I wanted to go back to Sun. Unfortunately, most of the gear is gone from Sun. The way I take it now, it's almost like a tourist destination. So, it would have been pretty difficult to have brought all the gear into Sun to make it like it was in the '50's.

Brian Setzer

Categorized in : Gone Tourists Tourism

I put a metronome up to all the songs, and I tried to really keep it true to the original tempos.

Brian Setzer

metronomes tempo song

With the Stray Cats at least, we really took the music somewhere else. First, we wrote our own songs. That's a real weak point in modern classics if you do rockabilly or blues.

Brian Setzer

cat real song

The biggest challenge for me was Get Rhythm. I don't know why.

Brian Setzer

rhythm challenges knows

,,, all around it would have to be Eddie Cochran, because it wasn't just music with him; it was his guitar playing, his look, his singing, I'd say that, all things considered, he's probably my favorite "cat" of all time

Brian Setzer

guitar cat music

To me, rockabilly music paralleled punk's energy and feeling, but the players were much better.

Brian Setzer

energy player feelings

Veteran performers are dying off, and new acts simply aren't emerging on the national scene.

Brian Setzer

veteran scene dying

I didn't want to take the guitar solos down note-for-note, but more or less use them as a map, and keep all the hooks from the guitar playing, and let myself come through.

Brian Setzer

hook guitar use

... so much of what we do now started in 1954 at Sun Records in Memphis Tennessee ... those guys were inventing that stuff (Rock & Roll) ... you can really tell on some tracks ... they were actually afraid at times of what they were playing. But Rock & Roll definitely didn't come before that time; it started right there

Brian Setzer

rocks track music

There's a fine line between pleasure and pain. Love me like a ball and chain.

Brian Setzer

balls lines pain

I basically sat down for a month, with all the Sun stuff I could find and just picked out my favorites. I didn't think that they were indicative of '54 to '57, although I tried to stay within that period.

Brian Setzer

months stuff thinking

To keep creating something with this type of music, you have to take it out of the box.

Brian Setzer

boxes creating-something creating

I can't tell you how many people have asked me to show them Stray Cat Strut and that little diminished run on the C. I guess my brain is wired backwards. I don't know what possessed me to do that, but I did.

Brian Setzer

cat running people

It's not about how loud you turn the amp up. That's not what makes it sound big. What makes it sound big is fooling around with different delays and reverb settings.

Brian Setzer

delay different sound

Don't be afraid to take liberties with this music. Try and put some of yourself into it.

Brian Setzer

liberty trying

I'm not God's gift to rockabilly. There's great players out there, and some of them deserve a lot more than they've gotten.

Brian Setzer

rockabilly deserve player

You had to pick something like Blue Suede Shoes because it's the flagship of the Sun label, but then I wanted to dig down and find something like Rakin' and Scrapin'.

Brian Setzer

shoes labels blue

Mark Winchester has left the band. He's decided that he's tired of the road and just wants to concentrate on his career in Nashville. I don't blame him at all. He'll certainly be missed.

Brian Setzer

nashville tired careers

I got cat class and I got cat style

Brian Setzer

style cat class

Since the big band started I'm just always swamped with movies and things. It certainly pays the bills and it's very satisfying, because I get to write all these big charts and all this crazy music.

Brian Setzer

movie crazy writing

For every rockabilly festival staged here, there are 10 held overseas.

Brian Setzer

rockabilly festivals