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Rockabilly Riot: a conversation with Brian Setzer

  Play Now [8:37]

by Jill Riley

November 14, 2014

Brian Setzer
Brian Setzer
Surfdog Records

Brian Setzer started his career in the 80s with the Stray Cats, with hits like "Rock this Town" and "Stray Cat Strut"; ne continued his career into the 90s by starting the Brian Setzer Orchestra, scoring a hit with a cover of the Louis Prima sibg, "Jump Jive and Wail."

Setzer now lives here in Minnesota; he's recently been all over the news after donating his signature, orange Gretsch guitar to the Smithsonian Institution. He has a new record out now, called Rockabilly Riot. Setzer launches his Christmas Extravaganza Tour tonight at the Orpheum Theatre in Minneapolis. "I've kind of wrangled it so I can kick off the tour here," Setzer says. "I can just drive downtown to the Orpheum and bring everything I need."

Here are additional highlights from the interview:

On his approach to songwriting:
"I don't really write songs in the rockabilly style; I just sit down and write and it becomes rockabilly music."

On finding local drummer Noah Levy to play in his band:
"Where do you find a guy that good? All the local musicians know who Noah is. I heard him play; his style mixed with mine. He's got kind of a swampy, laid-back feel to his play."

On donating his guitar to the Smithsonian Institution:
"I can't think of a better place for it; it goes behind glass forever. When all is said and done, that's where it will go … McCartney's bass is there — that's the one he used with the Beatles, so I've got to give them the real one that I grew up with."

On how his guitar came to have dice for volume and tone knobs:
"When I bought the guitar, it didn't have any knobs … as a kid, I just took Dad's vise in the garage, put a pair of Monopoly dice in there, drilled them out, put some Krazy Glue in there and I stuck them on the shafts, because it didn't have them. And now it's become a thing that people do that. But it was just, like, kind of a kid thing to do."