Interview from : http://www.rollingstone.com
Stray Cat Finds New A Home
King-of-all-trends-retro Brian Setzer riding high on his latest wave
Back in 1992, when former Stray Cat Brian Setzer first put together a sixteen-piece big band-style Orchestra to back him, it may have seemed like a rather futile gesture. After all, that was the year of the big sloppy guitars, the year of triumph for Seattle's grunge titans. But Setzer's decision to trade Go Cat Go for Swing Daddy Swing was a remarkably prescient one. Three albums later, with his new The Dirty Boogie slowly moving up the charts behind the neo-swinger Cherry Poppin' Daddies' Zoot Suit Riot, Setzer has found himself at the center of the kind of retro-revival craze that even the Stray Cats never really managed to catalyze here in the States. We reached him by phone at a hotel in Chicago in the midst of national tour with the Brian Setzer Orchestra.
Being on the road with a full orchestra has got to be a lot different from just jumping on a bus with a couple of guys in a band. Do you think of the Orchestra as your band?
Most of them have been playing with me for a while, so they are my band. But it's not a full-time gig for them. When they're not gigging with me they do TV soundtracks, movie scores and regular gigs. You know, when you hear the Lion King, that's my sax player.
I'm guessing that one of the big differences between working with the Orchestra as opposed to a smaller band is that now you really have to have everything written out. Do you have charts for all the tunes?
I'm so glad to hear someone say the word chart, because nobody seems to know what that is. Most people I talk to, they just think the band plays. But, yeah, charts are a big thing. The funniest thing is when people ask me if they can come up and jam with us. Because, you know, we don't jam. I mean, if someone's soloing we'll keep repeating a ten bar section until the end of the solo. But everything else we do is has to be written out.
How much work is it to come up with a chart for a song like "Rock This Town"?
It's a lot of work. I didn't write that chart. I gave it to Pat Williams. He's like Chivas Regal and I'm the cheap stuff. I figured, it's a classic song. And everywhere I go people want to hear it. I'm going to be doing it for the rest of my life, so I had to make it really special. Which is why I gave it to Pat. When we sat down and played it for the first time I was blown away.
Do you know of anyone else who's used rockabilly bass in a big band context?
No. Slap bass was just for rockabilly. I just put it in a big band because it sort of makes it rock more.
As does having an electric guitar up front.
Yeah, in the Forties they didn't have electric guitars. I don't know how those guitarists could have even kept up with a big band playing on an acoustic. Believe me, there's no way I could play in front of that big band without an amp. I do think that this is the first time a real big band has ever been done with a guitar up front.
When you think of the original big band swing groups, who comes to mind?
The first person who comes to mind with me is Count Basie. He's my favorite. And all that late-Fifties big band stuff, like Sinatra with Basie's band and Les Brown and Gene Krupa. Those are the names that come to mind for me. Oh, and Mancini, too.
So how do you feel about the new crop of swing bands like Cherry Poppin' Daddies and Big Bad Voodoo Daddy?
I think the revival is fantastic -- I like any swing band with the name Daddy in there. The only mistake some of the new bands make is that they don't want to be called swing. I'm like, 'Oh, no, you've gotta call it swing.' You have to. What else are you going to call it? Are you going to call it grunge? I mean, it has to have a name so people know what it is. So, I don't mind calling it swing. I also hope it doesn't turn into a situation where we have a lot of cookie-cutter swing bands. I think there have to be bands coming out and doing something different with it. It can't all be people wearing zoot suits playing 1940s jump with three horn players.
Where did you learn all those big chords - those jazz chords?
I just learned how to play guitar. I grew up with teachers. My first teacher took me through all the rudiments, then I learned how to read and write, I learned scales, and at the same time I was rockin' -- I was listening to the Allman Brothers and Creedence Clearwater on the radio. And when I finished that -- when I was 13 or 14 -- I started taking jazz theory from a jazz guitar teacher, because that's what we had in New York. So I learned all those chords, and they eventually crept back into my playing, even though I don't consider myself a jazz player. A lot of it seeped into my rockabilly playing with the Stray Cats. Some of those chords I was playing back then were jazz chords.
You've been ahead of the curve now with two big music revivals, rockabilly and swing. Do you ever think of yourself as playing a particular role in terms of keeping older music alive?
Well, I guess I do kind of recycle American music. I go about it innocently enough. I mean, initially I didn't think anybody would come down to see a sixteen-piece big band. And yet I thought the idea was fantastic. Just now people are starting to pick up on it, but six years ago when I started it people looked at me like I had three heads.
What do you think accounts for the sudden popularity of swing?
I think this stuff is all in us. I mean, you might have heard swing as a kid on a Rice Krispies commercial. So it's in our psyche. Whereas I don't know if something like ska really is. I don't see how they're going to get ska in Iowa. But the rockabilly, the jazz, the country and blues, and the swing is all there, as part of our culture.