When coronavirus first hit last year and everyone was nervous and frightened about what was happening, this album would have been the perfect pick-me-up if it had been out. But Lee Rocker, upright bass player for The Stray Cats and his own Lee Rocker Band, conceived, wrote, and recorded Gather Round during this time of the pandemic. With an instantaneous beat that never lets up, even on a ballad, it perks up the body like a ray of sunshine hitting your face. And it all came together because Rocker was getting antsy at home.
Used to being on the road since he was a teenager, being quarantined was just not his bag. So with his wife riding shotgun, Rocker jumped in an Airstream and crossed the country and back. It stimulated his creative muscles and Gather Round was born. “I wrote songs and music and drove 6,000 miles,” Rocker explained in a press release. “It’s been a year filled with global disaster and uncertainty. It’s also been a time of introspection and for me a time to reimagine how to record an album under these circumstances.”
With eight originals and two covers, Gather Round hones in on a sound that Rocker has loved since his youth. With musical parents, he took up cello then electric bass before becoming one with an upright bass, inspired by Willie Dixon. A Long Island kid with a penchant for 1950’s style rockabilly, along with Brian Setzer and Slim Jim Phantom, the Stray Cats were their perfect foil. “When we started doing it, it was very different. We were kind of too strange for a lot of the major rock clubs,” Phantom recalled during a 2019 Glide Interview. “We walked around 24/7 tooled up – jackets, black and white shoes, hair a foot high – to the 7-Eleven, to the liquor store, to the gigs; just anyplace that we went, we were full-on all the time. So there was no one else that looked that way. Not only was it the music, we really lived that entire life.”
After leaving New York for England, the band’s music caught on big-time. “I remember getting a call from my manager and record company and they said, ‘You know this rockabilly thing don’t look like it’s going to catch on,’” remembered Billy Burnette, whose father and uncle were rockabilly legends, and who was pursuing the same kind of music himself. “Six months later, the Stray Cats come out.” And that was when Stray Cat fever took over: “Rock This Town,” “Stray Cat Strut” and “Sexy & 17” all blasted from the airwaves while Built For Speed hovered at the top of the charts. Although they would take hiatuses from the band over the years, the Stray Cats celebrated their 40 year anniversary in 2018, toured and recorded a new album in 2019.
For Rocker, the Stray Cats, although a big part of his career, is not his only musical endeavor. He’s led his own band for years, releasing over a dozen albums, has played with his idols like Carl Perkins and Scotty Moore, opened for The Rolling Stones and released two albums with the trio, Phantom Rocker & Slick. On Gather Round, his band consists of guitar player Buzz Campbell, drummer Larry Mitchell, and piano player Matt Jordan. Throw in Rocker on upright bass and this band wiggles and shimmies like a cool hot rod.
I spoke with Rocker last week about creating the album, his early days in the Stray Cats, the kindness of Ronnie Lane and not buying a slice of Elvis’ birthday cake.
Gather Round sounds like you guys are sitting around in a room playing together. How did you accomplish that during quarantine?
You know, during quarantine I would go to the studio myself and start to play a lot of the instruments and really put the songs that I’d written together. It really has an incredible amount of energy and live feel and I think it was down to the focus that I got to put into it. I’ve recorded this way previously but not often. So I put a tremendous amount of focus and thought into it. And on top of that, I’ve got the greatest band in Buzz Campbell on guitar and Larry Mitchell on drums, and Matt Jordan on piano. I would talk to them about what I was looking for and they would send me the tracks. It was a slower process, it didn’t fall together, that wouldn’t be a good choice of words, but everything on this record is there for a reason and I put it there and I’m aware of it. There’s not a drum hit, there’s not a note or a breath that I didn’t purposefully put there.
Was that insane?
(laughs) It gave me something to focus on this year, I have to say that. There are rock & roll records where you’re all in the same room, not in 2020, and you just let it rip and you see what you get and you can get great rock & roll that way; but the other way of doing it, with this kind of focus, you can also get great rock & roll. It’s just a different route to get to the same result.
You said you played all the instruments at the beginning but what else do you play on the record besides the bass?
All the acoustic guitars, mandolin; there’s accordion on “Last Offline Lovers,” on a bridge. It’s this nice kind of swelling kind of sound to it that just comes in once on the whole record. That’s the only time I used the accordion. There’s a little bit of scratching on a banjo on that as well. I played the harmonica. Buzz Campbell did the electric guitar solos and put parts, and the piano was actually done with Matt Jordan in West Virginia sending them to me.
Where did you play mandolin?
Mandolin is also on “Last Offline Lovers.” That’s a track that I played everything on except for the drums and that was really a fun song to do. I mean, the whole record was, like I said, a lot of intensity to it on a personal level. It was just me during the bulk of the time in that studio room and an engineer on the other side of the glass and we did that out here in Santa Ana, California.
Most of these are original songs that you wrote last year. Where were you getting your inspiration from?
Gather Round is really sort of a chronicle or journal, in a sense, of 2020 for me and that became more apparent as I was recording and listening to the finished product. I’ve been on the road and touring for forty years and used to traveling a lot. I’m rarely in one place for more than a couple of weeks and with the pandemic and the lockdown, it was tough, and on everyone of course. At that point, there was really no music business, no concerts, so my wife and I got in our Airstream RV and drove from California to New York and back and I wrote a lot of the songs sort of on that journey. We were gone about six weeks and wrote “Gather Round,” which really is about getting in that Airstream and just going, “Last Offline Lovers,” “Pickin & Grinnin’” and “Dirty Martini.” I look at the titles of these songs and go, this is really what I did! (laughs) Getting in the Airstream, hanging out with my wife of thirty-three years, getting aggravated over politics, and drinking dirty martinis.
You don’t usually get political but you threw a few jabs in there on “Pickin’ & Grinnin’”
Yeah, I’ve written one or two songs over these forty years, maybe three, that are about politics. But I felt like at this point in time is such a critical moment in our history and I love our country and I feel like we’re going in the wrong way – I think we’re going the right way now – and disagreement is fine, that’s democracy, but I just think it really got off the rails. I felt like if I didn’t state my opinion, my thoughts, then I would be part of the problem. I have to say, I’ve got a lot of support for it and a little flak and that’s okay, that’s what it’s all about, right.
When you’re composing, what usually comes first?
It’s all different but more often than not a title comes first for me and what I want to write about. Usually, it’s a phrase or a title.
What was the first one for this record?
“Gather Round.” That really was the Airstream trip. I sort of felt like, after being trapped and then getting on the road, feeling a little bit more normal. It was traveling across the country and doing everything except play the concert (laughs). So that was my US tour. I just didn’t get to walk on a stage.
And you wrote a love song, which means you and your wife did not get tired of each other
(laughs) No, no, it was probably the opposite. Things are really good and I wanted to express that. And I think in a way, “Pickin’ & Grinnin”, I think this is sort of a moment for me as a musician and an artist to kind of be personal as opposed to taking a step back and it just felt good.
Your version of The Band’s “Ophelia” has a jitterbug feel to it. Why did you choose to do that particular song?
That’s one of only two songs on the record that I didn’t write. That song I really feel a kinship with. I was lucky enough a few years back to get a call from Levon Helm from The Band and Levon, of course, the voice and the drummer and the mandolin player, passed away a couple of years back [2012]. But I got a call and I picked up the phone and Levon Helm was on the phone. He said, “Lee, I do this thing called the Midnight Ramble.” Since Levon couldn’t tour anymore because of his health, although he was winning Grammys and just unbelievable his last two records, every Saturday night he had a concert in his barn in Woodstock and he called it the Midnight Ramble. And I got invited to go up there and play two or three times. I got to work with him and felt a really amazing connection, my bass playing, and his drumming, and wanted to do that song. So that song slipped into my live concerts over the last few years and I said, I’ve got to cut it for this record and put my own stamp on it.
Like with “Everybody Wants To Be A Cat.” Your version is a little bit slinkier than the other version. So how far back does your rearrangement of that song go?
Not long. That was during 2020, like the huge majority of this record was recorded. “Ophelia” probably pre-dated the lockdown by a few months, and “When Nothing’s Going Right,” but “Everybody Wants To Be A Cat,” it just struck me as something that had an underpinning of a great bass part and I started messing around with that. I wanted to do a track that’s so predominately about voice and bass and everything else is super minimal except for the background vocals that I did, which I was really trying to channel the Jordanaires and get this kind of clean, tight harmony instead of using guitars or piano to do that. I wanted it to feel like I’m right behind the speaker.
When did you discover this kind of music?
As a teenager, I’d say. I knew about Elvis, later Elvis, not really early so much. But I started to get turned onto blues music – Buddy Guy, Junior Wells, Cotton, Willie Dixon – and that sort of led me down the road. That was my thing, especially Willie Dixon being a bass player, singer and producer. Then I discovered Carl Perkins and early Elvis and it just captured me. Being an upright bass player, this kind of rock & roll, the upright bass is the engine that drives it, it’s propulsion and power. So it grabbed me probably around thirteen or fourteen years old.
And you never wanted to do anything else?
No, that’s really it. I feel like I’m sort of one with the instrument. Maybe the fact that the thing is a little bigger than I am (laughs) but between the two of us, we’ve become one and over the years thinking about it, I would say that the bass has brought me around the world a hundred times, not the other way around.
When did you actually get your hands on an upright bass?
Probably thirteen. I’m from a musical family. My dad was the solo clarinetist for the New York Philharmonic for sixty-one years. My mom was a music professor at Hofstra University in New York. So the rule growing up was you played an instrument. That was the one responsibility and you took lessons and you learned to read and write music and I started with cello at seven years old and then probably around twelve I started with an electric bass and then maybe at fourteen I got an upright.
So you didn’t find playing the upright bass very hard?
No, I mean, it was a hell of a lot of practice but a cello is a four string instrument, seated, and an electric bass is four string horizontally and then I’m back to four strings vertically (laughs). So it was something I got. Instruments with strings on it came pretty naturally to me. If it’s got a string, I can sit with it long enough and I can start to figure things out.
When I interviewed Slim Jim, he told me that in the early days of the Stray Cats, you guys were all in it, all the way down to what you were wearing. So what it was like being in New York, looking like that and sticking to your guns with the rockabilly music?
It was definitely something. I mean, out on Long Island we all started in the suburbs about thirty miles from New York City and playing these other places and there you would definitely get some looks wearing a pink suit and greased hair. They didn’t know who we were or what we were doing. But we would also go to Max’s Kansas City and play at that, and CBGBs in New York. It was the end of punk and all of that so we fit in a lot better in the city in a certain sense. But although they couldn’t make out what we were, once we started playing, people liked it and didn’t want to kill us (laughs).
You have a song on the new record called “Graceland Auction.” It’s quite funny but you can tell how much you love Elvis and his music.
I’m glad it hits that way cause that really is the truth. I’m a lifelong Elvis fanatic. I think he was the greatest ever on so many levels. I’m a bit of a collector and I love Elvis and he was like a superhero growing up. It was like Evel Knievel and Elvis. Then I got into the music and it was like, wow, and that song was after the road trip of 2020. I got back to California, and it was the last song I wrote for the record, and on my desk in my office – every year I get the Graceland Auction catalog, all the stuff you can buy – and I sat down after that trip and I went, it’s been staring me in the face for years, there it is, that’s a song! And that’s really how that came about. It wrote itself really quickly. Sometimes songs are a struggle and some are just, there they are, and that song was a there they are.
Now you didn’t buy that piece of birthday cake you sing about in the song, did you?
No, I did not (laughs) I’ve been fortunate enough to work with a lot of different people, Scotty Moore and DJ Fontana, which was the original Elvis band, the Blue Moon Boys from the Sun Sessions. Scotty and I toured together a lot and he played on some of my solo records, I played on some of his, we became really close friends. One year, it was two or three years ago, they were auctioning off his gold guitar and I tried my damnedest to get it but didn’t. That’s also part of the song.
You’ve recorded a lot at Sun Studios in Memphis. What does that feel like to actually put down a song in there?
There is something in that room, some real magic. I recorded there a lot with my own band, the Lee Rocker Band, and I recorded with Scotty Moore in that room and I also recorded with Carl Perkins and Paul Simon and it’s incredible. There is a sound there and there is a spirit there. So that was an amazing experience, especially with Carl, for some reason, because just of what he did there, “Blue Suede Shoes.” I mean, the architect of rock & roll started there and whatever it was, thirty years later I’m there standing with Carl having some laughs and playing music.
Do you think Sam Phillips would have liked you?
I hope so (laughs). You know, the people that I’ve gotten to work with that is from that first generation of rock & roll, I really cherish that and, I don’t know if it’s validation or maybe carrying the torch a little further, you know.
Who was the first real rock star you ever met?
I would say Ronnie Lane from the Small Faces. When we first got to England, Brian, Jim and myself, we flew to England with upright bass, a drum, and a guitar, and nothing else. We quickly ran out of money, we were sleeping in Hyde Park, and not knowing exactly what to do. And we met Ronnie Lane in a pub and he took mercy on us and brought us home and let us stay in his house, although his wife was not too happy about it (laughs). So these three American teenagers – I was seventeen, Jim was eighteen, Brian was nineteen – and I would say that was a real kindness.
What was the first song you obsessed over as a kid?
I’m not sure what song but I would probably say it’s the Rolling Stones. I remember watching Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert, which was on TV back then in the late seventies, and seeing the Stones and Jagger bouncing around doing “Satisfaction.”
Which Stray Cats song do you remember taking the longest to get right in the studio?
You know, with the Stray Cats, it’s really not about how long it takes. The first record we recorded in eleven days and the last record we did, I think, took about eleven days as well. It’s a matter of just getting it right. We’re a band that, since it’s a trio, you set up and you play, and every time you do it, it’s different. We’ve never played a song the same way twice. We’re almost more like maybe how Jazz musicians work, which is kind of like a conversation. So you just record it and try to find the one with the magic.
You mentioned Willie Dixon as a big influence. What exactly did you hear in him?
I heard everything. There are not many people who play the upright bass and sing and front the band and write and produce. That’s what I wanted to do and that’s what I’ve been doing all these decades now. But I had sort of discovered “Hoochie Coochie Man,” of course, and others, but he was Chuck Berry’s bass player on some of the early records and a session guy. But his bass playing knocked me to the ground. But I did get to see him actually perform. I was a teenager and it was in New York. It might have been at the Bottom Line, I’m not positive, but it was in a New York Greenwich Village venue and it was Thanksgiving, that much I do remember. It would have been mid to the late seventies.
With the new record now out, what do you hope you can actually accomplish musically this year?
I think, fingers crossed here, we’re booking concerts starting in late August across the US and in Europe. I’m just hoping that curtains rise and we can get out there and play some live concerts. I think we all need it – people making the music, people listening to the music – and I think it will be an incredible feeling for everyone that first time walking back into a venue and getting some live music.
Portraits by Jeanine Hill (color), Jet Luna (b&w)
