Rockabilly legend Slim Jim Phantom is at the Moonshine Club in Southsea on August 18

Jim is bringing his trio to the Moonshine Club in Southsea on August 18, but last time here, he was playing nearby at The Wedgewood Rooms.

Speaking with The Guide via Zoom from his home in LA, Jim recalls: ‘Right across the street there's an old tailors,’ he’s talking about Bentleys, ‘I was just mooching around, checking out some shops on the high street. I went in there to check it out and he brought out his scrap book and showed me pictures of teds from the ’70s with purple coats down past their knees – full-on, and he was one of them! I'm going to see if he's still there,’ and indeed he is. ‘He was a nice guy.’

Jim came to prominence when Stray Cats, his band with Brian Setzer and Lee Rocker, helped lead an early-’80s rockabilly revival. Since then he has worked with a veritable who’s who of musicians – from Lemmy to David Bowie guitarist Earl Slick, and various Sex Pistols and Guns n’Roses members, plus he’s the drummer in super-group Dead Men Walking with The Alarm’s Mike Peters, Captain Sensible of The Damned and a revolving cast of guests.

But for the trio, he’s with long-term foil, guitarist Darrel Higham – who he also records with as Kat Men – and bassist Adam Miles.

Jim also hosts Rockabilly Rave Up on Stevie Van Zandt's Underground Garage channel on digital radio giants SiriusXM. Later this month, his trio are releasing an album through Stevie's Wicked Cool label.

So why does Jim think rockabilly endures?

‘It's the original cool. I think you can go to any pop music that's happened since the original rock'n'rollers here in the United States - Gene VIncent, Elvis Presley of course, Eddie Cochrane, Jerry Lee Lewis, Buddy Holly, Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Fats Domino – all the great ones. Then in England, I'm a big fan of Billy Fury, Tommy Steele, Marty Wilde, Joe Browne – since that generation I think everything has been affected by it, it's just how much you let it!

‘The Fabs, the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, The Kinks, I know for a fact my rockabilly buddy Jeff Beck is – they're completely influenced by it, it's just a matter of how much you're influenced by it, and what your interpretation of it is.

‘It's all based on a certain musical pattern, and then it's the feel of it and a lifestyle choice. I know Jeff Beck, for instance, he rides around in a Hot Rod 32 Ford, rockabilly music blasting, and then he goes and plays music people associated with Jeff Beck, but his love of rockabilly and all things rocking is well known. The same can be said of all those guys.’

Jim is also known for his trademark stand-up drumming style with his kit at the front of the stage. Influenced by the original rock’n’rollers, like Gene Vincent and The Blue Caps, it soon became his style.

Jim recalls: ‘There were a few photographs we saw on the back of albums, and really through some hard research in the ’70s, we saw that [stand-up drummer] and thought: “wow that's different, no one else is doing that now”.

‘At the beginning of The Stray Cats we were playing a lot of gigs at the start, two, three sometimes four sets a night, so we thought lets try pushing the drums over here, let's try them at the front. We had the room to experiment and so very early on we were all across the front. We thought let's try to make this work – it looks cool.

‘It was a little bit of an influence from the originals, then you put your own slant on it and make it your own, and that can be said about all of it – the music, the look – one foot in the past and one foot running forward.’

And as he says: ‘Once you sign up for that, that's what the kids want!’

But he admits with a chuckle: ‘I'll tell you a secret – when I practise drums at home, I sit down.’

Aside from the trio’s tour, he’s also put together an album with Australian rockers Jimmy Barnes and Chris Cheney, plus British ivory-tinkler Jools Holland.

‘The four of us have known each other some 40 years – it’s something we’d been talking about doing for a long time

‘I was going to be going to Australia while my beautiful wife [bassist Jennie Vee] was on tour with Eagles of Death Metal, stay at Barnsey's house and make this record.

‘Then the world got different, touring was cancelled, but the four of us – and a very important person in the story is Kevin Shirley the producer – we kept doing it. We did it through file sharing - I'd do the drums, send them to Shirley, he'd send them to Cheney to do the guitars… and so on. It was Shirley who kept it going.

‘It's got a release pretty soon, and when it comes out we're going to go for it. At this point it's a little mythological, but it is coming!’

The Slim Jim Phantom Trio is at The Moonshine Club in Southsea on Thursday, August 18. Tickets £20. Go to theclubshine.com/event/slim-jim-phantom-trio.