Fabulous Thunderbirds: A good solo

Cris Cohen: What makes for a good solo?

Kim Wilson of the Fabulous Thunderbirds: You have just got to phrase it and draw people in. You don't do that by playing a zillion miles an hour for a whole solo, for five verses. If you can't get it done in one verse, you can't get it done. It's that simple. You don't ever take more than two verses, ever. Unless you're playing an instrumental. Don't ever take more than two verses on a solo. You're telling a story, you're phrasing it. And you're getting the sound. In order to get the sound, you have to really back off of the instrument. That's where you're going to get your optimum sound. And then when you do, you're accomplishing a couple different things. You're getting the optimum sound, and you still have headroom to get a different sound if you hit it harder. And when you back off of it, you're able to execute things that you're not able to execute if you're blowing your face off all the time.