Nick Lowe, one of the most ingenious songwriters and genial performers of the 20th and 21st centuries, has an uncanny sense of what makes pop and rock ’n' roll work — a sensibility that is a perfect complement to those of Nashville's own surf-centric, mostly instrumental band of aces Los Straitjackets. When Lowe and the ’Jackets got together to tour Lowe's 2013 Christmas album Quality Street, the chemistry they developed in their working relationship sparked a variety of further projects.

This spring, Los Straitjackets released a Lowe tribute record titled What's So Funny About Peace, Love and Los Straitjackets, on which they render selections from across a broad swath of Lowe's catalog in their own special way. This fall, they've reunited with Lowe for a run of concerts, beginning with a set at the Yep Roc 20 festival in North Carolina (a 20th anniversary party for Yep Roc Records that runs this Thursday through Saturday), and including a stop at City Winery on Sunday.

Today, we're very pleased to premiere a music video for the What's So Funny track "Rollers Show," Los Straitjackets' reinterpretation of a cut from Lowe's debut solo album The Jesus of Cool (which, as you probably know, was released here in the States as Pure Pop for Now People). Give that a spin above, and find tickets to the show here. 

Lowe (one of the most gracious interviewees ever) was also kind enough to speak to us by phone for a few minutes about working with the ’Jackets, the story behind "Rollers Show," and even about the suit he had modeled after Frank Gorshin's portrayal of The Riddler on the original Batman television series from the ’60s (to which Los Straitjackets make an homage in the video). Read our conversation below.

As I understand it, your relationship with Los Straitjackets goes back a little ways. How long have you been working with them?

I've been working with them for about the last three, or it's getting onto four years now. We did some shows, some Christmas shows. I put a Christmas record out about three or four years ago, and we decided to do a little run of Christmas shows with them backing me up, and I'd do a selection of tunes from my Christmas record. But it was really kind of an excuse to have a Christmas rock and roll party. It was very successful. People liked it so much, so we'd try to do an out-of-season show, where we'd replace the Christmas music with a few other things from my back catalog. We've done one show like that at the Lincoln Center in New York City last summer, and it was a great success. So we're hoping that that's going to be replicated in other cities in the United States.

What can you tell me about how you work together with the band?

Well, I've actually known them for a quite a long time. I mean more than 20 years probably, because they are managed by Jake Guralnick, who manages me, and so it's quite natural. ... I've always dug them. They're really great musicians, and I love the way they play my stuff, because they don't stick rigidly to the record. They really — as I always tell them, just take the song and play it your way, and if there's a bit of a lick or something from the original record that you like, stick it in, but don't copy the record. And that instruction, that single instruction, they've taken it to heart, and I think some of the tunes we play are actually rather better than the original record.

What do you like about the way they look differently at your material?

Well, first of all, they haven't got a keyboard. A lot of my stuff has got keyboards in, so at some point — albeit only fairly old-fashioned, piano and some sort of organ action, but I genuinely have got a keyboard on most of my records. Straitjackets, of course, are just a three-guitar-and-drums band, and also they're mainly an instrumental, kind of surf rock ’n' roll band. But most of my stuff — if a song's good, then most of my stuff can be played very simply on the guitar, and you can put it across and not have to worry about it too much. The song should do the work.

But they're really good musicians. I know they wear these masks and things, and people think that they don't take their job seriously. Well they don't take themselves very seriously, but they certainly take the job seriously and I get the benefit of that I think.

A lot of people tend to think of surf rock as kind of this kitschy, niche thing, but that's not necessarily true. There are some very characteristic sounds, but it's kind of taken on its own special role in American culture, and culture elsewhere. It is a serious thing.

Yeah. And they can adapt it to anything. They can really take any tune, once you are into that sort of stuff, you can take any tune, it could be a Coldplay or, I don't know, Beyoncé tune, anything. Nothing is sacred. They can take any of those tunes and turn it into something pure gold. No wonder there's people queuing up to play with them — I mean to sing with them, because they don't do vocals themselves. Well funnily enough, they've got rather good voices, but I think when they do their own shows, they just do oohs and ahhs, maybe a bit of background vocal I think. The drummer, I think, he does a little bit of background vocal, and that's about it. But in actual fact, they can actually sing really pretty well.

So what do you like particularly about singing with them versus other groups that you've worked with? Are there some differences that you can point to in the way that you all interact?

First and foremost, they are very agreeable traveling companions. They're extremely good fun to be with, and I feel very at ease when I'm with them. The other thing is that they know about rock ’n' roll music, and I know that sounds very trite and corny, but it's amazing how many people think they know how to play rock ’n' roll, but actually it's quite rare to find people that can do it. You don't really have to be that great, an accomplished musician, to play the stuff, even though they are. That's a plus if you find very accomplished musicians who know about it. But I would always rather play with someone who was less accomplished, but who understood — well, I'm not the first person to say this, but it's the roll part in rock ’n' roll.

That is the hard thing or the unusual to find people that understand that. Most people can play rock. That's easy. It's the roll part, which sorts the men from the boys. And the Straitjackets know and understand and can bring forth the roll part in the music, and that's the fun bit. It's the kind of feminine bit in a way, to rock ’n' roll. The two halves, and they bring that forth and that's what makes the music saucy. And that's why I like them.

So we're premiering a video for Los Straitjackets' take on "Rollers Show." What caught your attention about the Bay City Rollers?

I used to be in a band called Brinsley Schwarz and we were a pretty good band — not fantastic, but we did pretty well. This is back in the early 1970s, and we did OK in the U.K. and other concerts in Europe. We never made it to the States. Well, we did, but that's another story.

But anyway, when we broke up, the record company that we were with, which was United Artists at the time — shows you how long ago that was — they wouldn't let me out of my contract with them, because I was the main songwriter in the band. So they kept me, and I really needed to try something else. I didn't know what it was, but I could feel punk rock coming up. I didn't know it was going to be called punk rock, and I didn't know what it was going to look like, but I knew something was going to change, and I was going to be somehow part of it.

So I couldn't be with this old monolithic record label. I had to do something else, but they weren't going to let me go. So I thought, well I know what I'll do. My manager at the time [Jake Riviera] was a partner [in this]. The two of us were plotting and planning, and we decided that the best thing to do was to get fired, to get them to sack me. So I came up with this song about the Bay City Rollers, who were really, really big at that time. I don't know if you even remember them. If anyone remembers them now, but they were really huge. This teeny-bopper band from Scotland in the 1970s.

I had what I thought was a fantastic idea to write this sort of fan record about the Bay City Rollers, and take it into United Artists and say this is the sort of thing that I want to do. "I've got a feeling that they're going to be great, and I'm going to hang my" — I can't remember what I told them. Anyway, they were expecting something from me, some James Taylor kind of thing from me, I think they were probably expecting. Some angsty singer-songwriter stuff. Instead I turned up and presented them with this record, this "Bay City Rollers, We Love You," or "Rollers Show," whatever it was called.

I did a couple of them. I told them I was going to do an album of Bay City Rollers fan music, and I thought, "Well, they're going to sack me when they hear this." Anyway, to my astonishment, they thought it was great and a really fantastic idea, which wasn't what I had in mind at all. Not only that, they put it out in Japan, where the Rollers were really big. They put it out in time for [the Rollers'] big tour in Japan, and it was a huge hit. That was the first Bay City Rollers song, which I think was called "Bay City Rollers, We Love You," or something, a really, simple, dumb title like that.

Anyway, they say, "Well this is great. Get on with the album." So I started doing an album and I didn't get far with it, I must say. But I gave United Artists another song called "Let's Go to the Disco," by The Disco Brothers, and that actually did the trick. They sacked me when I brought that one in. Anyway, people liked the Bay City Rollers song, and I put it on my solo record when it came out, and obviously caught the Straitjackets' ear.

It's a great melody. You could do anything with that that you wanted.

Yeah, it's a sort of old-fashioned pop melody, the sort of thing that the Bay City Rollers themselves were sending out and sending millions of copies of. Unfortunately, that wasn't the same for me. But anyway, the tune lives on.

So in this video, Los Straitjackets are paying homage to a thing you used to do, wearing these Riddler suits, like the ones that Toni Riviera had made for you and Carlene Carter. I understand you were a big fan of the original TV Batman with Adam West.

I loved the original TV series. It came out over here in about, I don't know, ’66 or something like that, when I was in my teens. And I loved it. I thought it was really good fun. But in the very first series, the great Frank Gorshin played The Riddler. He was an impressionist. He did fantastic impressions of film stars. I remember his Kirk Douglas was absolutely uncanny. But anyway, he played The Riddler, and in the first series, he wore this brilliant suit. It was an actual suit, green two-piece suit, and it had question marks on it. And I thought, when I first saw it, when I was about 16 or 17, something like that, I just thought it looked really, really cool.

Sometimes he'd wear a green derby hat with it, what we call a bowler hat, and I thought he looked absolutely brilliant. Years later, when my, what was it called in the states, Pure Pop for Now People came out, I suddenly remembered Frank Gorshin as The Riddler. Because in later series, of course, he went on to have the leotard one-piece, like all superheroes or super villains wear, which I didn't think looked nearly as hip as his suit, his actual two-piece suit. Thin lapels, slim trousers, all that stuff, just like the mods were wearing in London at the time, in fact.

So I didn't much care for his leotard look, but when my Pure Pop record came out, I suddenly remembered this, and thought, "I know. I'm going to get myself a Riddler suit made, and this is going to be my image." ... Jake Riveria was my manager, and Toni Riviera was his wife. She was a really good seamstress, and I asked her if she could knock me up a Riddler suit, which she did, using very, very — well it was very cheap fabric, like curtain material or something. Anyway she knocked up this suit and it was a big hit. People loved it. I was very, very skinny in those days, of course, which helped the look, no end. I'm not exactly overweight now, but I think I barely get my arm into one of the trouser legs now.

Was it a comfortable thing to wear? Once you committed to it, did you enjoy it?

Yeah. It was great, walking around in a Riddler suit. I loved it. Are you kidding? But it wasn't exactly Savile Row. After I sweated in it a couple of times to a show, it did start to come apart. Toni had to do a few running repairs on it, I seem to remember, after a while. ... She made a miniskirt version for Carlene, who I was married to at the time. Carlene Carter, and when we got divorced, and I can talk about this quite cheerfully, because we're still very fond of each other now. The marriage didn't work out, but we're great friends now. But when we got divorced, Carlene took the male and the female Riddler suits, and put them in her suitcase and took them back to America with her. Whether she still has them, I know not, but they were last seen heading West, over the Atlantic, back where they came.

Is there anything you're particularly looking forward to when you come to town?

My little boy, who is definitely musical and he's a country music nut. He loves new country, and he's a great fan, and he came to Nashville last year when I was in town doing a writing session. He and his mother and his grandmother came to town and stayed, and they had a ball while they were there, and they absolutely love Nashville. They're very cross — well he's certainly very cross that I'm going back there soon and he's not going to be there to see it. … I'm not going to encourage him, but he's bound and determined that he's going to go back next year. He's a pretty useful musician. He's got a long way to go before he's as good as the people that we all know, the musicians that we all know are in Nashville, but he's absolutely determined that he's going to go there at some point and try his luck.

Oh wow! How old is he now?

Well he's only 12, but he's definitely on his way. He's really pretty good. It sounds to me like I'm a proud dad boasting about it, but it's really when I hear him play, I feel like I'm watching a lab experiment, more than anything that I've had to do with him. He's picked it all up from somewhere, which I don't know where he's got it from, but it is sort of astonishing to see.

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