Armed with a new label and a new album, Fountains of Wayne are also pondering a new promotional tact. "We want the crowd to come to us," jokes co-Fountain-head Chris Collingwood. "We're really tired with the touring crap."

The touring crap ran for more than a year and a half behind the band's last album, Utopia Parkway, which was a contributing factor in the long layoff between that acclaimed 1999 release (their second) and the new Welcome Interstate Managers, due June 3rd. As with the band's name (pinched from a New Jersey trinket shop), the album title takes its name from Collingwood and bandmate Adam Schlesinger's fascination with, and indulgence in, fringe-retail culture.

"It's actually something we found in an old photo from an insurance convention from the Forties," Schlesinger says. "Both of us collect these old thrift store group photos taken with those cameras that are on turntables so they can photograph like 500 people at the same time. We've collected a bunch over the years. And there's several songs on the album having to do with people at work and in working environments . . ."

"Which is nothing new for us," Collingwood interjects, before Schlesinger adds, "So I guess we're not really breaking new ground."

Since Utopia Parkway, Schlesinger has busied himself with soundtrack work (Josie and the Pussycats, Scary Movie, to name but two) while Collingwood claims that he "had a really hard time getting songs finished. I think it might have been part of just being demoralized after the whole Atlantic experience."

After recording and releasing two album with Atlantic Records between 1996 and 1999, Fountains and the label parted ways, and S-Curve/EMI will issue Interstate Managers. Sessions -- which include guest spots by former Smashing Pumpkin James Iha and pedal steel guitar whiz Robert Randolph -- also had to be worked around Hey Joel, a new animated VH1 series created by Time and Entertainment Weekly writer Joel Stein that Schlesinger likens to a Larry Sanders Show about VH1. Fountains provided the show's opening theme, as well as a pair of original songs in each episode.

"We're kind of like the Greek chorus," he says. "We're not involved in the plots per se, but we appear twice per episode and sing these little songs that hopefully elucidate the plot a little bit. It was kind of a fun assignment, because it forced us to write about things we might not write about otherwise . . . and somehow make it rhyme and make sense."

Due to the above distractions, some of the Interstate Managers songs -- like "Hackensack" and "Bright Future in Sales" -- are older than others, even by a few years, which will make them familiar for fans who heard them road-tested over the past couple of years. "Billy Joel sang about Hackensack [a town in New Jersey] in 'Moving Out,'" Schlesinger says, "and I didn't think he should be the only guy to be able to use that town name, because it's such a good town name."

"Plus it rhymes with back," Collingwood adds.

The longer recording period is also reflected in the album's sound. "There's songs about winter and summer," Collingwood says. "We could've called it 'Fountains of Wayne Presents the Four Seasons.'" Winter is repped, appropriately enough, by the "Valley Winter Song." "That's definitely a true story," Collingwood says. "I live in Pleasant Valley here in New England, and during the winter months it's not so pleasant. I tend to hibernate. I get that seasonal affective disorder thing, where I can hardly move during the winter months."

"We don't really know how it's going to go yet," Schlesinger says of the new album and label, "but we're pleased to have new digs, and we're working with some people that we always got along well with in the past. Hopefully they'll put us out on tour with the Baha Men."

The track listing for Welcome Interstate Managers:

Mexican Wine
Bright Future in Sales
Stacy's Mom
Hackensack
No Better Place
Valley Winter Song
All Kinds of Time
Little Red Light
Hey Julie
Halley's Waitress
Hung Up on You
Fire Island
Peace and Love
Bought for a Song
Supercollider
Yours and Mine

ANDREW DANSBY
(March 18, 2003)