Through most of the '80s, it had to really suck being named Steve Perry. After all, who wants to be confused with the tubby, raspy-voiced frontman of power-balladeers Journey? Now imagine you're an aspiring musician yourself, but one who cruises far from the musical mainstream, melding pop, swing, jazz and punk into a bright and crunchy mix, and your birth certificate still reads (sigh) "Steve Perry."

It's what drove the other Steve Perry - the studious, high school track star from Eugene, Oregon - to consider calling himself MC Large Drink when he formed his band, the Cherry Poppin' Daddies, in 1989. Now 36 years old, and gearing up to release the band's second major label release, the witty, eclectic Soul Caddy (Mojo Records), Perry seems fairly at ease with his surname, but plenty concerned that his band - which chugged up the charts with its peppy multi-platinum single, "Zoot Suit Riot," during the neo-swing revival in 1998 - will be written off as disposable popsters. The question for Perry is whether the new album's more serious, reflective focus, will be embraced by the public with, well, open arms.

GALLERY: A lot of people will be surprised by the musical diversity on Soul Caddy. I mean, most people only know the Daddies as a swing band.
We've always been really eclectic our whole career, so this is a true Daddies' record. Zoot Suit Riot, the album everybody knows us for, wasn't our first record. It was a compilation of all the swing stuff from our first five [sic], indie albums. The "hits" stuff. I mean, "hits" in that we sold a bunch of copies out of our van when we played around town. But this new record is more representative of what the band really does. Our diehard fans know that.

But what about the two million people who bought Zoot Suit Riot, and are expecting 12 more tracks of swing? What do you think they'll make of Soul Caddy?
I don't know. This has been a bone of contention for me my whole life: People always talk about being diverse as being a negative thing. I don't know why that would be. I can listen to this whole record, the varying styles, and it's not boring, it's always moving. Soul Caddy is sort of a concept record. I was trying to tell the truth about my different moods. I'm not just one person. So the different sounds and different genres work with that concept, I think.

Tell me more about the concept of the album.
This record is really about a couple of big things in my life, the main one being, I think, loneliness. Most of the record has to do with a sense of being alienated and hoping to connect. The idea in the song "Soul Cadillac" is a dream of happiness. The singer meets a soulmate who isn't about exterior things at all. The Soul Cadillac in the song is a dirty old piece-of-shit truck, it's not a Cadillac at all. But it's perfect for him. That's the whole point of the record: It's not about what's on the outside, it's what's on the interior. And the fact is, a lot of the songs, to put it in a nutshell, are about trying to reach out and be with other people in the world and not having a very easy time of it. My feeling is that most people in the United States are exterior, superficial sort of people, and that makes me really lonely. Things in the U.S. are about celebrity and money and success. We talk about certain huge bands that have absolutely no value, but when they sell a zillion records, everybody starts looking at them and turning them over and thinking, There must be some value here. There's not. It's bullshit.

Where does your band fall into the whole pop-music spectrum?
I don't know. That's what we're trying to discover with this record. I know for sure that with this record, we've succeeded in saying, "This is who we are. This is where we stand. This is where we fall."

There is a real sense of the bittersweet on the new album. Where does that come from?
I just feel completely fucking alone. I've got to believe that there are more people out there who feel this way. I'm trying to find a way to live in the fucking world, and that's what the record is about. I mean, there is joy and a philosophy and some easy-breeziness to some of the record. But mostly, I'm just trying to create a nostalgic world in my head and use that to make it possible to live in the world I actually inhabit. Swing was like that for me, in a way. I look back at what's called the Swing Era and I really like that period and feel that if things were only a little bit more like that today, I'd be a happier guy. So I just create that in my head. I make it that way in my head. Sometimes that makes me feel closer to being whole.

Does that really keep you from feeling lonely?
I don't think so, in reality. But it's your soul sort of reaching out. And in my music, I just try to tell the truth without being too gussied up or too clever or too ironic. I want people to relate to it without being crass. I tried to make a record that was solid. If I erred, it's on the side of being too simple.

I think the record succeeds in being very confessional and conversational.
I wanted the record to have that aspect.

So, where are you at in the world today, and your place in it?
I'm struggling right now, to tell you the truth, to find a way. Just to go back to the art side of things for a minute. I had to make a record for a major label after selling two million records that will both get my ya-ya's out, say the things on my mind, while also holding up my responsibilities to the guys in the band and my obligation to sell another bunch of records for these record-label folks. That's a lot of compromise to deal with, and it makes you really consider the things most important to you. With this record, I've really made my bed and now I'm ready to lie down in it. I've always bitched about there not being a lot of spirit in music. Occasionally, a "Heart Shaped Box" happens and it scars you, but mostly music is trash. Now that I'm here with a bunch of people waiting to hear what's next, I'm on a ledge. I don't know what's going to happen.

I know a lot of people are anticipating the sophomore slump with your new record.
To me, that was not even an issue when I was writing. Everybody hated our first big record because it seemed to just be cashing in on this swing revival. The way all that happened is not how I would've had it be. The late-'90s swing movement was just a big festival of opportunists, so I really tried to keep my distance from that and emphasize that The Daddies are more than about cashing in on swing. Critics hated us. Rock critics hated us because we ruined their buzz from Garbage and Bush. But ultimately, none of it mattered very much. Nobody gave swing very much thought. The revival was just a fart in the windstorm. If it's entirely going to go away, so be it. We're more than a swing band.

I think a lot of people failed to notice that "Zoot Suit Riot" was actually about something. It's a song about an important event in history.
That's because people don't listen. I mean, nobody knows what that song is really about. I don't even know why I wrote about that particular event. I just always write from this place of nostalgia. I'm nostalgic for a world that could've been for me. It's a more hyperrealized world. I create a Walter Mitty situation in my head where I'm happy, where I'm interested at all. Because I'm not interested at all in pop culture today. I look back to other eras and make my home - glitter rock, swing, and stuff. If the world were those ways, I'd be more interested in it.

Sounds like you need a time machine.
I need a time machine to get the fuck out of here. In writing songs, I try to do that in a certain way. That's the function of nostalgia in my work. It's punk rock without the screaming. The way I respond to the world is to get in my time machine and get away. My hope is that I'll "magically emerge back into life," as I sing on the record. Maybe by doing this art and putting myself through this meat grinder of effort that somehow, magically and mystically, I'll be happy. Maybe I'll emerge like I've always tried.

If you could revisit different eras, what would you bring back with you?
Broad-mindedness, for one. I was a child of the '70s. On All In the Family, they talked about things you wouldn't talk about today. There was more joy back then. There was more freakiness. Even though there are more options now, everything is more of the same. Everything is reactionary and saleable. Also, I really dig the style and the quality of objects from back then. You get into a car and it feels real. You put your foot down and you feel something deep inside. Music, too. Songwriting now is just about vibe. You turn on a drum machine and say a bunch of stuff from TV into a microphone. There's no craft. Also, anything that's really weird; I like all that. The androgynous space being, that's really cool. Extreme pop culture from the distant past. That's the way.

It sounds as though your childhood left really strong impressions on you.
It did, but I didn't really understand all of this stuff back then. I lived it, but I didn't know it. And things are never the same when you come back to it. You start to see what's really good about the past, and what its failures were, too. I mean, when you're in a moment, you never know which way things are going to go. Things could've gone differently than they have, and now I'd be bitching about how everything is too loose and there's not enough discipline today. I'd be a total fascist. But that's not how it worked out. Things went the other way: Reagan won, the Cold War, and all that shit, and everybody got a tight ass.

I've got to ask: What's the real story on the band's name? The press releases all say different things, the fan-sites say other things. Let's hear it from the horse's mouth.
It's real simple. We had a gig booked at some youth center in Oregon, but we didn't have a name. One of our friends was just screwing around and said, 'You should call yourselves the Cherry Poppin' Daddies!' And we all just laughed. I mean, we were kids and we were into punk and the Butthole Surfers, so it didn't seem all that weird to us. We never expected any popular success. The name was just for us. It was a joke. The reason I like it now is that it has a Holden Caulfield kind of feel to it. It's got a loss of innocence feel to it. I see it on multi-levels. And I like the idea that people are grossed out by it, too. I always felt that I'd rather be adored than liked or loved. It's like in a Cary Grant movie, the love interests always hate each other in the beginning. But by the end of the movie, they're all making out and everything. So then if people are put off by us in the beginning, then maybe they'll like us even more once they know who we really are.