Well, being mostly tone-deaf, I watch the rhythm guitarist's hands if I can. Now that a lot of old stuff has been youtubed, that's easier than it used to be. Sometimes I can follow it if the song is really simple (country music, preferably, because of the only-three-chords rule) and has a strong bass line; if I turn the volume loud enough, I can *feel* the bass instead of hear it, and then the guitar just has to follow what the bass is doing.

It's not like I have to do it very often. Because I also have a really narrow voice range, there's not a lot of stuff by other people I can sing anyway. As far as the lyrics go, I will get them in print one way or another. Either they're online in some database somewhere, or I'll get the author to send them to me. Occasionally I'll just have to listen to a song a lot and try to memorize the lyrics as I go along, but that doesn't happen very often.

I did some of this when I played with the Dodson Drifters, 30 years or so ago. We did a lot of old bluegrass classics, and I worked out the tablature to some of them, listening to the old recordings over and over again. Years later, when I actually saw somebody performing them, I realized I'd been dead wrong about the tablature (never entrust this job to the tone-deaf guy)--but I liked (and I think audiences liked) the way the Dodson Drifters did it better than the original.

Joe

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