When James Dewees -- keyboardist for the Get Up Kids and New Found Glory -- went through a divorce last year, he had a two-pronged plan for staving off depression: First, he recorded a cathartic album under his Reggie and the Full Effect moniker, then he hit the road, fake blood and bunny costumes in tow.

On Reggie's new CD, Songs Not to Get Married To, the conservatory-trained twenty-nine-year-old bares his soul while trotting out every musical idea bouncing around in his brain, including arch screamo, full-bodied punk and atmospheric New Wave.

"Depending on what my attorney said that day, I'd write a new song," says Dewees. "The freedom to do whatever I want is really important."

Real-life confessionals such as "Love Reality" and "What the Hell Is Contempt" may surprise longtime Reggie fans. Since starting the project in 1998, Dewees has channeled shape-shifting pop songs through multiple characters, whom Dewees and his backing band portray during their manic, theatrical live shows: crusty bluesman Reggie, fey English synth-poppers Fluxuation and blood-spewing Finnish death-metal band Common Denominator.

Some of Dewees' jokes, like the title to 2000's Promotional Copy, have backfired. "Best Buy and Sam Goody returned, like, 15,000 copies because they thought they actually got promotional copies," Dewees says. "The record label wasn't too pleased."

The son of a Methodist minister, Dewees studied composition at the University of Missouri. After routinely hooking up the Get Up Kids with free Pizza Hut when he worked there after college, Dewees joined the band -- proving himself to be both a punk-rock mensch and a tenacious partyer.

"It was cool to have him around when we worked out harmonies and chord progressions," says Get Up Kids drummer and sometime Reggie member Ryan Pope. "It's also amazing how he can just go a million miles a minute for days, then play a great show."