One Man's Music: The Life and Times of Texas Songwriter Vince Bell

XXXIII. Play Like You Practice

222 XXXIII PlayLikeYouPractice Itook three trips to Europe during that Texas stay. The first was in 1995 to Holland and Belgium as the supporting act for the Jayhawks. March 22 Tivoli, Utrecht (w/The Jayhawks) 23 Paradiso, Amsterdam (w/The Jayhawks) 24 Luna, Brussels, Belgium 25 Noorderlicht, Tilburg (w/The Jayhawks) 26 Leidsekade Live (National Radio Show) (afternoon) Nighttown, Rotterdam (w/The Jayhawks) (evening) 27 Oosterpoort, Gronlingen (w/The Jayhawks) 28 Zalen Schaaf, Leeuwarden (w/The Jayhawks) 30 Tom Tom Club, Heythuizen 31 Cactus Club, Brugge, Belgium When I did my own solo dates as well, Sarah, our driver Bert, and I saw the kilometers in between. In Den Bosch, it was at a joint down from a twelfth-century cathedral and a Mexican restaurant. Utrecht was a busy, paved-over university town, and a whistle-stop on the rail line between Amsterdam and Rotterdam. On the border with Belgium , I played the hippest spot in a little hamlet. There weren’t as many people walking the one street in the day as there were for my Play Like You Practice � 223 show that night. In Brussels, the guitar and I did a TV show in the morning and a horse-barn-turned-bar that evening. From a letter to my father: Wow! What a trip. We stayed mostly in Amsterdam down the street from the Van Gogh and the Rijksmuseum. We’d travel each day to another part of the country, or to Belgium to do interviews, or to perform on TV shows, radio shows, and in concert halls. Our drivers were tops, and everyone spoke English. Other than us packing a little too much, I’m not sure anything went wrong on this trip, thanks to them. BertVandeKamp,themostinfluentialandgraciousreviewer in Holland, said, “His guitar is so big, and his voice is so big. Theselargestagesswallowsolosongwriters, butnotVince.” I looked out to a standing-room-only crowd at the Paradiso off the Leidseplein in Amsterdam. This joint may well be the top place for a musician to play on this planet. Pink Floyd has played here, Prince has played here. It was filled to overflowing by the Jayhawks and me. There were no chairs. My tuner was on the stool next to me, geigering in red and green LED spikes to the notes I quietly played. I had been practicing or performing for decades. I knew the chords, and I knew the melodies by heart. I’d forgotten more jokes than you’d ever heard, and I was ready for another. I was pumped. The promoter introduced me as I banged out some opening chords on the “cannon.” Everything seemed to be working just as I’d planned as I rifled into the first number. Except one thing. I couldn’t hear a nickel of the vocal I had rehearsed for weeks. All the speakers, amps and cords, mics, risers, and lights, and I couldn’t hear a word of what I’m saying to 1,500 Dutch people and the fellow who books the Rolling Stones. The monitor mix was a mystery. The sound of my guitar was disappointingly unfamiliar. The old dreadnought’s EQ was brittle, over- 224 � One Man’s Music: The Life and Times of Texas Songwriter Vince Bell bearing,andunforgiving.Therewasnobottomendtotheinstrument. It made the passing chords to my songs sound ignorant. It made the way I play sound ignorant. It was way too loud. By comparison, my vocal was dull and puny despite stage monitors up to my knees. As I wrote in the Black Book, if you can’t be cool, you can’t stand . . . on one leg. You’d have thought that doing lyric passages would be difficult. But, guess what? I’d memorized the words. In that situation, I don’t know how anyone else does it, but I play the way I practiced. Even when I can’t hear a note of what I’m doing live and in person. Nothing like a show by rote with no ears. It’s almost as if I can judge an unheard note from the vibrations in my head. The booking agent for the Stones left for the party tray backstage in the middle of the first song. Trying to keep it together, I caught someone’s eye in the front row at the start of the second tune and smiled at them like I’d been reading their mail. I took a...