[FrankHudson]

Different ways to do this depending on the song and the players skills.

I sure admire great "chord melody" players and I have some understanding compositionally how it works, I can't execute it all that well myself. Similarly, independent fingerpicking motion, which I fake with a single flatpick has limits in what I can do.

If you're doing songs with lyrics, use the fact that the vocal part is what really connects most listeners most of the time. Instrumental players who can compel actually have a difficult task!

Someone's already mentioned "leave it out" for the instrumental bits. Sometimes this works in concert with that old magician's standby: misdirection. Is the solo or instrumental part "the hook" or one of them in the song? Make a new hook in your arrangement, perhaps a vocal one taken from the lyrics. Repeat something there that isn't refrained in the original version for example. Yes, there's part of every audience that (alas! I usually think) want to hear it "just like the record" but you can bring them over to your side with something else compelling. Or change the whole song so much that you're inviting the audience to consider something else about it rather than how well you can copy the "hit version." Example? Something that's been done effectively more than once: take a brisk paced, loud, party anthem and pare and slow it down and all of sudden it takes on a new air. Aztec Camera's cover of Van Halen's "Jump" or M. Ward's version of David Bowie's "Let's Dance."

Or make the vocal even more the focus. If you can do it well go Louis Armstrong or Ella Fitzgerald on it and sing the or an instrumental hook. Or gather the gravitas of a Johnny Cash doing "Hurt" and other instrumental colors or vocal gymnastics will seem beside the point.