Guitar Tricks Insider February/March Digital Edition | Page 33

LISTEN HEAR

The idea of a blues resurgence seems to come
and go with some degree of regularity. Bonnie
Raitt wins a Grammy and blues is back. Gary Clark
Jr. makes a splash at the White House and blues
is back. Buddy Guy wins an award and blues is
back. Robert Cray swings, Eric Clapton releases an
album, and blues is back. But no band brings the
cookin’ boogie blues to the masses like that little
ol’ band from Texas. ZZ Top hit the radio waves and
concert stage with twisted blue notes big enough
and loud enough, and somehow, just right enough
for everybody. A modern historian of blues guitar
playing, Billy Gibbons has one ear on the Victrola
and the other right on the groove. In this short
chat, Gibbons offered his thoughts on how to make
a trio more than the sum of its parts.
What are the advantages and disadvantages
of a trio? You have the whole harmonic
spectrum to fill, but as Santana says about
his large band, he has a large couch to jump
on.
Fortunately, being able to work with both Frank
and Dusty, they know each other like a book.
They can provide such a working bed that I, too,
can jump around with a similar kind of comfort
that Santana may be referring to. On the other
hand, everybody is pumping 100% 100% of the
time. The immediate goal of a trio is, “how are
you going to make it sound not spare?” lt just
requires a tremendous amount of motion and a
tremendous amount of playing to fill up the hole.
FEB/MAR

Yet nobody overplays. You may fill up
the holes but you don’t do it by talking
constantly.
True. There is again that sensibility towards
simplistic approaches to composition and delivery.
In a sense, turn around that dilemma of how do
you not sound spare and how do you sound full?
A lot of times it’s the simpler things that provide a
steadier or heavier bed to work on top of.
There’s also this magical groove thing that
happens with this band. It’s an atmosphere
that is not automatic. You work in a midtempo feel, which is hard to find.
lt is.
How do you make it work so consistently?
It ties in directly with the pros and cons or
working a trio. Well, there’s only three of us so
we’ve got to play 100%. But on a good night, or
during that special moment, a trio becomes a four
piece band with the arrival of Mr. Time. We refer
to that edge when everybody is on the money. On
the beat. And Mr. Time shows up to be the fourth
member. And that itself pushes the feeling into a
bigger space. If it’s not on time, you feel it, and it
shows up in the form of a kind of thinness.

DIGITAL EDITION

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