Published: April 25, 2008 12:00AM
By Serena Markstrom
The Register-Guard
I sent my older sister a text message to let her know I was in the garage of Dana Heitman, the Cherry Poppin’ Daddies’ trumpet player, for a rehearsal, then read her reply out loud to the band:
“I used to go watch them when I was in high school,” wrote the former Eugene resident who graduated from high school in 1991. Then came a second message, an afterthought: “They must be really old.”
Most of the seven guys finishing up the rehearsal reacted with some sort of agreement.
“We are old,” keyboardist Dustin Lanker said point blank.
The driving force behind the band, Steve Perry, is 44 and looks about the same as he did when the group’s “Zoot Suit Riot” became a multi-platinum hit and secured the Daddies as arguably the biggest band to ever come out of Eugene.
With eight years since their last release and 18 years since their debut “Ferociously Stoned,” many of the fellows from the group are actually daddies.
Their rehearsal ran with efficient professionalism. They covered much ground in a short time, with little time lost goofing off between songs as is typical for local band rehearsals.
Mostly they worked on new songs from “Susquehanna,” which is available now on the band’s Web site and slated for a June 10 national release on Space Age Bachelor Pad Records, the band’s indie imprint.
Saturday’s show at the WOW Hall marks a treat for local fans, some of whom have been with the band since the late ’80s when bassist Dan Schmid and guitarist and vocalist Perry, who’d worked together in the Jazz Greats and the Hucks as university students, formed the band.
They were just some kids who couldn’t get a gig at the WOW Hall, but they kept working at it, making music and playing wherever would have them. All these years later, six of the original eight Daddies are still with the band, though they have endured their share of internal band drama.
When the group was swept up in the swing revival with “Zoot Suit Riot” there was a backlash to match the excitement of a local band being on the national radar. Perry said during a recent interview he did not enjoy being yelled at and threatened with bodily harm when he was out in public in Eugene during that time.
After nonstop touring for a few years and a disappointing follow up to “Zoot Suit” with “Soul Caddy,” the group slowed down.
“It took a while to recover from success,” Perry said.
The mainstream success clouds the true nature of this band. People think of the Daddies as a swing band and even 10 years after that dance craze fizzled, it’s hard for the Daddies to get away from the image of the two-toned loafers and oversized dress jackets.
The Daddies make swing, and occasionally sign a contract to do a swing show, but if left to their own devices, the Daddies make weird, unclassifiable music.
Now, they do it with veteran skill.
“Susquehanna” checks the weird box in a genre-spanning set of tunes that are as catchy as they are odd.
Perry said they put out “Zoot Suit Riot” after so many fans approached the merch table at shows and asked which of the three independent releases had the most swing on them. “Riot” looked back at the best of swing the group had recorded at the time, and added four songs recorded just for the release. It was cheap to make and earned the band enough money to achieve some of its other goals.
This new project, with major themes of memory, love and loss, glides from ska to swing to bossa nova to flamenco to rock and back. They were able to make it, Perry said, because they have continued to work. The Daddies do fewer shows, but those shows have decent pay.
Perry said visiting so many musical territories was his intent from the beginning. There is a clue in “Hammerblow” that belies his philosophy:
“L’internationale sera le genre humane,” a chorus belts out toward the end of the song.
“My prediction is that in 30 years, American pop will owe a huge debt to world sensibilities,” Perry says in a news release and reiterated during the interview. “These I wanted to explore and potentially boil down to some fundamental building blocks that might lead toward a new, more international style.”
He said he is more inspired by books and movies than other music. His goal is that people will get under the genres and pay attention to the lyrics and see how the album tells a loose story through 12 songs that also stand alone. (A 13th track, “Arrancate” is a translation of the opener “Bust Out.”)
The most striking thing about the new collection of songs is how upbeat and danceable most of them are sonically, but how dark they are upon examination of the lyrics.
They deal with domestic abuse (“White Trash Toodle oo”), self abuse (“Blood Orange Sun”), public lewdness and drug abuse (“Julie Grave”) and suicidal thoughts (“Wingtips”).
By track 11, “Breathe,” we get the sense things are going to be OK, but only after a tortured emotional journey.
“We’re not for everybody,” Perry said from a seating area in his spacious south Eugene home, filled with natural light. “It’s odd.”
Perry writes the lyrics and parts for the other seven members in the group who play trumpet (Heitman), bass (Schmid), guitar (Jason Moss), saxophones (Sean Flannery and Joe Manis), keyboards (Lanker) and drums (Tim Donahue).
For this project Perry enlisted the help of other local musicians to bring in French horn, trombone, cello, flute and additional percussion and guitar.
Two of the band members no longer live in the area and it took awhile for everyone to be on board with the project, Perry said.
“Not everybody put their shoulder behind it,” Perry said.
In the past eight years, band members’ attention has been splintered. Most of them have other projects — notably Schmid and Lankers’ the Visible Men — and many have families.
“There was never a time when we completely ceased playing,” said Perry, who earned a bachelor’s degree in biology in 2004.
Getting together for mini tours or to play a lucrative few nights at a casino or festival is challenging enough with eight schedules to line up, but recording proved to be a different beast all together.
Perry said outside of himself, Gung Ho Studios owner Billy Barnett had the biggest impact on how the final recording came out. Perry worked with Barnett over countless sessions recording and rerecording vocal parts, retooling lyrics and bringing in musicians to lay down one track at a time for instrumental parts.
Barnett was the only other constant in the studio, and Perry said he served as a helpful sounding board; a nuts and bolts guy.
“He’s just like the fifth Beatle for us,” he said. “He knows exactly what I’m talking about (and) he’s really honest with me.”
Despite its quirkiness, “Susquehanna” is a pop album filled with hooks so catchy they are almost cruel. Sure, a lot of pop doesn’t casually name long-dead Roman emperors, but the Daddies have never played that easily into the mainstream hand even though they are a household name with a recording that sold 2 million copies.
Still, Perry wouldn’t mind another big hit. “Zoot Suit Riot” still makes him money. It’s been featured on the show “So You Think You Can Dance,” and there is a chance the band itself will perform on that show.
“Of course we would like to make our money back on the record, but that’s not the only concern for us,” Perry said.
“We would like to have success on our own terms and our own terms have a large artistic component to them,” he said. “Being realistic, we’d rather be seen for doing the thing we’ve always done, which is to try to make arty farty rock ’n’ roll.”
Bassist Schmid, who also tours with Frank Black of the Pixies, said when he first heard the new songs he was confused.
“Why don’t you sell these to Eminem or Christina Aguilera?” Schmid said was his initial reaction. But as he got to know the songs better he has come to really like them; he said he can’t get “Julie Grave” out of his head.
During the rehearsal, the tall and skinny Schmid bopped away on his two-toned bass, as Lanker played the keys and sang back-up vocals with his toothy delivery, and Donahue faithfully kept the beat.
The two-man horn section jotted down notes on sheet music. (Idit Schner will sit in on tenor sax for the CD release show in Eugene, and Boston resident Joe Manis will be in town for a total of three horns.)
Moss pounded away on the electric guitar but didn’t use any of the Spanish guitar present on the recording.
During “The Mongoose and the Snake,” a song with no trumpet part, Heitman left the room and returned to announce he had just received grades for his 15-year-old niece, who is living with him.
“Not good,” he said, picking up his trumpet with a disappointed look on his face. The other guys uttered a few words of support but then they shifted to the business of playing the fastest and oldest song on “Susquehanna.”
“Let’s do it as fast as we can,” Lanker said, and they all dove into the heartbreaking and heartstopping “White Trash Toodle oo.”
