Lake HighlandsHigh School alumnus Mark Salling paid a visit to Dallas last week sporting a mohawk along with a posse of other young stars from FOX TV’s Glee.

Salling, accompanied by another DFW cast member, Kevin McHale of Plano, were at Hot Topic in the Galleria to promote the new show.

“It feels good to come home, even though we’re here for only, like, 15 hours,” he said.  

After graduating in 2001, Salling headed to Los AngelesMusicAcademy in Pasadena, Calif., to fine tune his guitar. But some of his inspirations took root here.

“The first concert I went to was a Toadies concert, and I've always been really into Pantera,” he said.

After studying guitar for two years, Salling started teaching lessons at a music school in Hollywood. He continued teaching for about five years while bouncing from band to band as a guitar player.

“I was kind of struggling a little bit with trying to pay the bills being a guitar player,” he said. “Since I did acting as a child in Dallas and I was in LA, I figured I’d give it a try. Glee was the first audition I had [after] that realization.”

Salling’s character is Puck – the bad boy who wears a letter jacket and a mohawk.

“I wasn’t really like my character in high school,” he said. But Salling did say he knew people like Puck, so he tries to “chain them in a little bit” while playing the part.

The show deals with a lot of high school issues, so “it's kind of like going through high school again,” he said.

Salling said he misses certain Texas and LakeHighlands scenes: “Tex Mex, a little restaurant called Mexicalioff Northwest Highway, Jakes Hamburgers [and] the Frisbee golf course B. B. Owen. I miss my family and my dog.”

Salling said he couldn't be more proud to call Dallas his hometown.

“Coming from Texas, you really wear it on your sleeve, and it shocks people when you tell them you didn't ride a horse to school,” he said. “When they ask me if everything is bigger in Texas, I say, ‘hell yeah.’”

Glee premieres 8 p.m. Wednesday.

Lisa Zimmermann is the Richardson/Lake Highlands/Far North Dallas neighborsgo editor and can be reached at 469-330-5689 or via e-mail at lzimmermann@neighborsgo.com. Got a story, photo or video you'd like to share? Post them directly on neighborsgo.com. Got a story idea? E-mail it to me directly. For more about how neighborsgo.com works with our neighborsgo print editions, please visit neighborsgo.com/help.