We really made a mark with the Stray Cats. We made some really great records that really stood the test of time.

With the new record, we really want to get out there. I'm really having a blast. The band I've got is just fantastic, so I want to get out there and enjoy it.

That was something that was fun to do. My whole thought, in general, is to put my own stamp on things and not be walking over the same ground again. So I wouldn't have done that song again if I didn't think I could do something really different with it.

That was a point where I dug a little bit back to some of the blues stuff. I worked with some fantastic people. Scotty Moore, Elvis' guitarist, played with me on a couple of records, and we also had the Memphis Horns. Those were good days, but everything's got to end. It was time to do other stuff.

My parents have always been seriously helpful and behind it all the way. Although you think classical music is a different world, it's really not. The tours and recording sessions are basically the same.

That was a fluke. I'd recorded a lot of stuff for this record. I worked on it over a year. Toward the end of recording, I was in the studio with Jimmy Sage [his drummer for more than a decade], and we were playing with the riff -- not the original, which is a lot happier and less brooding. He was trying some different drumbeats. It was just one of those things that popped into my head in a minor key. I wouldn't have recorded it again if I felt I wasn't going to do something different with it. The album is not a rockabilly revival or '50s music. ... My music is not a museum piece in that you've got to do this way or that way.