Stray Cats Put Zest Back Into Setzer’s Career - Music: Re-formed rockabilly group will open a four-night stand at the Coach House tonight.

His new album with the re-formed Stray Cats bombed; he’s fed up with his record label, rock critics, contemporary radio and varied other constants of life; he’s tired of being underrated as a guitarist while new metal bands (“that can’t even play!”) fill arenas; he got held up for hours in border traffic the previous night returning from a club gig in Tijuana; and he’s running out of room for new tattoos.

So why does Brian Setzer sound so darned happy?

“It’s the Cats,” the 30-year-old guitarist enthused over the phone Monday from San Diego, in the midst of a tour that stops for four nights at the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano beginning tonight.

“I think I was put here to play rockabilly music, and I don’t think there’s anybody now who does it as well as we do. There’s an undeniable magic when I hit the stage with Jim and Lee. I missed that. It’s the same as having a special thing with a woman. It’s just that certain chemistry.”

Introduced to rockabilly through the Beatles’ covers of Carl Perkins songs, Setzer had become entranced while growing up on Long Island with the guitar styles of rock pioneers Scotty Moore, James Burton and Gene Vincent guitarist Cliff Gallup. He and two friends--bassist Lee Rocker and drummer Slim Jim Phantom--formed the Stray Cats 12 years ago to celebrate the ‘50s Southern rockabilly sound and look.

They didn’t find an audience for that music until they moved to England in 1980. A year later they returned home as the champions of a brief rockabilly rage, selling hundreds of thousands of import albums before a domestic label caught up with their momentum and released “Built for Speed” in 1982. Before the members went their separate ways in 1985, they charted hits with “Rock This Town,” “Stray Cat Strut,” “Runaway Boys” and “Sexy and 17,” and were one of the best-received acts of the 1983 US Festival.

Following the breakup, Setzer played Eddie Cochran in the film “La Bamba,” backed Robert Plant and Bob Dylan on recordings and released to solo albums that failed to find much of an audience. Rocker and Phantom’s collaborations with guitarist Earl Slick were equally ill-fated.

Setzer said their youth was a major factor in the split-up.

“We pretty much took it all for granted. We thought we could be that good by ourselves. All that success happened when we were very young, and whether you face it or not--saying, ‘this won’t affect me’--it does . It makes you feel kind of invincible, that you’ll always have that hit record, will always be able to write No. 1 songs, and the tide of popular opinion will always be for you. “And at the same time, we didn’t feel worthy of it. There was so much pressure, and so much criticism, and we listened to every little thing, instead of following our hearts. We actually would believe the snide things a critic would write about us. We laugh about it now, but then it would really hurt us.

“Plus, I was living in Manhattan and Jim and Lee had already moved out to the West Coast, so we were 3,000 miles apart. We all found women, got married, and drifted apart.”

Drift may not be the most accurate term to describe the breakup.

“We didn’t speak for two years. The split happened in a bad way. It had been coming up for some time, but it happened in one angry phone call. After I had made the call, I realized what I did, and I called Jim back to say, ‘Wait a minute, maybe I’m being rash here,’ and he just kept hanging the phone up on me. And that just compounded, where I was going. . . . It was a bad scene, not the way it should have gone down.”

Despite the long rift, Setzer said there was little apprehension when they got back together to play. “There wasn’t because it just felt right. When we got together and played, it was ‘Wow, I really missed you guys!’ I could get the highest-paid L.A. session guys, and it just didn’t even compare because that’s not what it’s about.

“We just really missed each other. We’d grown up together as friends. You don’t make friends that fast now, like you did when you were a teen-ager, and you realize a good friendship is hard to find,” Setzer said.

Released earlier this year, the reunion album “Blast Off” essentially didn’t. Although helmed by the group’s original producer, Dave Edmunds, and topped with songs that are easily the match of their earlier hits, the album sank virtually unnoticed in the states.

“And I really thought there was some pretty great songs on it,” Setzer said. “You kick yourself . . . and go, ‘Oh, maybe it was me’ and all that. But I’ll tell you, the only reason I can see--and I hate it when artists knock their record company--is I just think we’re signed to the worst record company in the world. I think they let it go down the tubes so bad, they barely even put it out. It sold a lot of records in Europe.”

Where the Stray Cats had initially become a sensation here without a label, Setzer thinks the current state of radio would prevent that happening again.

“I can’t really conceive of it, the way radio seems to me now. It’s really narrow-minded. It’s just disco. I don’t care what they call it, it’s the same thing. It’s either all that, or Bon Jovi and Poison.”

One element of the “Blast Off” album that Setzer isn’t critical of is producer Edmunds, though he doesn’t anticipate using him for their next album.

“Working with him again was great because it was very easy. He’s one of us, and he understands our language. But I think for our next record we’ll get a black producer, like a Nile Rodgers, just to bring a different outlook into it. Working with Dave is so easy that I don’t think it challenges us enough.”

After nearly a solid year on the road, and with the next album not scheduled until next year, Setzer said the band is planning to stay at home (Setzer makes his in L.A.) for a while when the current tour ends.

“What I really want to do next is give guitar lessons. I enjoy that. I’ll just have kids come to my house. It sounds corny, but I really want to keep rockabilly music alive. There are so many kids that are really into it, and I want to show them what I know, how to fuse their playing into that style. Nobody knows how to finger-pick or use their fingers anymore. I used to teach a long time ago, and I want to do it again.”

While Setzer’s idea of a good time still includes hitting the stage with Phantom and Rocker, cruising on his ’48 Indian cycle, and hitting the tattoo parlors now and then--”As many as I’ve got now, I have to be kind of choosy”--he imagines he’ll have opted for a quieter life by the time he’s 50.

“I’d like to open up a little store in a little California town, sell a few guitars and teach, and play the occasional gig in a little bar. I might slow down for that by the time I’m 50. Or I might turn into a Jerry Lee Lewis and just fly out the window. A man can feel he’s made his mark and be content by the time he’s 50. But, I’m only 30 now. I’ve got some life in me still.”

The Stray Cats play today, Saturday and Monday and Tuesday at 8 p.m. at the Coach House, 33157 Camino Capistrano, San Juan Capistrano. Tickets: $26.50. Information: (714) 496-8930.