Watching the manic antics of the Cherry Poppin' Daddies frontman, you could almost figure the swing revival had to happen just so Perry could get his moment of zoot-suited glory.

But you might be surprised to learn that the 30-something singer thinks he makes a rather poor pop star.

"Well, I'm kind of a curmudgeon. And I don't feel I've made a smooth transition into a...pop personality," Perry explains via telephone from California, as sirens scream in the background. "Pop music is so fake. It's like a giant high school. You've got all the different cliques, and everybody's trying to screw each other over, really."

Nevertheless, don't mistake Perry and his bandmates for Eddie Vedder-ish mopers. They're not.

That will be apparent when the Daddies bring their high-energy swing to Huntington's Wild Dawg Saloon at 8 p.m. Tuesday for a Marshall University-sponsored concert.

Meanwhile, here are a few more things you might not know about Perry and his merry men.

The Daddies are Steve Perry's band.

Yes, he's the energetic, wingtip-clad frontman.

But he also writes the tunes - down to the horn arrangements - and handles the increasing requests from the press.

He's also weathered regular defections from the eight-piece band to keep his musical vision intact.

"Not everyone has as much invested in it as I do," he says. "It's exhausting, but I've been doing it so long, I can't imagine life without it."

Perry figured all his friends would like swing.

It didn't quite work out that way -- at least not at first.

When Cherry Poppin' Daddies formed at the University of Oregon in 1989, grunge was just starting to take hold in the Pacific Northwest.

And fans of up-and-coming groups like Nirvana and Soundgarden couldn't figure out what Perry and Co. were up to.

"I didn't expect such antipathy from the alt-rock scene," he says. "But I didn't realize that I was breaking the sacred commandments against having horns and playing dance music.

"I just don't get music that's not physical. I'm not that smart, I guess."

If the band hadn't signed to Universal Records in 1997, it would no longer exist.

After nearly 10 years of low-budget touring, the swing revival came just in the nick of time for Cherry Poppin' Daddies.

Though the Daddies' three albums on Space Age Bachelor Pad Records enjoyed great sales, the band had had enough of living hand-to-mouth, Perry says.

"It's tough to keep telling a guy, 'Hey, here's five bucks. Go get yourself something to eat.' There was a glass ceiling and we'd hit it. With an eight-piece band, there was constant quitting," he adds. "We either signed with a major label or we folded."

Which brings us to the next point:

Don't mention the word "sellout" around the Daddies.

"You can't explain to a 16-year-old kid why you have to sign to a major (label). They get to go home to their mommies," says Perry, becoming even more animated than usual. "Meanwhile, I was sleeping on fiberglass insulation in people's houses. For 10 years!"

"And frankly, I haven't seen any corporate ogre types since we signed to Universal. No one's told me jack shit about how to make this new record. Most of the people I've met have been very decent people."

Although the single "Zoot Suit Riot" became an MTV hit, it got a chilly reception on the network at first.

When "Zoot Suit Riot" was shown on the MTV show "12 Angry Viewers," the panel that was rating the videos gave it a less than enthusiastic reception.

"I remember one kid said, 'That music should stay back in the '40s,'" Perry recalls with a laugh. "It was all these kids wearing hip hop clothes, who didn't even know that the songs they like are all sampled from the '70s," Perry adds with a snicker. "It's like, 'OK, you're a moron.'"

The Daddies aren't just swingers.

Longtime fans, who have heard the band's digressions into punk and power-pop on record and in concert, already know this.

But Perry says the band's new album may include some Motownish numbers and a song "that's kind of glitter-rock, like T.Rex."

However, despite that:

The Daddies aren't trying to escape the label of "swing band."

"People will inevitably ask, 'Do you wanna get out of the swing bag?'" Perry says. "No! We're proud to be a swing band."

Is there pressure to do non-swing songs, in anticipation that the swing trend may run its course?

"Well, it's not like we have anything to prove to people," he says. "We just wanna be what this band is."

The Daddies also aren't trying to outrun the past.

Perry jumps at the bait when he hears the rhetorical question, "Why listen to the new swing bands? Why not just listen to ('40s bandleaders like) Louis Jordan or Louie Prima?"

"I think that's a great idea," he says. "But they're just jump blues. That's not all that swing is, for one thing. "And if you're gonna use that argument, then why not listen to Duke Ellington or Louis Armstrong? Because Louie Prima blows compared to them. And then, why don't you just listen to Mozart or Beethoven?"

Perry is sometimes mistaken for the other Steve Perry: Journey's lead singer.

"Every day of my life, as a matter of fact," he says - despite the fact that the Daddies' swinging sounds would seem hard to mistake for Journey's workmanlike FM rock.

What does Perry say to clear up the mixup?

"I just tell tell 'em, 'It's not funny anymore,'" he deadpans.