“The crowds hated us! They were only there to see Stevie Ray, and they didn’t give us a chance... One night he called me on stage, and he handed me a Strat”: Brian Setzer on what he learned playing Stevie Ray Vaughan’s Stratocaster

Brian Setzer has looked back on the time he went on tour with Stevie Ray Vaughan – and got the rare opportunity to play the blues legend’s electric guitar.

In one of the more oft-overlooked footnotes in Stray Cats history, Setzer and his rockabilly group hit the road with SRV back in 1989. It was a tricky time, to say the least, blighted with tough crowds.

There was one highlight experience for Setzer, though: on one date, he got the chance to play Vaughan’s Strat.

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“I recall that the crowds hated us. [Laughs] They hated us! They were only there to see Stevie Ray, and they didn’t give us a chance,” Setzer says of the tour. “It wasn’t an easy tour for us, I can tell you that.”

Nonetheless, being on the road with SRV had its perks.

“I loved listening to him,” he says. “I remember thinking, ‘How does he get that sound?’ Only he could get a Strat to sound like that.

“One night he called me on stage, and he handed me a Strat and put it over me. I thought, ‘Oh, great! I’m finally going to see what this is all about.’”

SRV’s Strats are up there as some of blues guitar’s most iconic instruments, famously strung with ultra-heavy 13-58 strings. The thought of playing such a heavy-strung Strat, especially one that belonged to Vaughan, is intimidating.

However, Setzer wasn’t all that surprised. If anything, he notes, it felt rather familiar. And it cemented an important lesson: tone is in the hands.

“There were rumors that he had amps underneath the stage and he had them miked up in the basement – all sorts of stuff,” Setzer adds. “So I played it… and it sounded like me. I didn’t sound like Stevie Ray. I mean, his guitar even felt like mine.

“The action was the same, the volume he played at, the amp he played through. I was like, ‘Well, this is interesting. Stevie sounds like he does because it’s all in his hands.’ He was phenomenal.

“He was so fluid, and he played the blues differently every night. Besides us getting booed off the stage, it was a great show.”

To read the full interview with Brian Setzer, in which he gives an update on his ongoing health issues, pick up the new issue of Guitar World at Magazines Direct.