We're trying to find the audience who'll let us write songs and just be who we are". During the height of the Daddies' popularity, Perry found the band's mainstream notoriety was causing an alienating effect on his personal life, claiming it to have negatively changed his relationships with friends and even subjected him to occasional heckling from strangers who recognized him in public. He would later recall, "It's a total cliché, but [fame] doesn't make you happy. There's a lot missing. Success has given people the right to yell at me on the street, but I don't really feel like it's given me any dignity". Already feeling burnt out from the Daddies' constant touring, Perry's frustration was only exacerbated by the media's persistent dismissal of the Daddies as a retro novelty act, though he later claimed to have felt pressured to maintain the image due to audience and media expectations. When the band began to face criticism and accusations of selling out from their Northwest fanbase, the Daddies fought to further push themselves away from their mainstream typecasting: in a 1999 interview, responding to their place in the swing scene, Perry retorted "[we'll] unapologetically play ska right in the face of people who want to hear swing". Zoot Suit Riot had sold over two million copies in the United States by the time the swing revival's mainstream popularity had declined, finally slipping off the charts in January 2000. With their touring schedule finally coming to a close, the Daddies commenced work on their next studio album. Soul Caddy and mainstream decline (2000) In the fall of 1999, the Daddies returned to the studio to record their fourth album, Soul Caddy. A loose concept album reflecting Perry's disillusionment over the cultural zeitgeist and his experience with fame - as he described it, a "bittersweet" record about "being alienated and hoping to connect" - Soul Caddy marked a continuation of the band's musically varied format, intended to introduce a truer perspective of the Daddies' sound and personality to both their swing-based fans and a wider audience. Drawing from the rock and pop of the 1960s and 1970s, Soul Caddy interwove swing and ska with glam rock, soul, psychedelic pop, folk and funk. Despite allowing the Daddies creative control over its production, Mojo's response to Soul Caddy was considered tepid at best. Claiming that the new material was not like "the Cherry Poppin'