Cherry Poppin' Daddies have announced the July 16 release of its new album "White Teeth, Black Thoughts," which marks the Oregon band's first jazz and swing-powered outing in more than a decade.
The deluxe edition includes a bonus disc of material and features guest appearances from Buckwheat Zydeco and Zoot Horn Rollo (Captain Beefheart).
Despite the double platinum certified 1999 CD "Zoot
Suit Riot," frontman Steve Perry and the Daddies never made another swing record,
choosing instead to try their hand at Motown soul, R&B, psychedelia,
funk, and country, not to mention Latin, Caribbean, and other world
music.
"'Zoot Suit Riot' allowed us to continue to do our art," Perry
says. "None of this would've been possible without it. I didn't make a
record like this new one then because I didn't want to. A lot of the
other bands did and that's what I didn't like. It was so orthodox."
That spirit has impelled Cherry Poppin' Daddies forward for
nearly two decades. The turn of the century saw the band taking a
momentary hiatus, but after touring behind 2009's "Skaboy JFK: The Skankin' Hits of the Cherry Poppin' Daddies,"
the band - including founding members Dan Schmid (bass) and Dana
Heitman (trumpet) - created songs influenced by the Great
Recession and held together by a swing beat.
Though the initial concept was to simply "jam it all together," Cherry Poppin' Daddies crafted two
divergent song cycles.
Where much of the
contemporary swing scene is built around what Perry calls "clichés and b-movie ideas," the new album scrutinizes contemporary
culture.
On the second disc of the deluxe version,
the band's styles span New
Orleans swamp rock to hardcore hillbilly boogie. Raucous readings of The
Barnyard Playboys' "Flat Butts and Beer Guts" and "Subway Killer" -
originally recorded by Perry's own mid-'00s glam rock side project,
White Hot Odyssey - sees CPD twisting psychobilly into their own skewed
image.
The
bonus recordings are further marked by guest appearances from founding
CPD guitarist John Fohl (currently serving in Dr. John's Lower 911), Buckwheat Zydeco ("Tchoupitoulas
Congregation"), and Zoot
Horn Rollo (#62 on Rolling Stone
Magazine's list of the 100 greatest guitarists of all time). The Magic
Band guitarist's iconic riffola on "Flat Butts & Beer Guts"
accentuates Cherry Poppin' Daddies' place in the long continuum of
cracked artists distorting and deconstructing the American songbook.
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