Courtesy - The Oakland Press
George Thorogood says this summer’s Rockabilly Riot tour “was a Brian Setzer project from years gone by.”
“Every time I’d bump into him, he’d be like, ‘Let’s hook up,’” Delaware native and “Bad to the Bone” man says of Setzer, the Stray Cats frontman who’s also been a prolific solo artist. “Finally I went to see his Christmas show, which was outstanding. And the first thing he said to me was — guess what — ‘Let’s hook up!’
“I said, ‘OK — but this time are we going to do it?’ And we made it happen. But it’s been his brain storm in terms of a project.”
The two guitarists are certainly cut from the same cloth, steeped in American music including rockabilly, blues, R&B and rock. But Thorogood says fans will hear plenty of diversity between the two of them.
“He’s all guitar and all about that rockabilly thing,” Thorogood explains. “I’m into the guitar but not quite as far gone on one particular musical style as he is; I just let nature takes its course and kind of evolve into the things I do. But we’re both just as dedicated and the energy is still there with both of us. That’ll never go away.”
At 65, Thorogood is not harboring any retirement plans — although he cracks that, “If they pay me the same amount not to play, I wouldn’t play” — and has a list of recording projects he’d like to do. At the top of that now is a solo album, without his band, the Destroyers, but not necessarily a laid-back, acoustic outing.
“It’d be the way John Lee Hooker did it, just me playing alone but with some electric guitar stuff on it, too,” sasy Thorogood, who on June 16 will release “George Thorogood and the Delaware Destroyers,” the original, raw mix of the group’s 1976 debut album that was originally released on vinyl for Record Store Day in April. “I’ll probably do some other people’s songs, maybe acoustic versions of some of my songs like Eric Clapton did, some obscure blues things. I hope to get it done within the next year or so — I’m pretty adamant about it, actually, so that’ll be the next thing you hear from me on record.”