Fountains of Wayne plays the Paramount

In addition to cowriting "Stacy's Mom," "Red Dragon Tattoo" and other classics for the ultimate songwriter's rock and roll band -- New Jersey's Fountains of Wayne -- Adam Schlesinger is a member of supergroup Tinted Windows and author of movie songs for "That Thing You Do!," "Music & Lyrics" and many others.

"I like to stay busy," he says en route recently to a morning meeting at a Manhattan dim-sum place. "I don't like to think of it as a business strategy." The power-pop band -- which also includes Jody Porter, Chris Collingwood and Brian Young -- will be taking care of business tonight at the Paramount in Huntington.

You wrote "Stay In Our PJs" for the Nickelodeon band Big Time Rush and have predicted a new boy-band era. So . . . One Direction or The Wanted?

Well, my kids are really into that Wanted song ("Glad You Came"), so I'm going to have to go with that. It has one of those choruses -- it's like a long string of things where the last word in the sentence is the first word in the next sentence. It's a really smart songwriting trick.

Have you used that one?

No, but I'm going to now, definitely.

In "A Road Song," you say in the lyrics you know road songs are cliches. So why write a new one?

A lot of times, it's fun to take a type of song that's been done a lot and put our own spin on it. . . . I didn't even have an idea of what the song would be, just the first few lines and melody had a '70s singer-songwriter [feel], and that led me to think of a road song, which is a very '70s singer-songwriter move. I just remember in the '70s, there were lots of songs about being on tour and how rough it was. I thought that was a kind of funny thing to be complaining about.

Chris has been saying recently that he checked out for a few years, then re-emerged for last year's "Sky Full of Holes" album -- and that caused some tension between you. What's your perspective?

Chris and I have known each other since we were 18, and obviously there's going to be some ups and downs in a relationship that long. I don't feel closer musically to anybody else in the world. The two of us agree on about 99 percent of stuff. We can really butt heads sometimes, and it gets pretty contentious. . . . We ended up making a really great record. I'm happy we didn't really throw in the towel.

WHO Fountains of Wayne

WHEN | WHERE 8 tonight, the Paramount, 370 New York Ave., Huntington

INFO $20-$50; 800-745- 3000, ticketmaster.com