Cherry Poppin’ Daddies

Steve Perry – vocals, guitar
Jason Moss – guitar
Daniel Schmid – bass
Tim Donahue – drums
Dana Heitman – trumpet
Sean Flannery – tenor saxophone
Ian Early – baritone & alto saxophones
Dustin Lanker – keyboards, piano

Flag waving is dangerous. In the course of human history, it’s always been a good way to get shot. For a band, it is a great way to get pigeonholed and marginalized. Since their inception in 1989, the only flags The Cherry Poppin’ Daddies have run up their pole besides the Jolly Roger, is their own collective freak flag. For twelve years frontman/songwiter Steve Perry has worked like a nihilistic pack mule creating songs that tell beautiful stories about the ugly and unfulfilled society we live in.

The band’s 1991 debut album “Ferociously Stoned” is filled with stories of lust and wanting, sex, death, regret and redemption, a lexicon of the sad frail sock puppet theater that is mankind. The Daddies use of musical genres is equally wide ranging; punk rock, soul, funk, hot jazz, hardcore.

Throughout the band’s subsequent releases, “Rapid City Muscle Car” (1993), “Kids On The Street” (1994) and the 1997 breakthrough album, “Zoot Suit Riot,” has been nearly nonstop touring. Crossing the country three times in one year was not uncommon. The band (Steve Perry, guitar, vocals, Dan Schmid, bass, Jason Moss, guitar, Tim Donahue, drums, Dana Heitman, trumpet, Sean Flannery, tenor saxophone, Ian Early, baritone and alto saxophones and Dustin Lanker, keyboards and piano) will be back on the road full time this fall, promoting “Soul Caddy”, their new album which contains all the thrill and hope of a night on the town, as well as the lonely introspection of the walk home by yourself. “Deep down inside, I’m a sentimental guy,” says Perry, “and I’m disappointed with a lot of what I see nowadays. That’s what this record is about. It’s a bittersweet record about loneliness and disillusionment. And I don’t know of anything more universal than that.”