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

XXXII. The Poetry in the Prose

218 XXXII ThePoetryintheProse T. Bone Burnett wrote the liner notes to Phoenix: Vince Bell, is, as far as I know, the only writer who has ever read his own obituary. In between Indio and Joshua Tree his tape turns around for about the fifth time. It is other worldly music. Heart breaking music. In a world of entertainment and musick—a world that celebrates the sameness of all things— this is music that celebrates the differences. Magical unrealism . Poetry from the solitary world of rank strangers—savaged into a state of grace. . . Just past Joshua Tree there’s a bumper sticker on a bent up ’74 Dodge pickup that claims Jesus will be back soon. I hope that’s true. But in the meantime, happily, Vince Bell is back now. I had begun preparing for the aftermath of this album a long time ago, and from the bottom of the barrel, in the deafening quiet of Music School. Today, I was exactly where I had craved to be during that dark, trackless time. Now I had the same problems everyone else had. Be careful what you wish for. The Poetry in the Prose � 219 Bob Neuwirth may have said it best: “So you wanted to be an artist . Now you are. Live with it.” And if the living wasn’t as easy as I had imagined, at least I was pushing the envelope again, and on my own. Before I left that bucolic little tourist town of Fredericksburg three years later, I bought a used computer, divorced my independent record label, got turned down for jury duty, played at The Bottom Line in New York, couldn’t book enough gigs, got world-class reviews, and penciled another album or two’s worth of tunes. I was relentlessly at it every day. But earning the title “Legendary” doesn’t necessarily pay all the bills. I also wrote a book about my decade of recovery; that book would eventually become part of this one. For the first time, I relied on the spirit of the prose alone to express my thoughts. I had never intended to write prose. Because of the powerful impressions made on me by people like Lennon, I had regarded prose as an arcane art form. I had started writing about the aftermath of my accident in Berkeley but had exhausted myself writing 30 pages, saying, “That’s it. That’s the story.” Right. So I got back up on that carousel pony in the quiet little Central Texas town and wrote the other couple of hundred pages: Two hundred and four pages in 184 days. My favorite room of the big, turn-of-the century house we lived in was the limestone front porch shaded by a huge hackberry tree. It was framed by white wooden gingerbread against a yellow background with a heavy, dark-green swing to one side where one could escape for unrehearsed moments. From that swing, I could look out across the widest streets in Texas. The block was made up of rough-hewn, 150-year-old mortared stone-and-timber houses beneath stands of pecan, the ubiquitous hackberry, and live oak trees. The roads in my little town 220 � One Man’s Music: The Life and Times of Texas Songwriter Vince Bell were originally constructed broadly so that wagon teams could turn around in them. The town was so small that everyone knew everyone. Down at the grocery, I offered to let the kindly German local and her bag of ham hocks go ahead of me and my bottle of wine. When my turn came, I instinctively produced a driver’s license with my check as if I was ordering a beer on Venice Beach. The nice young lady at the register said, rather dismissively for an otherwise polite Hill Country native, “We know where to find you,” as she handed my license back. Now, that’s a small town in Texas. As our typical day at home went along, I ducked back out the front door to worry the latest tune or just get away from the computer for a blessed moment. I swung gently back and forth with the ever-present cup of coffee in my hand. From there, I did some of my hardest thinking . In my head, I went over signature licks and chord passages to music I hadn’t even played yet. I appreciated anything that...