The Cherry Poppin’ Daddies are an amazing and creative Band; they’ve taken the past and made it the future. Like any world-class musical outfit, they combine superb musicianship with killer song writing. Steve Perry, composer, lyricist, singer, guitarist and motivating force behind the Cherry Poppin’ Daddies took the time to answer our questions about CPD’s music and direction.

WORD! – this is one of America’s best bands – period. If you think you know music and you don’t have CPD in your collection – you don’t know Jack.

Jeff: As a musician it’s easy to see/hear how Swing flows into Ska or Jump Blues melds with Jazz. Other critics and some of your fans have been rigid enough to complain about stylistic changes in the Bands songs and arrangements.

a. What’s your take of the bands sonic evolution?

Steve: There are two aspects of the band and their evolutions are different. We make records one way and our live show represents our interaction with how the outside world has understood what we have done. As far as making records is concerned, we have stayed the same. We are concerned with marginalized genres and how they can be jammed together to make a 12 to 16 song collection. So swing and mod rock and glam and Soca and Fado and everything else we are interested is fair game in our process. With the live show, we are conscious that we have sold 2 million swing records and toured with many Ska bands so we are perceived the way we are because of the limited interaction people have with our stuff and artistic goals.

Honestly, the live shows are what we perceive people want from us when they pay for a ticket and the recordings are for ourselves. If it started to get out there that we are a band with an eclectic identity, we would be pleased and play more challenging shows. But as we are fairly iconoclastic and don’t fit neatly into any of the scenes, I don’t foresee many people clamoring for what we do reflected in a live show.

b. Has packaging the albums by style helped define you or restrict your creativity?

Steve: I think the packaging is an opportunity to add, and even complete the vision of the record. Unfortunately, I have dealt ham-fistedly with all the artwork myself and frankly, though I did the best I could with limited resources, I think I screwed the pooch a bit. If I could work with somebody who had a high level of craft, we could do phenomenal stuff. But we have been hamstrung by meager budgets and living in a place with very few people who are driven in their pursuit of craft.

I think I would have pursued a kind of Roxy Music type of glamour look where you could see the worms underneath the shine. Maybe in the future I can find somebody to work with. Susquehanna came out of a dream where a lone dejected character was walking on the beach in a bloodied tuxedo wrapped in barbed wire and he was dragging a bouquet of flowers in the surf. What survived in the reality of the photo was the disembodied tux wrapped in barbed wire. Everything I want to do costs too much money!

Jeff:  In my opinion CPD is a very innovative and hip band. It’s not easy to honor and blend the past with the now and still be 21st Century relevant. How do you balance your music and avoid being “Too Hip for the Room?”

Steve: Hah. We will never be perceived as ‘too hip for the room.’ I think the bands that are allowed that distinction have to play into a set of preconceived notions from at least as far back as the 60′s that music represents the soul of an artist, and is not artificially created. You know… like Bob Dylan is just some sort of magic being instead of a calculating artist. Also, I think that there are genres that trigger most people’s ‘relevance button.’ I am less interested in those… like “indie rock.”

I am not interested in low fi production. I think many people attribute a certain realness and “soul” to lo-fi-ness. That is of course a crock of shit. I was watching Paul Morrissey’s/Warhol’s “Women in Revolt” the other day. Transvestites of that era are more interesting to me and more marginal. They are creations of themselves unabashedly. They are funny weird and pregnant with potential. Hip-Hop and Indie Rock come from super middlebrow value systems to me and are boring. I think being relevant in a pop medium currently means having to come from these social-climber value systems that both these scenes embody albeit in different ways. And I don’t find myself caring about them. I am envious of all the fun they must be having. But I like the losers in the culture wars way more. The extinct evolutionary lines that few people respect.

Jeff:  I’ve heard you compare your song writing to short story writing.

a. What gives you song/story ideas?

Steve: It’s part autobiographical and part what I see around me. I’m drawn to little struggles and the downtrodden in general. I like Cassavetes’ movies. If I could make little Cassavetes movies with the prickliness of Godard, that is what I would do. Godard is a very literary movie maker. So I think in movies and poetic terms. Oh and as far as symbolism is concerned I am always thinking Mallarme.

b. Do different genres of music suggest different themes?

Steve: Yes to me they do. But… often I will try and work against this in order to try for something different. Like a swing song about child abuse and loneliness. Party Music as a template for deep alienation and lyrical sadness maybe.

c. Albert Collins has suggested that some songs are about things that happen to you and some are about things that happen to other people. How autobiographical are your lyrics?

Steve: Somewhat autobiographical. But then I go off wherever I need to in order to feel satisfied by the song as a chapter in a whole story. I try to zoom out and see how the whole thing will seem.

Jeff: Blues – Swing – Ska -These are all complicated musical styles. How does CPD work from a arrangement
and performance perspective?

Steve: I write the songs and bring ‘em in, and the band in learning them changes them to fit what they do. None of the guys in the band are inherently interested in the musical styles I write in.

Jeff: I’ve been talking to a lot of Artists lately about performing in Europe and overseas generally. Non-USA audiences seem to have a greater appreciation for classic styles of music. The band seems to be able to literally “Bring the House Down” or at least the ceiling. So… Is there a difference in audience response to CPD in or outside the States?

Steve: Yes. There is an appreciation of American roots music overseas. Also, there is an appreciation and knowledge of art that is far more advanced then American audiences seem to have. It’s sad to say, but true. Now, a lot of the best music is coming out of Europe again because of their education. The gnarliness of the US though, I think helps good stuff to come out of our system. We have it harder probably than the Swiss. We have no social services net to catch us here. I think that gives us an edginess. Its a shitty way to live though.

Jeff: What’s next for CPD?

Steve: I am working on some songs, but it’s early to see what it’s going to feel like as a whole. There is a song that I would love to record with Buckwheat Zydeco. I am going to try and contact him once the song is fleshed out…. I wrote the song after Katrina, but felt like if I recorded it then, it would be cheesy and possibly self-serving. Now, I think I can get it out and have it be a part of a concept.