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

XXXVII. Live in Texas

246 XXXVII LiveinTexas The success of a good piece was its importance to those who cared to listen in the first place. Nonetheless, writing was pushing the envelope for the adventuresome of us. It was as much unanticipated discovery as it was knowing calculation. Thus the attraction for someone with a leaky ballpoint pen in a shirt pocket and nothingbutatablenapkin,oramatchbookcover,onwhichtoillustrate before the ink runs out. I counted on discerning others to find their owntruthsinthescenariosIcreated.Myworkwasdesignedtoprovoke your thinking, not tell you what to think. But I confess, when a listener followed the truth that I told, my feet never touched the ground. Songs were yet a chatty flock in the air above my desk. Sometimes they’d end up in someone else’s hair. At that point they weren’t my problem. If I’d written them well, they’d fly under all sorts of conditions and would return to any handler, experience notwithstanding. But the writer in me had to push away from the rolltop desk and turn back into a guitar player again. I could feel the ends of my fingers. I was out of shape. Back to those awful atonals that put dark green ruts in the fingers of my left hand. Live in Texas � 247 From a letter to Tom Pacheco: My stay at your kitchen table at Woodstock a while back has emboldened me. I will record a new album with no help from any label. Just me and the 28. Victoria Williams, the Louisiana woman who sang up Phoenix with me, e-mailed, “Welcome to the unhooked generation.” From a letter to Bert Van De Kamp: I’m putting together an experimental recording this goround . So there will be a lot more “me” in the final mix, guitar , and vocal. One of the goals of this effort is to produce a credible sound with a minimum of other players so I can tour the end result as it appears on the CD. Now, with further refinements to my fingerpicking, altering the low tuning of the guitar yet again, and the use of the largest gauge of string I could find, I could play lightly, which is the only way I’ve ever sounded good anyway. An accented backbeat, inventive new chord forms, and superior sound response that was full and in the front row’s face. A tall Texas friend of mine, Chip Woodburn, deadpanned, “I’ve baled hay with smaller wire than that.” I was on the road when, out of the blue, I received an e-mail from Vince Pawless, a fine instrument-maker from Dallas. Other pals of mine played his instruments and loved them. His note to me concluded by saying that he wanted to build a guitar for me that I could help design. I flipped. I never anticipated I would have the opportunity to have a guitar designed to accommodate me. A guitar that was built with my desires and style in mind. ENDORSEMENT You flatter me somewhat speechless. As you know from the rough out of my experience . . . that doesn’t happen very often. 248 � One Man’s Music: The Life and Times of Texas Songwriter Vince Bell From a letter to Vince Pawless: Vince, Your offer is fantastic. The opportunity to scheme a guitar with you is pretty dreamy. I thought about it all the way down the interstate playing from Tejas to Tennessee. Tell me when I can contact you at your convenience. I can’t wait to see what we might come up with. Looking forward to it. Vince I sent him copies of my CDs to celebrate the effort to build a new kind of guitar from the Southwest, made by Vince, played by Vince. From a letter to Vince Pawless: Vince, Shortly before I recorded my first album, I invented “the claw”inaloftspaceacrosstheBayBridgefromSanFrancisco. It should be pretty obvious to you on these cuts. Maybe this tape will help us design the v2 so that it has that dreadnought characteristic of a great bottom end with the added feature of a strong high-mid like a double-O-series fingerpicking guitar. A brass saddle would help. And the mesquite top might well contribute to these qualities. We’ll talk further. Find me when you will. v2ince From a letter to Vince Pawless: Vince, Went to the Internet today and looked at some inlay compositions . Full color with pieces of shell...