Fabulous Harpist

Thunderbirds' frontman still cranks out powerful stuff

by Don Fluckinger

Listen to "Money, Marble, and Chalk" by Kim Wilson

Yes, Kim Wilson was hit by a car in early 2000. No, he didn't miss a step in his grueling performance schedule.

Amid the young guns of the blues--the Kenny Wayne Shepherds and the Jonny Langs--grizzled veteran Kim Wilson is passionate about what he's doing in the blues, and he epitomizes the working-class tough guy who gets the job done, whether on stage, in the studio, or while being interviewed for blues web sites.

The 49-year-old harmonica player brings a retro feel that dates back 20 years before he came on the scene fronting the Fabulous Thunderbirds, and it is his passion for doing things his way that has put his self-launched Blue Collar Music in limbo after releasing his solo CD My Blues.

While on stage doing solo gigs he plays it loose and free, letting his band take him where they may on a given night, Wilson carefully controls everything, including the sound of his music, in the studio. His album My Blues isn't retro, although it's recorded live-to-mono. To Wilson, his blues is thoroughly modern. Recording in mono isn't primitive, but rather "the way the music sounds best." It's all about preserving musical integrity.

"I'm known for that," Wilson says. "I don't care what everyone else is doing out there, I don't care if I'm the only one that's doing it the way I'm doing it, that's the way it's gonna be or it's not gonna happen at all."

This is coming from a guy who was an MTV star in the 1980s for the T-Birds, who along with Stevie Ray Vaughan's brother Jimmie propelled Texas blues to Top Ten pop-chart glory. Flung through the major-label sausage grinder, Wilson lived to tell about it and still takes the T-Birds on the road 200 gigs a year sans Vaughan, who left the band in 1990 to pursue a solo career.

The past several months haven't been easy for Wilson; he almost didn't live to tell about a car accident he was in several months ago. He actually wasn't in his car when another vehicle hit it, but was close enough to be thrown 20 feet and suffered a concussion. But it wasn't enough to slow down the man who brought us the anthem "Tuff Enuff":

"I took the shot well," Wilson says with a laugh. "I went right back to work. I was pretty racked up for about a week and had some soft tissue damage. I'm still a little bit tweaked there, but I can do what do."

When Wilson isn't on the road with the T-Birds, he plays solo gigs. Away from his hard-rocking band, Wilson plays straight blues of many styles, showcasing his harmonica chops, which Muddy Waters himself tagged the best to come along since Little Walter. That back in the late '70s when the Fabulous Thunderbirds were the house backup band at Antone's nightclub in Austin, Texas, a stop for all the major artists then and now.

In the recording studio on his solo projects, Wilson is a taskmaster, having a very clear idea of what standards and obscure tunes he wants to interpret, and how to do it. The sound is classic blues, as it was recorded in the 1950s, as it was meant to be. Yet there's some R&B, Chicago, Texas vibes interspersed throughout the record, a little uptown stuff . . . all stitched together by that live-to-mono sound. Knowing how Wilson likes to direct things, some pundits wonder why he chooses to cover mostly other bluesmen's songs instead of dipping into his own original repertoire of several hundred compositions.

"It's kind of shocking to people that I've really been dwelling on other stuff [than my own]," Wilson says. "But a good's song a good song, and it's stuff I've never had an opportunity to play. . . .As long as I stay in my own world and don't subject myself to the torture of the flavor of the second, I'm fine. I just listen to Muddy Waters and B.B. King and I have a ball. That's the standard I'm trying to reach."

After recording three solo albums for other label in the '90s, Wilson launched his own label, Blue Collar Music. After My Blues came out, monitoring the business affairs and squabbles over advertising co-op dollars got to be more than Wilson wanted to deal with. Wanting to focus on touring and recording, he put Blue Collar "in limbo," for the moment, he says, shopping for another more established label to partner with.

On the road as a solo artist, Wilson takes some players along with him, including guitarist Kirk Fletcher, a young guy about whom Wilson raves endlessly. Fletcher's tone and style is smooth, along the B.B. King/Robert Cray axis, exuding class and something a lot of young players don't have--patience.

Wilson's overall objective, though, is to assemble several "local" bands across the country who can get together when he's in town to play a gig. For instance, at a recent gig in Worcester, Mass. at the local blues joint Gilrein's, local guitar hero Troy Gonyea was in the band--and Wilson is happy to do it not just to give a youthful player some exposure and bring in some locals who might not have otherwise come, but also because he respects Troy's ability.

"He's not some kid picking up a guitar, playing it for three months like a cabbage shredder on some major label . . . [making] $25,000 a show for about a year then he's gone," Wilson says. "This kid is really learning how to play, he's doing his homework. He's a journeyman musician just like we all learned. He's going to establish himself and be around a long time because of that."