To me, rockabilly music paralleled punk's energy and feeling, but the players were much better.

I'm not God's gift to rockabilly. There's great players out there, and some of them deserve a lot more than they've gotten.

For every rockabilly festival staged here, there are 10 held overseas.

We weren't afraid to mix some crazy styles into the standard rockabilly look. We also took a lot of different musical influences that were part of that era.

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.

Since the big band started I'm just always swamped with movies and things. It certainly pays the bills and it's very satisfying, because I get to write all these big charts and all this crazy music.