Bitter Corner

This is an I Heart Podcast. Guaranteed Human. Hey guys, it's us, the Jonas Brothers, I'm Joe. I'm Kevin. And I'm Nick and guess what? We created our own podcast called Hey Jonas. We invented a podcast. Well, we didn't invent it. We just contributed to it. We're the first people to do podcasts. We get to ask other people questions because we're sick and tired of being asked questions. Well, sick and tired is a strong way to put it, but you know, tired and sick. Tired and sick. Listen to Hey Jonas on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast. Just listen, we don't care where you hear it. Another podcast from some SNL late night comedy guy, not quite on humor me with Robert Smigel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Bob Odin Kirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer, Streeters Side L, helped an Aka Pella band with their between songs banter. Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes. Those people are starving for banter. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and friends on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. If you're watching the latest season of the Real Housewives of Atlanta, you already know there's a lot to break down. Of course you're accusing Kelly of sleeping with a merry man. They holding K Michelle back from fighting Drew. Pinkie has financial issues. On the podcast, Reality with the King, I, Carlos King, recap the biggest moments from your favorite reality shows including the Real Housewives franchise, the drama, the alliances, and the tea everybody's talking about. To hear this and more, listen to Reality with the King on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Saigon, the story of my family and of the country that shaped us. From my heart podcast, Saigon. You're gonna think I'm serious about a free Vietnam, one city, a divided country, in the war that tore America apart. For Vietnam. The pouring patch, all of it. Freedom of Vietnam! There's a fire coming to this country and it's going to burn out everything. Listen to Saigon. On the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Take it a walk. Welcome to the show. My guest today is a man who helped put Rockabilly back on the map and kept it there. As the upright bass player and co-founder of the stray cats, Lee Rocker helped build one of the most visually electric and sonically explosive acts in rock and roll history. Born in Massa Peak with Long Island in 1979, he and Brian Setser and Slim Jim Phantom. He took their pompadores and their passion across the Atlantic to London, where a Rockabilly revival was just catching fire. And the rest, as they say, is music history. It's like rock this town, stray cats strut, runaway boys, they became anthems. And now the cats are back with new music and a full cross country summer 2026 tour. Lee Rocker is next on the Takenowalk Podcast. Lee, welcome to the Takenowalk Podcast. It is so great to have you on. Thanks so much, Buzz. So take me back to Massa Peak, before the spark of Rockabilly hit you. What was the first impact musically that you recall, hit you and connected you with a life of music? I'd have to say that really goes way back. I'm from a musical family. Both of my parents were classical musicians. My mom was a clarinetist and a music professor at a place called Hofstra University. And my dad Stanley Drucker was a clarinetist also. He was a child of prodigy from Brooklyn, New York, who went on at a very young age to become the solo clarinist with the New York Philharmonic. A position he held for 61 years. So music goes way back. My grandfather before that was on Vaughville as a saxophone player. So music is kind of the family business. I mean, Rockabilly isn't, but or wasn't, I should say. But music was always something I grew up with from being a little kid like lying in bed every night. I heard rehearsals and clarinets and saxophones and pianos and lessons being taught. So I was immersed from day one. I was fascinating thinking about Massapiqua at the time when the spark hit when some teenagers decided to go down the direction of Rockabilly. What was that calling when everybody else was listening to disco and to new wave? Me, Brian and Jim were kind of retigates. And we listened to all different stuff. We lived in the same neighborhood within a couple of blocks of each other. And, you know, as you said, disco is on, but there was Rock and Roll, it was the 70s. But there wasn't really rockabilly. And we started to, well, for me, I stumbled on it really through the blues. I was totally getting into blues and muddy waters and Willie Dixon. And I was like, well, I found that music and that led me down that pike to Rockabilly music to Presley's sun sessions and Carl Perkins and Johnny Cash. Remember my grandfather had some Johnny Cash records. And we kind of bonded over, I think maybe being misfits a bit and also finding this music together from a pretty young age. And a decision to pack up and head to London in 1980, a big leap of faith that frankly most people, no less, no, most bands never take. What gave you guys this confidence to take that on and do that? I could be funny here and say something, but I honestly, I think the honest answer is that we started the band and things really started to take off even before going to the UK. I mean, we were teenagers. I was 17, but we were playing in a corner bar out of Long Island or a couple of them. You know, we'd have every Wednesday at one place and every Saturday at another and really quickly it went from being the couple of drums at the bar the first week to the next week being 50 people to the next week being 100 and that happened out on Long Island. We started to go into New York City and do a play at Maxis Kansas City or CBGBs and the same kind of same kind of thing kept happening to the point where we're really getting a line of block long, full of people to see us. I guess it built our confidence to try things. We were also super young and hadn't never thought anything through very well, but that was apparent. I mean, that was obvious. That was right in front of your face. So in the summer of 80, we were starting to talk about it a few months before. We started saving up money from these gigs, you know, Penn. I don't know what it was, you know, 50 or $100 or something, maybe, you know, somewhere around there anyway. And we bought literally four airline tickets, three of the band and one for my upright bass. Slim Jim put a snare drum in his suitcase, Brian carried his guitar and we flew to London and landed and pretty quickly realized that we hadn't hadn't really thought this through very well. Probably a statement that is universally told in rock and roll, but we hadn't thought it through very well. We started sleeping in Hyde Park and all night movie theaters and going to the venues that we had read about in the melody maker and the enemy. British rock and roll newspapers the day and we would get them in New York. So we had a little idea. Oh, there's this club. There's that club, and we just started to show up and ask for a gig, and one thing led to another. We met people we met some really interesting folks, you know from Ronnie Lane and everything kind of snowballs. I've been shot out of you can. But that same thing that happened. Around the New York area happened in London and again, really quickly landed in June and we were virtually homeless and by July or August, we were playing pubs and rock gigs with a line down the block. What a story. My God. That was great. The upright base is such a physical instrument that's understatement. It has its own stage presence. How did you develop your relationship with it and those that are watching this and seeing the video part of it can see in the background. There's a beautiful upright base. How did you develop the stamina for working that instrument and the demands that it makes on you. Yeah, no, it is a very different thing, you know, and just going back to the beginning there, talking about parents and classical music, you know, the only rule we had growing up was you took lessons and learned how to play an instrument. I started with cello so like an upright base, four strings, different music, a chorus and all that, but you know a lot of the same things discovered rockabilly and blues and fell in love with the sound of an upright base, a double bass. And yeah, it's a super physical instrument. For me, I really am one with it. It's a physical connection. It's a whole body thing. You're holding it in front of you that vibration goes through your entire body. And it's like an all immersive thing. And it's funny, you know, on the rare occasion that I do pick up an upright base. And then I love an upright base. But it just doesn't do it for me anywhere close. This is almost hard to put into words, but I'm one with it. And I feel like it puts me dead center of the band and the music and the upright base for the stray cats and for rockability. It's really that, it's the engine. It's the motor that runs it. You've got, you know, of course, every element is so important with rockability music. Because in general, there is drums, upright base, and one guitar. So that I occupy a huge spot there in the middle, halfway between the guitar and the drums. Well, that was really where I was heading in terms of this. Deceptively simple sound that is rockability. The frills are not really there, but yet it's fresh after decades. And in fact, I remember when it hit the scene with you guys, what was so cool about it, I was across the water from where you were in the Danbury Connecticut area, at a station called I-95 when the stray cats burst on the scene. And it was so different yet it was so, you know, of a different era, but it was brilliant in terms of the differentiation at the time that it had in the musical landscape. Did you feel that when you were breaking out with the band? Yeah, I mean, it just propels music in a different way. And I don't feel like it's something, although of course it was done earlier than the electric bass, but I think it's just a powerful rhythmic and foundational sound. To me, it's just the coolest thing ever. I mean, I've played bass now every day of my life. I hate to say how long, but definitely, at least 50 years. So let's play something we call the fast five here real quick, five quick questions. First of all, first concert you ever attended. Deep purple at the National Coliseum. I don't remember the years it was in the 70s. I was in junior high school and cold turkey and Savoy Brown with the opening bands. First instrument you ever bought and what did it cost you? In electric bass, I think it may have been a Korean company called Live Wire. And it was a burgundy SG looking electric. First record you wore out as a kid. Oh, it was definitely Beatles. It may have been, you know, my sister's a hard days night or something. First time that you knew the straight cats were really going to make it. In London, after we were there for a month or two, playing a place called the venue in that day. And at that show, everyone converged on it from Dave Edmonds to Keith Richards and Mick Jagger and Ronnie Wood and Charlie Watts of the whole whole Rolling Stones were in the front row. And that kind of felt like, man, we've already made it. First thing you do when you get off stage after a great show. Take a deep breath, really. I'm not one for rituals. And I just kind of pretty quickly return from the, from the, from the journey. So you recently released Stampede and a cover of Eddie Cochrane's a teenage heaven. Yeah, the first new music in six years. What brought you back into the studio and what do those songs mean to you? Well, three of us, you know, you know, despite what a lot of people think. I never think of the straight cats as having broken up. We started it in 1979 and my dad's garage. And now it's 2026. And we've taken breaks, you know, there's been stuff in the press. Oh, they broke up this reason that reason, whatever. But we were playing these last few years, a lot more frequency with a lot more frequency and loving it. And just felt like it was time. Like, let's, let's cut something again. Let's do this. The band sounding too damn good to not at least cut a couple of songs. And let's do it more. And let's get out there and have a blast really. So after being away from it and then getting the band back together. Does it pretty easily pick back up where you left off? Completely and kind of amazingly, I guess, you know, you just pick right up. I mean, it's, you know, just a cliche to say it's up like riding a bike. We know each other so well musically, you know, for our entire lives. We kind of move as one musically in a lot of ways. It's a, it's a conversation. In some ways, I always think that Brian and I and Jim were almost more like a jazz trio or certainly not playing jazz, but where it's almost freeform where we just listen to each other. And we, and we move with it. And the songs are never the same way twice. And being a trio, you get an incredible amount of freedom to vary and move things around. So yeah, it's just get out there and do it. It's not a band like you're drilling a rehearsal on an arrangement. It just doesn't happen that way. We just get out there and rock. I described the music and the concert experience in one word joyous. What does it make you feel as an artist when you could feel that joy that's radiating from the audience as you're performing? It's the greatest, it's the greatest feeling. I mean, it's, it's what you do it for really. You know, I think that rock and roll and joy and fun and having a good time. You know, it's really important. There is so much that goes on in life for everybody. You know, and I don't, you know, without getting into whatever in the world is happening. I love great rock and roll. As an escape for everybody. And maybe escape, even not even the right word, but so I don't think it's an escape, but it's an experience. And, and happiness and fun and joy and having a good time are maybe more important than anything else. And if the music can do that for people and for us, then it's, it's done a really great thing. Ryan says he's healthy and strong again. Slim Jim has called this the greatest rock ability show on earth. And of course he's not wrong. So what makes a straight cat's live show different from anything else out there? I think what we do is truly unique. I don't see anybody else playing this music in this way. And I think our, the combination of the three of us, it's an indescribable thing. I mean, I, I can't think of any, any band that's training the same ground as us at this point. And we certainly have roots, you know, from Johnny Burnett trio and Perkins and early Presley. But I think we've brought our own stamp, our own sound in our way of doing it together. And you know, when it comes to the straight cats, the three of us, Brian Jim and myself, I really think that the three of us add one plus one plus one adds up to more than three. Tell me your view when you see an artist such as Bob Dylan, who has amazing respect for music on so many different levels and so many different dynamics as an artist, his respect for it, including rock ability. How do you take that when you see somebody like Dylan, you know, adding of, if you will, to the overall, category today? I'm personally, I'm a huge, huge Dylan fan. And I'm not sure if I, if I caught the specific question, but just in talking about Dylan, just what an incredible talent. And a person who has obviously gone his own way from from going electric and and and the pushback that he got over that. And I do know if you say a rock ability fan, I remember meeting him backstage, a number of years ago. And one of the things he said was, you know, whatever they say, don't give a fuck about it. Just do what you want. That's amazing. I love it. The tour kicks off July 24th in Las Vegas. It winds through California, Midwest Ohio. It wraps up in the New York area. You're covering a lot of ground. What are you most looking forward to about spanning the country? I'm looking forward to getting out and and rocking with with the boys and getting back to what what we do best. And I do believe that we've been having such a good time doing it. And everyone's happy and healthy that I'm hoping that there's going to be more to follow this as well. And then when you come to the New York area, Westbury, Atlantic City, Morris town, do those particular areas carry a different weight given that everything started there in Long Island or on Long Island. Sorry. Yeah, right. You can't really get in it. going along Island is always, you know, special for me growing up there. I do live in New York City some of the time. I slip my time between New York and California. I'm a New Yorker, so that heart. So when I get back there and back the East Coast, I just feel like I'm kind of in my natural habitat. And I was a thing that just a vibe that I take so over. - Any particular venues over the years that have been really the type of venues or specific places that you just love? - Well, just thinking back to the early ones, Maxis Kansas City and CBGBs and those crappy rock joints that kind of, you know, with the center of the bullseye for so many years, thinking back where those, I haven't done the Long Island show, which is at Westbury, or the New Jersey show on in Morristown, that I remember, there is a venue that we've played that just really moves me, which is Pier 17 in New York City. And standing on that walking out and standing on that stage and the Brooklyn Bridge is there behind you. You see Brooklyn on the other side, you're looking up the river at Manhattan. That kind of just sends the shiver down my spine. - A striking view. It's unbelievable. - Yeah. - Well, in closing, Lee, I ask every guest this question. It's the dream walk question. Who would you take a walk with anybody living or dead? Who would it be and why and where, maybe? - That's a great question. And as far as someone who was a friend who's gone and musician would be Carl Perkins, I miss Carl. I spent a lot of time with them. We recorded together, toured together, had a lot of laughs. We even all did the soundtrack to Porky's Revenge. That's a bum. I would love to spend a little more time with Carl, just sort of being his presence. He was, my mind knew, is the King of Rockabilly. He really crystallized a lot of things on a lot of levels for me. And we had a beautiful friendship that I cherish. - Lee Rocker, new music out from the Strait Cats, a tour, my God, thank you for sharing all this on "Take in a Walk" and giving us the joy of Rockabilly and the Strait Cats. - Thank you, Buzz. - Appreciate it, Lee. - All righty. - Thank you, man. Good luck on everything and thank you. - Sure, take care. - Okay, bye. - That was fun. - Thank you. (soft music) - Hey guys, it's us, the Jonas Brothers, I'm Joe. - I'm Kevin. - And I'm Nick and guess what? - We created our own podcast called, "Hey Jonas, we invented a podcast." - Well, we didn't invent it. - For the first people to do podcasts. - We get to ask other people questions 'cause we're sick and tired of being asked questions. - Well, sick and tired is a strong way to put it, but tired and sick. - Tired and sick. - Listen to, "Hey Jonas, on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever, you get your podcast." Just listen, we don't care where you hear it. - Another podcast from some SNL late night comedy guy, not quite on humor me with Robert Smigel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Bob Odin Kirk to David Letterman helped make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer, Streeter Side L, helped an acapella band with their "Between Songs" banter. - Where does your group perform? - We do some retirement homes. - Those people are starving for banter. - Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and friends on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. - Why are we also obsessed with romance? On the Radio 831 Podcasts, join us, - Sanjana Basker and Tyler McCall, as we unpack all the trending tropes, fuzzy adaptations, book talk drama, and celebrity love stories with hot takes and sharp guests. Each episode digs into what these stories reveal about desire, fantasy, identity, and how we love now. - Listen to the Radio 831 Podcasts on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. - The story I told myself can then shape my behavior and that can lead me to sabotage the possibility of connection. - This mental health awareness one, tune into the podcast deeply well with Devy Brown. If you've been searching for a soft place to land while doing the work to become whole, this podcast is for you to hear more. - Listen to Devy Brown from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.