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XXXIV. Texas Plates
- University of North Texas Press
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230 XXXIV TexasPlates Two months after moving to Nashville, we packed up the Jeep with the guitar, the border collie, and boxes of CDs and made a swing through the northwestern U.S., playing not only in Washington and Oregon but also Montana, Colorado, New Mexico, and Texas. In Portland, it was NXNW, the Pacific Northwest’s version of Austin’s SXSW. In Denver, it was a show with Bill Morrissey, during the worst snowstorm they’d seen that early in the year in decades. Finally settled in the hollow in the Nashville woods, I began to record my second CD, Texas Plates, with producer Robin Eaton. Just as with Phoenix, the basics were recorded live: me and my guitar, Mickey Grimm on drums, percussion, and cajon. Over the next year outstanding players were added: Pat Bergeson, Lewis Brown, Pat Buchanon , Chris Carmichael, Dave Jacques, Brad Jones, Al Perkins, Ross Rice, Aly Sujo. Kami Lyle, and Maura O’Connell sang harmonies. I thought it ironic that Maura, a woman from Ireland, sang some of the more ringing notes on “Second Street,” to help me typify what, a half a world away, is in the hearts of a truckload of Tejanos as we were all looking for work. Texas Plates � 231 The new album got its name when I turned around a year or so after I’d moved to Nashville and realized I still had Texas license plates on the Jeep. An old drummer of mine, Jim Alderman, had moved to Nashvillefrom Texasfouryears earlier.His wife hadn’t lethimchange their license plates. I took a tip from a publisher friend and found a place for my CD on an affiliate of a major record label. When I asked an L.A. companion with vast experience in the record industry if I should chance it with oneofthedastardlymajors,hereplied,“EveryoneexceptMichaelJackson and Madonna has been fired from a major label, so go get fired.” While I was waiting for the release of the new CD, I began the mother of all podcasts, six years before there was such a word. I started recording and broadcasting my music on a $135 computer that my sister Shary had given me. The 1.01 program I used, and the files it created, were readable by the computer programs that were available in all the major studios. Whatever I did could be edited, added to, or altered as if I had recorded it in one of the high-dollar labs. Withsuchcheaptechnology,Iembarkedona28-weekseriesbroadcast from my new website, vincebell.com, and called it “Live Music’s Cool at Live Music School.” No cover charge, no drink minimum. I ran upwards of a hundred tunes from all eras of my authorship, with accompaniment on percussion and accordion by Jim Alderman. Renditions of songs from Texas Plates, Phoenix, and the Complete Works of Vince Bell were featured. I even ran the “Riverside recording,” the three songs I had been doing in the studio on December 21, 1982. Thanks to yet another used computer hooked up to the Internet in the other room and garrisoned by Sarah, I appeared on radio programs across the globe without leaving my back room. Early on, Internet radio interviews from Florida, England, and the Netherlands highlighted the effort. I always thought it odd that I came to Nashville [3.146.34.191] Project MUSE (2024-04-17 22:45 GMT) 232 � One Man’s Music: The Life and Times of Texas Songwriter Vince Bell to shuck and jive the intransigent music business, only to discover a wellspring of artistic freedom from the computer on my desk. From a letter to Jim Musser: Yo. This is Vince. I’m going to start putting live recordings on my website. They have come from a microphone I set up at my desk. My voice and guitar, but nothing less than CD quality. I bet it will be better than the sound at 99% of the grab ’em, stab ’em bars I’ve outlived over many a year now. Like the basics to Texas Plates, which were recorded in 30 hours on the 28 and Mickey Grimm’s wooden box (called the cajon), an old drummer of mine from Tejas came in and bashed and slashed on a collection of widgets he found in his garage. This idea reminds me of the kid who craned to listen to the AM radio in his mother’s fire-engine-red Mercury Monterey convertibleinthelate’60sand’70s.Backthen,youdidn’tgive a rat’s...