HBO

Underground Garage Radio’s Little Steven Van Zandt, above right, is a member of Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band. Below, James Gandolfini, left, plays Tony Soprano on The Sopranos while Van Zandt is his second-in- command, Silvio Dante.

AP / BILL KOSTROUN

Like the Sopranos scene where he and Adriana went for a ride, Little Steven Van Zandt got behind the wheel of his own FM radio show three years ago with vengeance in mind.

“I don’t know how we got there, but there was a radio format for every kind of music except new, straight-ahead rock ’n’ roll,” the guitarist for Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band said by phone from New York last week.

Satellite and nonprofit radio outlets have broadened formats since then, but you still won’t find a cooler two hours of straight-ahead rock ’n’ roll on the radio than Little Steven’s Underground Garage.

Van Zandt’s syndicated show ties together rockabilly from the ’50s, doo-wop and garage-rock from the ’60s, punk from the ’70s and bands from today that echo those sounds. Between songs, Van Zandt offers wisecracks, monologues and heartfelt raves that are part Alan Freed, Lester Bangs and Silvio — his character on HBO’s The Sopranos.

With the no-duh mission statement that “this kind of music sounds best live,” Van Zandt and his radio team have put together the Little Steven’s Underground Garage Tour, which comes to Foxwoods Resort Casino, in Mashantucket, Conn., on Tuesday. The show features ’60s hitmakers the Zombies, ’90s retro-fuzz band the Woggles and modern noisemakers the Mooney Suzuki and the Gore Gore Girls.

“Like the radio show, we try to have bands from different decades at our concerts,” Van Zandt said, also referring to his annual Underground Garage festival in New York.

Not just shilling for the tour’s sponsor, Rolling Rock, Van Zandt pointed out, “It’s so hard for these bands to tour and make a living at it these days, with gas prices and just the lack of infrastructure. Usually, the only bands who get sponsorship are the ones who don’t need it. So this is a great way of helping out some bands who deserve it.”