Brian Setzer
Brian Setzer
Brian Robert Setzeris an American guitarist, singer and songwriter. He first found widespread success in the early 1980s with the 1950s-style rockabilly revival group Stray Cats, and revitalized his career in the late 1990s with his Swing revival band, The Brian Setzer Orchestra...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionGuitarist
Date of Birth10 April 1959
CityMassapequa, NY
CountryUnited States of America
dying veteran scene
Veteran performers are dying off, and new acts simply aren't emerging on the national scene.
creating creating-something boxes
To keep creating something with this type of music, you have to take it out of the box.
song real cat
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.
song metronomes tempo
I put a metronome up to all the songs, and I tried to really keep it true to the original tempos.
copying drum far felt fills ignore original overlooked people rockabilly tricks
I wanted to keep it authentic, ... I even went as far as copying the original drum parts. I felt that was an overlooked part of those recordings. Now when people play rockabilly they ignore the little fills and tricks they used.
blasting exactly guitar rockabilly solos tried updated wild
I never really did rockabilly exactly like they did it in the '50s, ... We always kind of updated it. But I didn't need to go blasting crazy, wild guitar solos around this stuff. I tried to keep it authentic.
blues country cousin rockabilly
Rockabilly is really part of our background, ... It's a cousin to the blues and country. And it's that important.
computer exists faded file found fragment friend heard research sent tape toward
My friend sent me the song, which I hadn't heard before, ... It faded in toward the middle, and I thought the computer file was broken. But we did research and found out that a tape fragment is all that exists of the song.
himself mind
He said it was too long ago for him to put himself back in that mind-set,
hit room stuck travel wait
I always thought when I hit 50 years old that'd be it for the travel. I don't have to tell you - you wait at an airport, your flight's delayed, get on a 14-hour flight, get off, get stuck in traffic, you get to the hotel and the room service is closed.
grunge
I started a big band when grunge was popular. I mean, that didn't make much sense.
beatles covers eddie found gene rockabilly stones
When I was a kid, I found out about Eddie Cochran and Gene Vincent through the Beatles and the Stones doing covers of rockabilly songs,
player feelings energy
To me, rockabilly music paralleled punk's energy and feeling, but the players were much better.
shoes blue down-and
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'.