Music Preview: The Fabulous Thunderbirds are ready to storm Pasadena with their storied brand of blues

By Jonny Whiteside

July 5, 2016 1:14 PM PT

Musician Kim Wilson has kept his blues-rocking powerhouse the Fabulous Thunderbirds going strong for more than four decades, and when the band fires up for a set at Pasadena’s Rose on Friday night, it’s certain to be a musical conflagration of delightfully cataclysmic proportions.

The veteran harmonica player-vocalist’s insatiable drive to be a bluesman took a soul-deep hold early in life. “I liked it because it was artistic and mean at the same time,” Wilson said. “I was an athlete in high school. I liked to smack people around and with blues. I thought I could not only do both — I thought I could also really be artistic. And it takes a lot of skill, it has to be loose with a lot of improvisation, which I like.”

Wilson followed a circuitous route through the blues jungle, going from playing clubs in his hometown of Goleta, Calif., to a stint in Minneapolis and then, critically, south to Texas. Along the way he immersed himself in the idiom’s almost mystical power and learned from its historic masters as often as he could.

“There were a lot of old blues guys that came through Goleta and I got to play with a lot of them — Eddie Taylor, Albert Collins, Lowell Fulson, Pee Wee Crayton,” Wilson said. “People like Furry Lewis came through. It was an incredible experience for a young kid. And later, in Minneapolis there were a lot of the Detroit guys: I played with Albert Collins, same thing, tremendous experience, very, very cool.”

From the Fabulous Thunderbirds’ mid-1970s start in Austin, Texas, where Wilson co-founded the group with storied blues head Jimmie Vaughn, the band steadily ascended. It was a propitious context; the Austin scene had long welcomed and nurtured influential extremists (13th Floor Elevators, ZZ Top, Kinky Friedman, Waylon & Willie), a fact that Vaughn and Wilson capitalized on and they began to generate serious musical heat in short order.

“I have a very high level of standards that are almost impossible to meet, and keeping that up is what really inspires me,” Wilson said. “My standards are the same as all those old blues guys — to do that same thing — that is very important. My teachers, my mentors were very influential on what I do and to be able to do that, well, it takes a long time to reach that kind of a goal.”

Their first album came in ‘79, and before long the blues-busting T-Birds graduated from status as popular Kings of the Texas blues circuit to opening shows for the Rolling Stones and Eric Clapton. When they released “Tuff Enuff” in 1986, it promptly and surprisingly became a certified platinum crossover smash, with the title track single crashing the Top-10 and its popular accompanying music video enjoying heavy rotation on MTV.

Vaughn left the band to join his spectacularly successful sibling Stevie Ray circa 1989 and while the T-Birds never repeated that searing hot flash of commercial and artistic accomplishment, the group, albeit in various permutations but always with Wilson up front, has steadfastly rolled on. The T-Birds have hosted some notable players over the years (pianist Gene Taylor, guitar wizards Kid Ramos, Kirk Eli Fletcher, the late cult hero Nick Curran, drummers Mike Buck and Stephen Hodges) and the current lineup, with guitarist Johnny Moeller, bassist Steve Gomes, Kevin Anker on keys and drummer Rob Stupka, kicks as hard as ever.

“We are a blues band that plays R&B and rock ‘n’ roll,” Wilson said. “It’s a very unique thing, it’s not done by anyone anywhere else — no one does what we do.”

“It’s not rigid, not at all. It’s loose, and you do it your own way. But you also have to do it as well as they did, that’s a huge philosophical point to me. It’s very important. I want to do that same thing, to be able to say something in a way that’s right up there with what all the old blues guys did.”

Who: The Fabulous Thunderbirds

Where: The Rose, 245 E. Green St., Pasadena

When: Friday, July 8, 7 p.m.

Cost: $20 to $48

More info: (888) 645-5006

JONNY WHITESIDE is a veteran music journalist based in Burbank and author of “Ramblin’ Rose: the Life & Career of Rose Maddox” and “Cry: the Johnnie Ray Story.”