How did you guys start out?

Perry: I wrote a bunch of songs and a friend of mine was a sax player and, it's really vague in my memory. We just started playing in the basement, then a friend said, "Why don't you come play with us in Springfield!"

Moss: Steve and Dan were sort of the nucleus, (ex-bassist) Dan Schmid. They played together in a band called St. Huck, which was like when I was in high school.

What music did you listen to when you were kids, you know, our age?

Perry: I graduated from high school in 1981, in Binghamton, New York, and I used to watch "Soul Train," things like that, when I was a kid. Then when punk rock started in about '77, I started listening to the Sex Pistols, the Clash, the Damned, and everything changed.

Moss: I was more of the Led Zeppelin and Beatles, conventional rock music. I graduated in '86 from South Eugene High School, and at the time, the New Wave was kinda the thing--which I hated. Duran Duran was like, satanic to me.

I was wondering about the name.

Perry: There was this tape that a friend of mine made for me; I was listening to a lot of jazz at the time, it was race music from the '20s, it had dirty lyrics and all that. And someone said (after rehearsal), "Why don't you call it the Cherry Poppin' Daddies?" and everybody laughed really hard.

Obviously, it's a disturbing name, but it's funny and sexy and sort of jazzy at the same time...we really didn't think about it, but pretty soon we had a gig. "Mr. Wiggles" was our first name, and that just was not working.

So we played a show, and it went really great--this was maybe '89--and so this guy came backstage, from what's now the Eugene Weekly. "What's Happenin'," the music guy...the next week he wrote an article about the Cherry Poppin' Daddies.

And it was like oh, cool, somebody liked the show. And the week after that it was like a firestorm of controversy that pretty much lasted about two years. After that we couldn't get a gig in Eugene as the Cherry Poppin' Daddies.

Was there any individual or group spearheading it?

Perry: No, it seemed to be a grass-roots hate movement...but only in Eugene. Everywhere else, it's never been a problem.

What makes a good audience?

Moss: It's nice to have audiences that really listen to the music. They move around and react to it but at the same time, you can tell, you can see it in their eyes that they're paying attention to what you're doing, what you're playing.

When you do a concert, is it planned, or do you kind of play to the audience, what they're into?

Perry: One of the members makes the set list, then we get up on stage and look down there and if it's stupid, then we change it.

James Phillips (onetime Daddies sax player) is my band teacher and I'm curious why he left (the band).

Perry: The road, mainly. We're one the road all the time, and sleeping in doggie doo-doo and smelling people's feet. It's just a super hard lifestyle--you're partying every night, sleeping on people's floors, then you're driving 10 hours to get to the next gig...James was a great member of the band, but I think he just got tired of the road.

When you guys eat on the road, is it just a bunch of junk?

Moss: We try to minimize the junk. Definitely.

Perry: Well, Jason and I sorta do. You've come a long way, though, I think. Jason used to eat like cookies with pink cream on them and Slim Jims and like a beer.

Moss: Everyone does that at some point.

Perry: Or Ho-Hos with a pint of Jack Daniels.

What keeps you going?

Perry: It's fun. It's sort of a perpetual adolescence...you get to see a lot of the country, it's super-duper creative; there's no rules for rock 'n' roll, really. It's like a giant bacchanalian festival.

Moss: Well, it's not quite like that all the time.

Perry: Sometimes there's four people in the audience. During those times, I guess I'm just stubborn.

Moss: And it's a fun way to make a living...law school's still an option, though.

Perry: For Jason.

Do the band members tend more towards boxers or briefs?

Moss: I would say boxers, mostly.

Perry: Yeah, boxers.

Moss: I think there's one guy in the band who wears briefs.

Perry: There's a brief guy, though. A brief guy.

And the gal? (that's new bassist Nalya Cominos)

Perry: An unknown quantity right now. She hasn't played a show out of town with us.

Do you guys ever daydream about being like the Rolling Stones, being 75 and, like, touring the U.S.? Do you guys wanna like, go to Japan and sing?

Moss: Well, we might go to Japan soon, actually. Before we're 50. Yeah, it'd be nice to be doing that, I would hope that...

Perry: ...we were making 60 billion dollars.

I was wondering if any of your songs come from personal experience?

Perry: I'm not really a first-person lyricist. I like to tell stories.

How important was the music program at South Eugene High School to your career?

Moss: Not very important at all. I took one jazz class, like a beginning jazz class...my musical education was pretty much self-taught...I wanted to play like Jimmy Page, so I just listened to Led Zeppelin records and I took a few lessons to get started.