The Perfect Bluegrass Guitar Solo?-Learn Kenny Smith's Lonesome River Band Classic

Aaron Jaxon coming to you, and today I want to show you one of my very favorite bluegrass lead guitar solos. So this solo comes from the great Kenny Smith, and this is from the Lonesome River Band. The tune is called When You Go Out Walking, and it's from the One Step Forward album, back when it was Don Rigsby and Ronnie Bowman and Sammy Sheeler and Kenny Smith. And I think Ricky Simpkins is playing fiddle on it. Just great, um, just kind of hard-driving traditional bluegrass. I love this music. We're going to be in the key of B, have the capo up here on the 4th fret, you know. And, um, so this is just a really, really cool solo. And so the title to this video is maybe a little bit clickbait, but it really is to me one of my favorite solos. And it's like he does the perfect combination of playing melody and throwing a little bit of flash in there, and I just love the combination of that. And to me, it just kind of all comes together for like a perfect bluegrass solo here. So, um, if you haven't ever heard the original recording of this tune, please check it out. I've got it linked down in the video description. But real quick, before I jump in and do the solo here, let me play just the rhythm of this tune here for you. There is that. And then the, the, the melody on the verse and the chorus to this tune is— it's the same melody. Obviously it's different lyrics, but, um, it goes like this. I've been congested for a couple of weeks here, so please excuse my singing, but I wanted to give you the melody. So it's like a 1, 2, 3.

When you go walking after midnight over on the wrong side of town Walk down any street, many lost souls you'll meet whose lives are broken like mine.

So that's the melody that he's playing over here. So I wanted to throw that in there. I know my singing is not in great shape right now, but I wanted to throw that in there to give a little bit of context here. Okay, so this is a, it's a pretty short solo. It's like 8 bars here. Um, but real quick, let me just go through and play the whole thing nice and slow. You heard me play it at the beginning of the video, but I'll play it nice and slow here for you. 1 and 2 and 3. Okay, so for me I think of this solo in like 4 small chunks, okay?

So the first part being—

okay, that being the first chunk. The second chunk being The third chunk being—

and then the last one being—

okay, at the very beginning here, this first little chunk here, remember he's playing around the melody and he's doing it with a flat pick almost the way a banjo player wood. So remember the melody, when you go walking after midnight, and he's doing— okay, so that part was actually really challenging for me to get because you just— he's— there's only like a handful of notes in that little part there, but he's doing these like specific rhythmic things, um, that, that are really effective but were a little hard to decipher by ear. So, uh, again here, okay, and, and that will come in, it's, it's the and of beat 3, 1 and 2 and 3 and 4.

Okay, so remember where that comes from right there.

So again, this first little passage here, okay, which leads us into the second little part of this solo here. And this is— I love this little lick, and it's a— and that takes us from G to C right there.

And so we'll do—

so we'll slide right here. And then, so we're doing— so right here I'm playing the 3rd fret of the 2nd string, 1st string open, 3rd fret of the 2nd string, 5th fret of the 3rd, and then that open 2nd string. And you actually, when you're playing those little almost those little kind of floating licks, you actually want to minimize the movement in your left hand because it gives the melodic passages that you're playing just a little bit more sustain. And that's not going to have the same effect if I go, uh, it just doesn't.

Okay.

And then we're ready to go into C. So he goes, then we hit that dominant 7, and then we go into C right there. So that's just a great little, great little passage to have. You can use that just as like a regular G lick. Or you could do it like he was doing and use that, um, you know, when you're going from G to C. You know, there's just a bunch of cool things you could do with it. I mean, you could even— there's a bunch of applications, you know. I'm, I'm thinking of a tune like Little Cabin Home on the Hill, you know.

You know, you could—

there's just a whole bunch of little applications that you can use from that. And that's, you know, one of the big parts of learning a lot of these note-for-note solos is not to just be clones, but is to just take these licks and phrases and passages from the great players, put them into your own playing, and kind of use them in different places. But anyway, I'm getting off track here. So that's kind of like the second part of the solo.

And then, okay, so then, so he does that little floating lick, and then now we're in C, okay?

And we're going to stay on C, and he's going to do All right, I love that. Um, and that's just open second fret, hammer on to that third string open.

And then we'll come up here, which is just a classic little Kenny Smith thing you can do over C.

Uses that all the time. That's a great little flashy run that you can use over any kind of C shape here. All right, so again, back into context here, and then he'll come over here. So then we kind of go back into like our kind of minor pentatonic, and then we end it with real bluesy sounding. Okay, so let me go all the way through this solo nice and slow again here for you.

1, and 2, and And 3.

Okay, so one more time, let's hear that, um, up to tempo with the backing track. Okay, so just a really, really cool solo from Kenny Smith here. But again, I think it just demonstrates beautifully how to combine the melody, um, with some flashy hot licks there and come up with a really cool bluegrass solo. So again, remember, you can get the tabs for this lesson down in the video description and in the top pinned comment. As always, thank you for hanging out, and I will see you next time.