The Fabulous Thunderbirds Have Been “Struck Down by the Blues”

Any musician who has labored in the trenches for 50 plus years could be excused for being burned out, jaded or just plain tired. Kim Wilson is none of these.

On the contrary, Wilson is completely psyched about the release of the album Struck Down, which celebrates the 50th anniversary of his band, the Fabulous Thunderbirds. The record captures the classic T-Birds sound, but in no way does it sound dated. Houston audiences will have a chance to hear the new material live when the band plays for two nights at Main Street Crossing on Wednesday and Thursday, August 7 and 8.

Vocalist / harmonicist Wilson founded the T-Birds – along with guitarist Jimmie Vaughan – in Austin in 1974. At the time, Vaughan described the band thusly: “We’re an encyclopedia of music from the Gulf Coast, you know, Lightnin’ Slim, Lazy Lester, Texas shuffles, rockin’ Cajun. We are all 27, handsome motherfuckers that dress cool, and our music drives girls wild.”

Flash forward a few decades, and Wilson is the last T-Bird standing, having led the band through numerous personnel changes since Vaughan’s departure from the group in 1990. There have been many hills and valleys, but Wilson is bullish on the new album and the band’s future.

Contemporary blues acts often strike a precarious balance between “authenticity” and “relevance,” and Wilson seems comfortable with maintaining this equilibrium. “This is not a museum piece,” Wilson says via Zoom from his home in California. “This is a modern recording, but the sound of it is incredible. Shelly Yakus (John Lennon, Tom Petty, U2 and dozens of other heavy hitters) did the mixing.

“I haven’t recorded digitally in about eight years, and I found out what they’ve done with digital recording, and it’s kind of blown my mind, how good they can make it sound. They’re about ready to make me a believer. I had a couple of Grammy-nominated CD’s, and they were recorded straight to analog mono. So this is a departure from that. But, that being said, it’s an incredible sounding CD.  Since the Tuff Enuff days [ca. 1986], it’s really the best thing we’ve done, by far,” Wilson says. “Between the material, the sonics, the performance, it’s the best record we’ve done. Including Tuff Enuff.  It’s a true T-Birds record.”

Wilson and Yakus had never worked together prior to Struck Down, but they quickly discovered a simpatico approach to making records. “The first thing Shelly said is that you have to mix with emotion. And I said, ‘Oh. This is my guy.’ I’ve never had anyone tell me that. You have to have someone who’s a little bit old school for a band like this.”

So, the album’s title song, “Struck Down by the Blues.”  What exactly does that mean? “It means you just get hit by it. It’s like a truck. And you don’t care what happens after that, you’re gonna do it,” Wilson enthuses. “You’re gonna do it no matter what. I used to say that I was either going to be a musician or a wino. But I had no choice. I was gonna do it no matter what. And it worked out great.”
From there, the conversation takes a philosophical turn, with Wilson (who would know better?) reflecting on the notion of what it takes to be a real bluesman, as opposed to a poser or a pale imitation. “You have to be you and do it to death. That’s what I learned from all those old guys that I played with. I was friends with everybody. Muddy Waters, Jimmy Rogers, Buddy Guy. And when I was I kid, I was playing with some Texas guys – Albert Collins, Pee Wee Crayton and Lowell Fulson. I was 18, 19, 20 years old when I was playing with these guys.

“And I learned from them immediately, you’re gonna do it to death, and that’s it. You’ve got to have a monstrously high standard. You’ve got to believe in yourself, because if you don’t believe in yourself, ain’t nobody gonna believe in you.

“Here’s the thing about blues,” Wilson says, as the master class continues. “All these guys who originated it – and the women – they’ve all got their take on things, they’ve all got their own personality, they’ve all got their own style, they’ve all got their own quirks. It’s an amazing thing to gather all that stuff in. Now it’s more like everybody’s singing church music and calling it blues. It’s very generic. When they mixed rock with blues – not rock and roll, rock – that’s when things got really muddled.”
Happily, old-school T-Birds fans don’t need to worry about those sorts of things. Wilson makes it clear that he and the collection of musicians that he has assembled are staying true to the spirit and the essence of the blues. “What I love about these guys is that they have their own take on things,” Wilson says. “No matter what I tell them, it’s going to translate and come out of their soul in a whole different way, their own way. That’s very important.

“In this homogenized, generic world that we live in, it’s really good to have your own identity. And this band is expounding on the past of this band [the T-Birds], which was expounding on the past of music. If you expound on the past, you can hear the past, you can hear the present, you can hear the future. I think there’s a true future with this band. And people are going to realize that when they hear this record.”

The Fabulous Thunderbirds will play at 8 p.m. on Wednesday and Thursday, August 7 and 8, at Main Street Crossing, 111 W. Main in Tomball. For more information, call 281-290-0431 or visit MainStreetCrossing.com.

For more information on the Fabulous Thunderbirds, visit FabulousThunderbirds.com