coody is glad to have the break but is anxious to return to the road to promote the album. It is a dichotomy that fuels Ninja Gun.

“I love the South and South Georgia,” Coody says, “but it can be confining. It is interesting to me to see different places and see a different mentality, see a different culture. ... It’s gratifying to see people connect to what you do, especially from another area.”

That conflict of ideas and impulses plays out in Coody’s bio. As he relates in a few short sentences: He grew up on a Brooks County pig farm, earned a degree in psychology, and now plays in a punk-rock band.

“We’re redneck country kids who want to get out,” Coody says. “We have an appetite to see other things. I never felt like I could be satisfied working with Georgia Power.”

That’s the spirit of the band and the theme of the songs on “Restless Rubes.” The satisfaction found in not being too satisfied with the status quo. About the “stigma of being a musician and maintaining a sense of security,” Coody says.

These tracks show a growth of maturity in the songwriting as well as the band’s musicianship, while still maintaining a sound that is, as former area music critic Matt Walker described it, something akin to Johnny Cash meets the Ramones. Ninja Gun maintains the country punk of the band’s debut album, “Smooth Transitions,” while finding a new direction.

While the members of Ninja Gun may consider themselves “Restless Rubes,” the group has found a niche for their music and with each other in the band. Ninja Gun has a distinct Internet following as well as a growing audience in the punk circuit. The group’s songs have been used by television shows, such as the aforementioned “Friday Night Lights,” as well as MTV “Road Rules.”

But the band has also stayed together for years with no membership changes. Ninja Gun remains Coody; Jeffrey Haineault, drums; Thad Megow, guitar; Jacob Sparks, bass.

Spending months on the road, in a van, things get tense. “You’re at each others’ throats and you’ve got to get that out of your system,” Coody says.

Still, it’s a tight-knit group. When one member couldn’t make the VDT View photo shoot because he was out of town, the band grabbed one of his relatives to sit in as his surrogate.

And as much as they seek different things and new experiences, Brooks County and South Georgia are still home. It’s a place where they still find security, support, community and family.