In the course of setting up this interview, Tanya L. Edwards received several prank phone calls from band founder and frontman Steve Perry. In between clowning around and muttering about porno cops, he talks about the golf-crazed Warped Tour, pooping on the tour bus, Howie Mandel's wardrobe choices, and painting his butt yellow.

Where are you right now?

Outside of St. Louis somewhere -- we're doing St. Louis today, it's sort of out in the sticks, so we decided to go golfing. So we went golfing, and now we're trying to get a cab to come out here and pick us up and take us back to the Warped tour. There's lots of golfers on the Warped tour -- you'd be surprised.

Wow. So is it like... hey, NOFX -- let's hit the links, now!

Yeah! I know NOFX and the Reverend golf -- and some of the guys from Bad Religion...

So how is the Warped Tour going?

It's kinda cool to be "the swing band" among punk rock bands. We're the cole slaw in the picnic basket -- we tend to stand out a bit.

Are you playing any of your older, more punk material?

We play a few things, like "Teenage Brain Surgeon" and stuff like that, which are more Oingo Boingo-ish. That's about as far as we go.

What's the story with the poop on the bus?

What happened was, the Specials... I guess a security guard asked to use their bathroom, so they came over to our bus and said "Hey, can this friend of ours use the bathroom?" Because they said "friend," we assumed the guy knew the road rule -- don't poop in the bus! Because, when you poop in the bus, it gets in the air ducts and it's there for days and days. So he went in, and stayed in for a conspicuous amount of time, and we said, "What are you doing in there?" Of course, he'd already done his business... so we really owe the Specials... something special. We're really good friends with the Specials, we've played with them quite a bit, so we really can't get too mad at them.

What next?

Warped Europe, U.S. theater tour, New Zealand, Australia, Japan, South America...

That's a pretty hectic schedule... which are you most excited about?

I'm so psyched about South America, we're gonna be playing with Los Fabulosos Cadillacs -- they're huge there.

South American audiences can get pretty wild...

Yeah! We did a tour with them in the states and a lot of Latinos showed up, it was so wild. They liked us, but it doesn't seem like they like you because they're untying your shoes, fucking with you, waving the Argentine flag, hugging each other... just all sorts of stuff we don't do. They're a really great audience once you understand they don't mean it in a bad way... Meredith Brooks was in Buenos Aires or something, and got pelted with rocks and garbage when she opened for the Rolling Stones. She cried and stuff, you know, "Why are you doing this to me?" I just expect to get shit raining down on me. They party so insanely hard it's unbelievable -- but it's not necessarily like our partying, which is drink and get obnoxious -- they're totally straight, and they're hooting and jumping! They know how to enjoy music there.

Did the fact that you're a film buff play a part in the "Zoot Suit Riot" video? It's got a really dark -- almost Latin -- feel, with lots of alien vampira types...

That's a friend of ours, actually, in real life. She had her fangs in and we just said, "Hey, take a picture of her." What we wanted to do was have some swing dancing and tie it in with a kind of Day of the Dead feeling. So there's lots of gooey licking, viscous fluids, and things like that. It didn't go as far as I wanted it to, though; I wanted it to go much further. There's dead animals and things in it, though -- the idea was this kind of disturbed... I wanted to get Latino feel to it, plus mix swing dancing in, but not overt swing dancing, with everybody perfectly dressed. I wanted a mish-mash of people, which represents our overall audience a bit more. We don't fit into the swing scene exactly, and we wanted something creepy and dark, but fun.

Speaking of creepy -- you appeared on the new Howie Mandel show recently -- what's he like?

Super nice guy. I met him when we did Leno; he had the dressing room right next door to us. He knew who we were and stuff, he said, "My daughter and I are fans of the band, you should come and do the show." So we ended up doing it. I hadn't seen the show, but all I could remember about Howie Mandel before that was that he put a rubber glove over his head and blew it up with his nostrils. I wasn't expecting much, and he was actually really funny -- it's a good show, I'm not at all surprised it's doing well.

Does he still wear Hawaiian shirts?

He was very casually attired, very L.A. I think he was wearing blue jeans and a blue cotton shirt with no words on it -- I thought that was pretty classy. He's a classy guy.

Are you classy guys?

We're so stupid, and yet there is a message. We really don't know what's happening exactly -- people always ask why we do this, that, or the other thing. I have no clue. "How did you come up with swing?" I don't know -- it seemed like the thing to do at the time. Or, this one kills me, "Who was around at the time to make you want to start a swing band?" As if that's how everyone does things -- by watching other people do it -- and thinking, "That's what I'll do too," like a flock of sheep. That's not what happened at all. We just went, "What if we put a Coke box on our heads and took off our pants and painted our butts yellow?" That's how we think -- yeah, that'd be cool, let's see what happens...

The suits probably work better than painting your butts yellow.

Yeah, but at least it's an option.