Guitarist returns to rockabilly roots
Rockabilly music is a no-brainer for Brian Setzer. So the singer, songwriter, guitarist, producer and bandleader — who has had separate careers as the lead singer of the Stray Cats and as a prolific solo artist — insists that the making of his latest album, Rockabilly Riot!: All Original, involved little premeditation.
“I don’t think in terms of writing certain records at all,” Setzer said from his home in suburban Minneapolis.
“The songs kind of come to me, and after I write three or four songs, it determines itself what it should be. After the third song for this, I said, ‘ Well, it sounds like a rockabilly record to me.’ It just screamed stand-up piano; stand-up bass; drums; and just good, rocking guitar.”
Rockabilly Riot! takes Setzer back to the music that introduced him and the Stray Cats to the world in 1979. It is filled with revved-up ravers such as Let’s Shake, Stiletto Cool and Nothing Is a Sure Thing as well as rootsy shuffles on Rockabilly Blues and Calamity Jane, and even some doo-wop-style crooning on The Girl With the Blues in Her Eyes.
Setzer and British producer Peter Collins recorded the album with a quartet in Nashville, Tenn., going for a live feel instead of studio polish.
“I think this album was a lot about performance,” said Setzer, 55. “We took about a week and a half to arrange it, then I went on tour and I cut CDs for everyone and they took them home and lived with them for about a month and a half, so they really had them down, rather than going in and doing them one song at a time.
“That’s really what this music takes,” he said. “You’ve got to get it under your belt and make it yours, rather than create it in the studio. So this was less about the studio and more about the band.”
Setzer certainly has cred regarding rockabilly. Growing up on Long Island in Massapequa, N.Y., he bucked the mainstream and the trendy rock conventions of the time after falling in love with early rock icon Eddie Cochran.
“One day I saw a picture of him and said, ‘ Wow, that guy looks really cool,’” recalled Setzer, who later played Cochran in the film La Bamba (1987).
Setzer found kindred spirits in James “Slim Jim Phantom” McDonnell and Lee “Rocker” Drucker, forming the Tomcats and changing the band name to the Stray Cats after moving to England in 1980.
“The kids were ready for us,” Setzer said, “but the record companies weren’t.”
The Stray Cats’ 1982 homecoming set off a hurricane of rockabilly revivalism in the United States, which netted them two hit albums and a trio of top-10 singles, including Rock This Town (1982), Stray Cat Strut (1982) and (She’s) Sexy + 17 (1983).
The group flamed out in 1984, although there would be periodic reunions between 1986 and 2009, and Setzer doesn’t rule out more in the future. Meanwhile he expanded his musical reach, starting with the Americana-rock album The Knife Feels Like Justice (1986) and tapping into the 1990s swing revival with the Brian Setzer Orchestra, a 17-piece big band whose cover of Louis Prima’s Jump, Jive an’ Wail (1998) became a hit on radio and in TV ads.
The orchestra remains his favorite form of musical expression, though.
“That thing’s so musical,” said Setzer, who will take his orchestra on the road for its annual holiday-themed show again this fall. “Musically, I can do whatever I want with it, and nobody’s done it like this. I don’t know many people who have a big band going and keep it active like this. People, when they hear it, they love it and they come back.”
Along the way Setzer has picked up three Grammys and launched a best-selling line of Gretsch signature-model guitars. He even joined Mick Jagger and Keith Richards in lending their voices to a 2002 episode of The Simpsons.
“You know, I just like making music, whatever kind it is,” Setzer said. “I’ve been lucky enough to do a lot of different things and not be stuck making just one kind of music. I don’t take that for granted.”