After last year's surprise hit Welcome Interstate Managers, Fountains of Wayne co-frontman Adam Schlesinger plans to take Broadway next. Along with The Daily Show head writer David Javerbaum, the singer-songwriter is working on an adaptation of the John Waters' 1990 film Cry-Baby. The production, which they hope to debut in 2006, is set in 1954, and Schlesinger is working on new music for what he describes as a "rockabilly musical."

"The show is about the square kids versus the cool kids," Schlesinger says. "The cool kids play the rockabilly, and the square kids don't know what that is and they play really square music."

The square kids are the Whistles, a collegiate a capella vocal group, and -- in addition to the cool rockabilly stuff -- Schlesinger and Javerbaum are guilty of writing their music. "All their songs are painfully uncool," he says. "It's got to be good and bad at the same time. I'm good at the bad part . . . it's the good part that you have to work at."

Schlesinger's Broadway work comes on the heels of Fountains receiving a Grammy nomination for Best New Artist (after a decade as a band) and scoring their biggest hit to date with Interstate single "Stacy's Mom."

"It definitely gave us a new lease on life in terms of being able to exist as a band," says Schlesinger of the group's recent success. "We never set out to compete with Usher or anything, so we didn't necessarily judge our own success or failure by how well our records sold. But it was certainly nice to have some renewed interest in the band and feel like there was a reason to keep going."

The coming months will be busy for Schlesinger, with atmospheric pop side-project Ivy's fourth album due February 1st and the possibility of a Fountains B-sides compilation. "We've got a lot of stuff that was released only in really obscure ways -- stuff from European singles, stuff that was only on compilations and a few things that haven't been released at all," he explains.

Schlesinger adds that the next studio album, however, is a ways off. "It's been a crazy year for us," he says. "It was great, but we're exhausted."