Steve Perry (Oregon musician)

American musician (born 1963)

Stephen Henry Perry (born October 8, 1963) is an American musician, best known as lead singer, songwriter and rhythm guitarist for the Oregon ska swing band the Cherry Poppin' Daddies.

Perry was born in Syracuse, New York, to a physicist and a social worker, and raised in Apalachin, outside the industrial city of Binghamton. He described Binghamton as being "a poor, run down, loner class town", which would later serve as a significant influence on his songwriting. After graduating from Vestal High School in 1981, Perry moved to Eugene, Oregon, to pursue track and field and chemistry in the Honors College at the University of Oregon, where he befriended fellow student Dan Schmid. Finding himself more interested in "drinking beer and going to punk rock shows" than attending college, Perry dropped out in his junior year in 1983 and formed the punk trio The Jazz Greats with Schmid and drummer Joe Brooks.

After emerging as a successful regional band and eventually becoming a consistent staple of the West Coast third wave ska touring circuit, the Daddies broke into the musical mainstream with their 1997 album Zoot Suit Riot, a compilation of swing songs culled from the band's first three albums. The album sold over two million copies in the United States and helped launch the short lived swing revival of the late 1990s, and brought the Daddies into the limelight. Nevertheless, Perry has often expressed contempt for the band's period of temporary fame, citing frustration over what he claimed was persistent and lingering media typecasting of the Daddies as a generic "retro swing band" at the expense of their dominant ska punk influences. Additionally, Perry has also talked about the socially alienating effects fame had on his personal life, claiming it to have negatively changed relationships with friends and even subjected him to occasional heckling from strangers who recognized him in public. In recent years, however, Perry has retrospectively called the success of Zoot Suit Riot "a blessing" for giving the band and himself the financial stability to continue; as he put it, "no more blocks of government cheese".

During the Daddies' hiatus in late 2000, Perry temporarily relocated to Manhattan for the better part of two years to be closer to his family and "chill anonymously". Upon moving back to Eugene, Perry re enrolled at the University of Oregon, pursuing an undergraduate degree in molecular biology, graduating in 2004 with a Bachelor of Science. During this time, Perry was also active singing in the glam rock band White Hot Odyssey, a side project he started with Daddies guitarist Jason Moss in 2002. White Hot Odyssey released a self titled album on Jive Records in 2004 before disbanding the following year. Perry presently lives in Eugene with his wife Yvette and their daughter, and works in a biology laboratory. In 2014, Perry publicly announced that Yvette was diagnosed with stage IV colorectal cancer at age 41; since then, he has regularly discussed her ongoing treatments through the Daddies' social media accounts, as well as promoting awareness of and organizations dedicated to colorectal cancer.