Back in the mid-’90s, you couldn’t ride to a rave in a white Ford Bronco or read an article about Hootie and the Blowfish in Cigar Aficionado — or do whatever else people were doing in the mid-1990s — without hearing a familiar pulsing beat and the voice of Chris Ballew enthusiastically bellowing “Lump sat alone in a boggy marsh!”

Chances are you know the rest.

Ballew, frontman of alt-rock hit-makers The Presidents of the United States of America (that’s PUSA for short), broke up the trio just a few years after that song achieved a level of ubiquity. In January 1998, while PUSA was seemingly unstoppable, he stepped away to spend time with his family.

Once at the top of the mountain, Ballew told GO! Magazine, he realized the view up there wasn’t quite right.

“I either sold or donated all my instruments. I got rid of all my two-strings,” he said, referring to his “basitar,” a six-string guitar modified with two bass strings. “One of the reasons we broke up was because I had this voice saying, ‘This is great, but this is not your final destination. This is not it.’”

What was “it” — and this took him a few years to realize — is children’s music, little pop gems aimed at the dancing-in-diapers set. Ballew, as parents of young children may be aware, is the man-child behind Caspar Babypants, a project just for kids.

You may be surprised, or may not be surprised, at how well Ballew’s post-punk-power-pop skill set translates from writing and performing songs like “Dune Buggy,” “Bug City,” “Peaches” and “Boll Weevil” to writing and performing songs, as Babypants, such as “I Found You,” “Sleepy Head,” “Cricket the King” and “The Stump Hotel.”

He just wrapped up recording of his seventh Babypants record, a Beatles cover album. That’s a lot of productivity given that he only began the project in 2009, and that he and Jason Finn (drums) and Andrew McKeag (guitbass, a bass with three guitar strings, same as his predecessor Dave Dederer played during the mountaintop years) have been fairly active as PUSA over the past decade. They recently toured Australia, and will be performing at Bend’s Century Center Courtyard Thursday (see “If you go”).

“Lump” was an interesting choice for a single, considering that when PUSA originally played it live it was a “dud,” Ballew said. But he liked the song well enough to release it anyway, knowing the band could potentially end up playing it countless times live.

Prior to his own success, Ballew played guitar for Beck around the time “Loser” made him a star and radio fixture.

“I got to watch him play it endlessly on stage without feeling like it was a great song,” Ballew said. “‘Never release a song (we don’t like to play)’ became our democratic credo.”

Prior to the Babypants project, Ballew’s post-PUSA music activities included the supergroup Subset, which was essentially a PUSA collaboration with fellow Seattleite and rapper Sir Mix-a-Lot. Subset even played a Bend date during its brief existence.

“It was legendary. It was a very (debauched) show,” Ballew said. He declined to reveal any incriminating details “now that I’m a family musician.”

However, “Sir Mix-a-Lot is a magnet for naughty behavior,” he added. “Collaborating with him was extremely great. He’s very talented, very smart and a very funny, nice guy. He even taught me how to use (the recording software) Pro Tools, which has revolutionized everything (I do).”

In 2008, PUSA released the studio album “These are the Good Times People,” the first PUSA recording to feature McKeag. “We haven’t done any recording since, but we’re starting to write songs,” Ballew said.

As for PUSA’s live sets, “We’re feeling loose, playing super tight and having fun,” he said. “It’s an energetic free-for-all.”