[Bob Womack]

A little over ten years ago I was called to engineer, co-produce, and play guitar for an album. As their first-call guitarist I was turned loose on several songs and fell in love with one in particular. I decided it needed lap steel leads played in the style of David Gilmour. I brought out my rig and spent a day composing and playing leads for three places in the song, including the intro. The next day I spent a while doing a little mixing magic on the leads and then called in a guitar friend for an opinion. He wasn't quite impressed: "I think maybe you've over-playing here." I thought about it and decided that the figure I played was important to the development of the song and besides, it contained a tough-to-play little chordal bar slant that I liked. I left it in.

The next day the executive producer and label owner flew in to hear progress on the album. He asked to hear the songs in the order of his interest, which made the song I had concentrated on come last. When he finished with the playback of this song he broke into a huge grin and said, "You played all that stuff? I love it. This song just got promoted to the first song on the album and we are going to release it as the first single as well."

That has stayed with me to this day, both as a great compliment and as an encouragement to trust my instincts.

Bob