Interview from : http://www.aptonline.org
An Interview with Brian Setzer
Q: I hear you're in Glasgow now?
A: Yeah, we are in Scotland.
Q: What has it been like on this European tour?
A: Gosh. We trotted over here with this little record I made in Nashville. They have been going crazy over here. It's kind of nice to see. It's just been great.
Q: Is this the album that came out last week?
A: Yeah. It just came out. It came out a little earlier over here.
Q: Any highlights or surprises over in Europe while you have been out there touring?
A: Hmm…. Yeah! The biggest surprise was for me. I pretty much have a gold record from every territory in Europe, but I have never received a German chart position. We hit number 20, finally, in Germany. Oh My Gosh, we waited all these years since the 80s. They finally bought the record.
Q: You are a busy guy because you have the Rockabilly Riot CD that just came out and then you have Dig that Crazy Christmas that comes out in October and the public television program CHRISTMAS EXTRAVAGANZA that is going to begin airing probably at the end of November. Tell me how you came up with the idea for EXTRAVAGANZA and what that experience was like?
A: Well, let me tell you how it got started out. Years ago, I did a couple songs for the Schwarzenegger movie Jingle All The Way. They asked me to do my own version of "Jingle Bells" and that was it. So I did, and then they asked me for another one. I wrote a song that Lou Rawls sang ("So They Say It's Christmas") and then they asked me for another one. So, I had three songs in the movie and I did this kind of up-town, down-town version of Sleigh Ride. You know, like a Sleigh Ride through the Bronx, kind of a gangster, "old timey" and Darlene Love sang that. That was the start of it. And then a year later, everyone kept asking me "Why don't you do a Christmas album with the big band?" I kind of fluffed it off. Well, a Christmas album? You know that will be a lot of work to sit there and write charts for all those songs, and even more difficult to try to take these old songs in a new direction. What finally got me was that I turned on my radio station and heard "Jingle All the Way" four years later and all the radio stations were playing anything they could get that had some kind of revamp to it and was kind of modern. Then, I just said, 'Alright, I mean if these radio stations that play top 40 were digging to find my version of "Jingle Bells," I guess people really want this.'
Q: I was going through some things and I saw an interesting quote from the New York Daily News that says, "Brian Setzer scores with music that no one is suppose to care about anymore." So why do you care so much about these songs?
A: Well, these are classic songs. You are not going to do "White Christmas" better than Bing Crosby did it, even though it's 50 years old. My trick was well, if I'm going to do this, how am I going to do it like Brian Setzer does it? How do I do it my way? I kind of scuff it up. I like to say I take it downtown. This would be if you went down to New Orleans and heard a Christmas album or downtown in any city like Chicago, you would hear an album that sounds like this.
Q: What do you think about the smaller venues of the past and what you are doing today? How do you feel about where your career has been and where it now?
A: For starters, as a musician playing an art form of music (rockabilly) that was pretty much forgotten a year or two after it started, I am really surprised and happy that I'm still here. I have just been riding on the wave and trying to come up with interesting things in this musical direction. So many bands come and go. I guess the only reason I'm still here is because people still want to hear me. They want to hear this kind of music.
Q: What's next? Is there something that's missing and do you feel like if I don't do X, Y and Z you won't be fulfilled?
A: Oh no. Its not that I'm not feeling fulfilled. That's an answer I have never been able to give. Because it just hits me over the head. And I go, 'Okay I have to do this.' Like with Rockabilly Riot, I was playing some old records and my son came into the room with his friends and he is eighteen. He was like, 'wow this is great! What is this?' I was playing "Red Hot" and these kids flipped out. So that's when the mallet hits you over the head. So this is where I have to make a "Sun tribute" record. I have to do all these songs. Find all the best songs I can and put them on one record. So if an eighteen-year-old-kid wants to buy this, he can get it.