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

VIII. Six Strings, No Kick

34 VIII SixStrings,NoKick I’d been playing that acoustic guitar long enough for it to look like a Brazilian-rosewood-and-spruce extension of my rib cage. It was where all the songs I wrote came from. Nevertheless , I wanted to add new tunes to my repertoire. I wanted to play with other like-minded musicians. I wanted to interpret the music I had loved since I was a kid, as well as write music I hoped was just as good. Musicians made far more money in Texas playing the hits in pickup bands out in the interstate motel lounges. That wasn’t quite what I had in mind. Instead, I wanted to be more like the glamorous rock ’n’ rollers in the British Invasion that had shrewdly marketed Houston kids like me since I was old enough to tune an AM radio. Ihappeneduponarough-looking,blondeRickenbacherguitarhanging on a pawnshop wall in Houston. It was similar to the one Lennon played in the early Beatles. It was puppy love, alright. It had some important pieces missing but still had the original pickups. A few trips to the guitar fixer later and it was reconditioned plenty good enough for four-by-four rock ’n’ roll, even without the whammy bar. For the first time in my young performing career, I played both the familiar, woody 28 and the new, loud, and raucous member of the orchestra. Six Strings, No Kick � 35 In 1976, after moving back to Houston from Tahoe, I scoured the Montrose neighborhoods for eligible types with my own developing tastes to form a band. The result was my first group, a five-piece called The Level Flight Band. We had a drummer, Jim Alderman, a bassist, Peter Gorisch, a lead guitarist, Steve Beasley, and Dan Earhart a.k.a. “Captain Macho” on keys and a Celeste which we called the “portable door bell.” It was like a glockenspiel with a keyboard. I probably destroyed at least a couple of other groups in putting this wild bunch together. In short and rather breathless order we learned a repertoire of Vince Bell fingerpicking and flat-pick strummers. I added a smattering of Warren Zevon, Nick Lowe and Dave Edmonds, Little Feat, Bob Dylan , the Rolling Stones, and the ever-so Beatles. I played the heavier sounding numbers like Zevon’s “Lawyers, Guns, and Money” through a Twin Reverb amp look-alike with that pawn shop wall-hanging. After a while, the dreadnaught sat in its stand most of the night. My band members and I were ambitious to the point of bodily harm. When you’re that young, you may well fail miserably but you ain’t gonna die. We threw ourselves at showbiz like stage divers. We began to be the recognizable carnival characters in the dilapidated localities off the beaten paths of Houston and I was as clown-faced as any of them. But it was my name on the marquee, so it was up to me to find the watering holes that would book us sight unseen, using a phone Southwestern Bell disconnected with almost clockwork regularity. We unstoppable boys were long on want to but short on just how to go about it. And whatever we did while inventing our take on show business, we did with nothing at all. That was good art. Something from nothing. After scheduling a few openers with Mike Condray at his 500-seat Liberty Hall in Houston, which netted the band some fair reviews 36 � One Man’s Music: The Life and Times of Texas Songwriter Vince Bell from the local papers, we were on our way to that collegiate capital town in the Hill Country. I took my game but inexperienced bunch to play in Austin, scoring a gig at Castle Creek in Armadillo World Headquarters town. We were going to open for singer Doug Sahm and his equally well-known piano player, Augie Meyers. Now that was moving on down the highway. I was going to play with a charting rocker, one of Texas’ favorites. Pretty exotic fare. My first half-dozen years playing had mostly been as a solo. Now I was fronting a band. When the day of the gig arrived, we stuffed the old camper with as much equipment and warm bodies as we could. The rest of us piled into my Rambler. About four in the afternoon, we pulled up to the...