Album Review: Lee Rocker - Gather Round

 I’m a rockabilly fan and The Stray Cats are the most successful rockabilly artist of my lifetime. I’m a fan, of course, and generally like Brian Setzer’s solo albums (more big band than rockabilly). But if you really want to get me going, talk to me about Lee Rocker’s solo career.

Rocker, of course is best known for playing bass in the Stray Cats. He had a detour with band mate Slim Jim Phantom and Bowie guitarist Earl Slick (the two Phantom Rocker and Slick albums have been re-released. They’re ok. They just couldn’t sound anymore 80s).

Rocker’s career includes a stint on Alligator Records, and like many in the genre, he’s dipped heavy into classic cover songs. That said, I can’t think of many albums better (rockabilly or otherwise) than 2007’s Black Cat Bone.

Gather Round is the first album of Rocker original songs since then. Not that he hasn’t been busy. 2019’s The Low Road was a CD/DVD combo of the Cats greatest hits recorded at Daryl Hall’s famous studio. That same year, the Cats reunited and released ‘40’, their first new album in 26 years. Hardly essential, it was fun, and a reminder that music is better with the Stray Cats around than the alternative.

I should avoid comparisons with the Cats’ recent disc, but Gather Round at least seems like the more interesting album. Lead single “Pickin and Grinnin’” is a dig at a charismatic recent ex-President. Graceland Auction is the Elvis homage. When Nothing Goes Right is off the recent Cats album and Everyone Wants To Be A Cat sounds like it could have been (it’s the Scatman Carothers song from The Aristocats, I believe retrofitted as a cousin to Stray Cat Strut). Ophelia is the Band song with a bit of a 1920s jazz swing vibe. The Last Offline Lovers has novelty lyrics but swaggers like a barroom classic. A Dirty Martini is an instrumental that might be closer to what solo Setzer is doing.

For a genre that is fairly straight and narrow, Rocker has once again put together a record that has a lot of variety and fairly ambitious; if nothing else, truly enjoyable.