Jere: Let me start by congratulating you on the success of "Zoot Suit Riot." That song just took off. Could you have ever imagined how huge it was going to get?

Steve: No, no. When they first started about sending it out for radio, we had to have a discussion about it. The label said that they thought we could get a single out of it, but our plan was to just go around and show people who we were. Our strength is our live show. Since there hadn't been any swing music on the radio since 1948, we figured we could set some kind of precedent. It was such a long shot. It didn't sound smart to say that we were taking this single to Modern Rock radio. It seemed too early for the scene. Swing is big on the West coast, but we'd come to the East coast and people would say, "What the hell are you doing?" (laughs) But we released it and it just sort of boomed.

Jere: Every now and then the Modern Rock crowd will pick up on something that's completely out of left field. Just look at Esquivel, Tony Bennett...

Steve: Yeah. That stuff getting popular is even more amazing than swing. Swing is at least more danceable. It rocks a little harder.

Jere: How have things changed for you, or for the band, since this single got big?

Steve: Mostly it's still the same, you know -- just traveling around and playing. It's strange having people know who we are, who the band is, without seeing us perform. People walk up to me and say, "Hey, you're Steve!" And I’ll try to remember who they are, but they only know me because they read my name on the CD or have seen the video.

Jere: Yeah, MTV really got behind you guys after a while.

Steve: They broke it to a lot of people who might not have heard it otherwise. They actually had it on that "12 Angry Viewers" show first. And, God, people hated it. They shoot that show in New York, and it's all these hip-hop-oriented kids. Damn, they hated it. They thought it was terrible. As soon as the song started, they started yelling at each other (laughs). It was a weird reaction. But for that show, I guess that's the best reaction you can get.

Jere: As long as you get some reaction then you're alright. It's when you bore them that you've got to start looking for a day job.

Steve: Yeah. At least none of them said it was pretty. I guess rap's the big thing with them right now. They're all, "I'm really down with Grand Master Poopy" or whatever (laughs). So it was kinda cool to be so threatening to them.

Jere: So you're saying that there won't be a Puff Daddy remix of "Zoot Suit Riot," right? (laughs)

Steve: No, probably not (laughs). We won't be jumping on the electronica bandwagon, either.

Jere: Since we're talking about reactions, what kind of reaction did you guys get when you first started playing.

Steve: Well, we started in '89, which was the apex of the hair bands. We were in Oregon, too, which is probably a lot like Alabama -- kinda backwater, the last state to get the news, or to try anything new. It was all Red Hot Chili Peppers and Poison kinda bands. We were just about the most uncool thing you could possibly imagine. People didn't know what the hell we were doin'. First of all, we had horns in the band. There weren't even many ska bands when we started, 'cause the second wave had sorta died out. We musta seemed really weird. But we didn't just come out and play swing all night long. We've always been kinda eclectic. We might play a country song, or a heavy metal song once in a while, just to throw 'em a curve.

Jere: At your shows now, do you get a lot of people doing the whole zoot suit dress-up thing?

Steve: Yeah, but most of the crowd is just regular people. There's a certain amount of people who come to swing and dress up and stuff.

Jere: I've never had the chance to see you guys live. What are your shows usually like?

Steve: Well, the main thing is that we'll play about 80% swing, and the rest is just stuff that we'll throw in. We came out of an all ages background, and we toured with the Mighty Mighty Bosstones early on. That was back when there were no swing clubs. And we weren't really interested in playing a show where everybody was in suits, you know? We wanted to take our music to whoever. We have ska influences and rock influences, too. We're like a rock band that plays swing. We'll bust out a song like "High and Low," which I wrote originally for the Bosstones. They asked me to write a song for 'em, so I wrote "High and Low," but they ended up not recording it. It still sounds like a Bosstones song, it's just us playing it. We always come back to swing, though. We could play swing all night long, but we wanna keep doing things the way we've always done them.

Jere: So you started when swing was uncool, and now you've got people clamoring for it. It's gotta give you guys a good feeling.

Steve: Yeah, it's weird. You'd think it would. But, in a way, it's good and bad. We don't want the swing stuff to become a straightjacket for us. We're not just some nostalgia act. But once it becomes "a thing," it's kinda hard to pull people out of their trip. They like to think that they have an exclusive on the swing culture. So we feel pressured by a certain part of the audience that are really into Swing. They want us to be swing and swing only. But that's not us. So our success has been tempered by expectations.

Jere: And so many people are saying that this is just a fad that’ll be gone in a few months.

Steve: It's definitely a possibility that it'll be gone in a few months. What will make it a fad is that group of fans that are really into the nostalgia of it all. The group that would make the bands toe the line, so to speak. I think it'll be a lot longer than just a couple of months. But it could be short-lived. Even if it is short-lived, though, it could add some really cool things to the rock scene. Just the fact that people are dancing together again. In pairs. How long's it been since that happened? At discos, people hump the air by themselves. At hippy shows, the people dance around by themselves. At ska shows they do that little robot dance by themselves. Or they mosh. They're all alienated forms of dance. It's all about you. With swing, it's you and your partner. So, even though elements of the swing scene can be kinda elitist, there's also a sense of decency and decorum, of manners and style. That's been pretty lacking for a while, in rock and youth culture. If a couple of these things can stick, even after swing's gone, then I think that would be vindication. I think a lot of rock culture is just retarded, you know? (laughs) It is. The hair bands were arrogant and looked like girls. Grunge cured some of that, but it got to a ridiculous state of torture. That, "Oh, I’m so tortured.." bit got old. It got overblown, and it got ugly. On the other hand, ska can sound a little too brainlessly happy. That rubs people the wrong way, too. It's so happy that some people think it's superficial.

Jere: Rock always has had these trends, where something gets really popular and it seems that everybody's doing the same thing. But in between these phases, there’s always an interesting little phase in the middle where nobody knows what’s gonna happen next.

Steve: I think it's a response to the negative things about the last phase that stuck, you know? Now we're saying, "Yeah, that was cool, but there was something wrong with it." I don't foresee swing being a huge thing. For starters, it's pretty difficult to play. The bands tend to be larger, and the horn players have to be pretty good just to begin with. Rockabilly might stick, but rockabilly's stifled like swing. It's a fashion victim kinda thing. I think it's a lot easier for people to get into something that has no fashion rules. Like alternative rock doesn't have any real fashion. You can just roll out of bed and look cool (laughs).

Jere: You guys were playing swing music years ago, so is it fair to assume that you’ll still be playing it years from now?

Steve: If we want to, yeah. For me, it's about personal and artistic freedom. It's not about having a hit song or whatever. It's not about the scene. 'Cause I think the scene is just getting started. I just want it to be clear that, if this thing does stick around, it may be hampered by the elitists. I think it's wrong of these people to try to exclude anyone who doesn't swing dance. But there are positives, too -- it spans age groups, for one thing. I think that's super cool. It's not just twentysomethings who are trying to be trendy. It's people out having fun.

Jere: It's just about the most positive scene that's come around in a long time.

Steve: Yeah. It's a positive scene even though some of the songs aren't about positive things at all (laughs).

Jere: Right. Songs like your own "Mr. White Keys," "Drunk Daddy," and "Master and Slave," for instance.

Steve: Yeah. We don't want to throw out all of rock's issue-oriented stuff.

Jere: Those songs are issue-oriented, but they're not downers.

Steve: Right. They're even kinda funny, in some cases. They kinda transcend the issues, I guess.

Jere: On the back of the new disc, there’s little logo -- it's a heart with barbed wire around it, and it has the word "forever" on it. Where did that come from?

Steve: From my childhood. I grew up in a Catholic town, and that image had that feeling of bittersweet passion. It was just an idea I had. It just felt right.

Jere: Your bio talks about Fletcher Henderson and those guys, but what modern stuff do you listen to?

Steve: The Bosstones, of course. And Fishbone. We're friends with them. I like Rancid. They're a good band. I like any band that pushes the envelope a bit. I'm not into metal. I like Iggy and the Stooges, and the Dolls, and the Damned. But I really don't listen to a lot of new music. I listen to weird shit. I've got a CD of tangos that I like. I like the new Dylan record. I like some of the other swing bands.

Jere: About the song "Ding Dong Daddy of the D-Car Line," that's not any kind of reference to the old song "Ding Dong Daddy from Dumas," is it?

Steve: No, I heard about the Dumas song later on. This carpenter I know was tearing down this old house, and he found these old newspapers in the chimney. So he brought them to me and showed me this article that said "The Ding Dong Daddy Gets Short Term." It was a story about this guy from the '40s or '50s who was a conductor. Along his route, he would woo these elderly spinsters and marry them. He was married to 16 chicks at one time. So one of 'em found out and told the other ones, and he went to San Quentin for polygamy. But he became this minor media star, the "Ding Dong Daddy of the D-Car Line." I thought the name itself was perfect. It swings. So I wrote that song. A little later, someone brought me the sheet music for "Ding Dong Daddy from Dumas."

Jere: I've actually been to Dumas, Arkansas. That's a long story. But, anyway, they still have this annual "Ding Dong Daddy Days" celebration. It's a tiny little town, but they’re still very proud that the town was mentioned in that song.

Steve: They celebrate the fact that they were mentioned in a song? God, that's awesome. I've got this Louis Armstrong compilation that has that song on it. I guess "Ding Dong Daddy" was a phrase back in the day.

Jere: And a pretty descriptive one, at that.

Steve: Oh yeah (laughs). That phrase swings.