What a difference a year makes.

When the Cherry Poppin' Daddies released "Zoot Suit Riot" last summer, the album arrived with minimal fanfare and managed to fly under the radar of the masses for many of the months that followed.

Now, after the unlikely mainstream success of all things swing-flavored, a heralded turn on this summer's Vans Warped Tour, and a breakthrough video that earned the band an MTV Video Music Award nomination, the Daddies are in the catbird seat. This week, just as the band finished its run on the Warped Tour, "Zoot Suit Riot" finally cracked the Billboard top 20.

The Daddies have been doing the voodoo that they do for a decade, and like many artists who suddenly see the form they love go mainstream, they are quick to point out what's been lost in the translation (they don't play swing, they play jump blues). However, they aren't getting territorial either. As frontman Steve Perry and guitarist Jason Moss explained when MTV News Online's Robert Mancini caught up with them during a recent Warped Tour stop, as far as the Daddies are concerned, the more the merrier.

Perry and Moss also talked about hooking up with noted porn director Gregory Dark for their first video, teaming with Jamie Caliri for a more surreal second video, and where swing needs to go to become more than a passing fancy.

Here, you'll find all that and much more.

Enjoy.

MTV NEWS: I suppose we should chat about your Video Music Award nomination for Best New Artist in a Video. When did you guys get the news that you were nominated?

JASON MOSS: Somewhere on the Warped Tour I got the news. I can't remember where, but I remember getting the news, but don't ask me where we were.

STEVE PERRY: We were rolling down the freeway at some point probably and it was a big surprise...I was like, "What? It is? What is it?" We were all very surprised.

MTV NEWS: Are you familiar with the artists that you are nominated with?

STEVE: Some of them. Let me get this straight, it's Natalie Imbruglia, right? Familiar with her, not that kind of familiar! Mase, I don't know much about Mase, I must confess.

JASON: I'm somewhat familiar.

STEVE: Um, what are the other ones?

JASON: Fastball.

STEVE: Fastball. We know those guys real well. We slapped those guys around a couple of times on tour. And uh, who else is it?

MTV NEWS: Chumbawamba.

STEVE: Chumbawamba, yeah they're label mates--the anarchists--see I know some stuff. We have no chance.

MTV NEWS: But it's a thrill just to be nominated.

STEVE: Oh yeah, it's a thrill to be nominated.

MTV NEWS: See, now you can finally say that.

STEVE: That is great. I've never said that! I've wanted to do two things in my life. One was to say, "It's a thrill to just be nominated," and the other one is to at the end of Jay Leno when everyone stands up and the credits go and you know with the monkey next to me--I did that! I've done those two things now.

JASON: So we quit, thank you.

STEVE: Thank you very much.

MTV NEWS: The video that was nominated was directed by (X-rated filmmaker) Gregory Dark?

STEVE: The infamous Gregory Dark, yes.

MTV NEWS: How did you wind up working with him?

STEVE: We worked years ago together. No, I actually used to own a video store, a couple years ago, in my former life. A small video store that went under because of lack of funds. I couldn't keep the lights on. I had lots of independent and alternative films and I also had a sizeable porno section, so I knew of Greg's work, his X-rated stuff. They were actually really funny films.

JASON: He would watch them over and over and over again.

STEVE: I had to just make sure he was the right guy so I wanted to go through his work you know, piece by piece. I have lots of freeze framing and things like that, a four-head VCR.

MTV NEWS: Has he done much outside of X-rated films?

STEVE: Yeah, he has done a bunch...he did an Alkaholiks video.

JASON: Sublime.

STEVE: Yeah, he did the Sublime video. He's a real solid director and he's a bit of a freak like we are, so I think that's why we talked to him about doing the video. It was like he was kind of freaky ,and you know that's kind of what we wanted to do with the video.

MTV NEWS: So now I understand that the new video was just submitted to MTV. Who did you hook up with this time to direct the video?

STEVE: Ah, Jamie Caliri. He did the Marcy Playground video. He did a really incredible Morphine video. He won an award for that one. We got a lot of treatments for the video, but we really didn't want to have something that was like, "Hey, get swing!" You know, there's going to be like 2 million videos of the same thing, and we wanted it to be more about the song than about "Hey this is something that all you cats should be digging!" That's pathetic, you know, so we decided not to have martinis or swing dancers... we had actually swing dancers, the shadow silhouette sort of like on our album cover, but we didn't have anything that would really hit people over the head with, "Hey we're a swing band, get it?"

JASON: The best part of the video though is a classic car that's covered with pastries and a really beautiful woman standing next to it. I don't know what it means, but it's the pastry covered car and it's great.

STEVE: It's awt (art), it's awt. No it really is, it's more surreal and it's beautifully shot. It looks really good.

MTV NEWS: You guys have been doing this for years, so now with this sort of neo-swing explosion do you feel territorial? Do you feel like there are just too many people at your party, or is it a case of the more the merrier?

STEVE: Well my personal philosophy is it's not... I think the party should not have one suit, you know. I want it to be...we're trying to make this swing thing evolve into something new , you know, a new kind of sound, a new kind of wave of rockin' out. So no, I wouldn't be territorial about swing. I like to bring in other sorts of influences and ideas. I think that's absolutely essential for swing to stay around. I mean if it's going to be all about classic cars and martinis and stuff like that, you know, that's not that interesting really--that's stuff! I mean how can you be interested in stuff; it's only going to last this long [pinches an inch length of air between his thumb and index finger]. So, but music... it's good music. If it's combined, like the Reverend Horton Heat is playing right now behind us, they kind of combine this modern rock sensibility with rockabilly and I think he's striving for something that's different and his own you know. I think that's the way we should go too with swing.

MTV NEWS: So once the tour finishes up what do you guys have on tap? Are you going to do your own tour?

STEVE: Yeah, we're going to go to Europe with Warped and then we're going to come back in the fall and do a tour with some fabulous bands. We're going to come out with Pietasters and Hepcat, and a band called the Big Six from England, they're going to play with us, and Ozomatli. There's a bunch of really good bands, just a bunch of bands that we really like and we're going to do a tour together so it should be really awesome.

JASON: I think we're going to be in Europe when the MTV Music Awards take place so...I guess we'll be accepting the award via satellite from Europe.

STEVE: [with an accent] We're in Greenland, thank you!