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Anyone who has heard rockabilly or surf knows the impact of the guitar.

You'll also know how important your high E string and B strings are in your solos!

Unless you are or plan to be a world class player of rockabilly, you can pretty much get by on a handful of chords and one solo! For most any rockabilly or surf solo, you can pretty much "gimp" around on the E and B strings at the twelfth fret for sixteen bars and sell a pretty convincing solo to the crowd!

Steal as many parts of various players solos that you can copy and mix them into a new solo and you're pretty much set to rock the joint!

A majority of my soloing is ripped off from Tony Andreason of the Trashmen, a Minneapolis, MN based surf group. (More on SURF in TOPIC #3). I blended a touch of Paul Burlison, some Eddie Cochrane, Carl Perkins and a lot of Scotty Moore from Elvis's SUN day recordings.

The best advice is to locate as many of the older recordings that you can and listen and learn. Some great players were around then that nobody recognized until twenty years later!!

James Burton, for example, recorded some killer solos behind Ricky Nelson on Imperial. He also played some awesome rockabilly behind Bob Luman back in the mid to late 50's and he was just a teen kid back then!!

Larry Collins is also a damn good player, and back in his teen days in the fifties, he played some killer riffs with his sister back on Columbia records

EQUIPMENT? Well, I prefer the sound of hollow bodied electrics like Super 400's for the sound, but for budget purposes, my Epiphone Emperor works just fine.

Cooler yet are the old Gretsch 6120's. That's what Brian Setzer of the Stray Cats was playing back in the 80's!

AMPS? Well, I'm into the Fender tube sound for crisp clean highs and reverb tanks that tweet, but that's because I play a lot more surf these days. For rockabilly, the tube amps would be best for recreating the old authentic sound. Especially an amp with a tape delay, but those amps are pretty expensive and tough to locate these days. Your best bet is to buy a reissue tube amp, and spend a little on a good echo/reverb box or processor. Something as economically priced as the Boss DD-2 through DD-5's or whatever they have now will work quite nicely for recreating that old 50's rockabilly sound!!

Everyone has their own preference for the amount of delay, reverb, treble and bass they use with their equipment, so experiment, and you'll find something that's you, yet someone else!

That's it for this month, see y'all later cats!