After 43 Years, The Stray Cats Return To Tulsa!

There are moments in life that don’t feel like they happened years ago. They feel like they happened in another lifetime. On March 8, 1983, I stood in the crowd at The Old Lady On Brady in Tulsa, Oklahoma watching the Stray Cats tear through a set that permanently rewired my musical DNA. It was the Spring Leg of their Built For Speed tour.

Rockabilly wasn’t nostalgia that night—it was alive, loud, dangerous, and impossibly cool. Brian Setzer, Lee Rocker, and Slim Jim Phantom walked onto that stage looking like they had stepped out of the 1950s and somehow landed in the middle of the 1980s without missing a beat. The house was sold out and a lucky 2,799 people saw this Rockabilly trio tear it up and tear it up big.

43 Years, 4 months and 30 days ago.

What I remember most wasn’t just the music. It was that guitar. Brian Setzer was playing a Gretsch White Falcon. Under the stage lights it didn’t look like an instrument. It looked like automotive chrome, fine jewelry, and Art Deco architecture had somehow become a guitar. White, gold, oversized, elegant, and rebellious all at once. It was the most beautiful guitar I had ever seen. Standing there in the audience, I made myself a promise. Someday, somehow, I would own one. Life has a funny way of stretching those promises across decades. Careers happen. Families happen. Responsibilities happen. Dreams quietly wait their turn.

The White Falcon

Later that same year, in November 1983, my future wife saw the Stray Cats on the very same tour when they came through Phoenix. We had no idea our lives would eventually intersect. We were simply two young people in different cities, listening to the same songs, watching the same three musicians, unknowingly collecting pieces of a story that wouldn’t come together until much later.

Today that story comes full circle after 43 years. Exactly 15,858 days after I first saw the Stray Cats, we’ll be standing together to see them again—this time at The Cove at River Spirit Casino in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

The same three band members. The same unmistakable sound. The same swagger. Only the audience has changed. This time, I won’t be staring at Brian Setzer’s White Falcon wishing I could own one like his someday. Because someday finally arrived and I’m very grateful to be able to see one of my favorite bands with my favorite person.

Ready For A Rockin’ Show!

Today, hanging in my music room, is a 1959 Gretsch White Falcon—the very model that captured my imagination all those years ago. Every time I open the case, I’m reminded that some dreams aren’t meant to happen quickly. They’re meant to age, gathering meaning with every passing year until they become something far richer than the object itself.

It’s funny how memories work. I can barely remember what I had for lunch a week ago, yet I can still picture the lights reflecting off that White Falcon in 1983. I can still hear the slap bass, the twang of the Gretsch, the snare cracking behind Slim Jim, and Brian Setzer making it all look impossibly effortless.

Music has a unique ability to become a time machine.

Jeneric With Their Own Band Of Stray Cats

Tonight, when the band launches into “Rock This Town,” “Stray Cat Strut,” or “Runaway Boys,” I’ll undoubtedly be hearing more than the songs. I’ll be hearing forty-three years of memories layered together—the excitement of being twenty-three years old, the unexpected journey that followed, meeting the woman who unknowingly shared that same tour, and the satisfaction of eventually fulfilling a promise I made to myself in the middle of a crowded concert hall.

Not many bands survive four decades with their original lineup. Not many dreams survive that long either. The Stray Cats did. And so did one young man’s promise to someday own a Gretsch White Falcon. Some stories don’t end. They just wait 15,858 days for the next chapter.