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One Man's Music: The Life and Times of Texas Songwriter Vince Bell (North Texas Lives of Musicians (Paperback))
Author(s): Vince Bell (Author)
- Publisher: University of North Texas Press
- Publication Date: April 1, 2009
- Edition: Illustrated
- Language: English
- Print length: 261 pages
- ISBN-10: 1574412671
- ISBN-13: 9781574412673
Book Description
Texas singer/songwriter Vince Bell’s story begins in the 1970s. Following the likes of Townes Van Zandt and Guy Clark, Bell and his contemporaries Lyle Lovett, Nanci Griffith, and Lucinda Williams were on the rise. In December of 1982, Bell was on his way home from the studio (where he and hired guns Stevie Ray Vaughan and Eric Johnson had just recorded three of Bell’s songs) when a drunk driver broadsided him at 65 mph. Thrown over 60 feet from his car, Bell suffered multiple lacerations to his liver, embedded glass, broken ribs, a mangled right forearm, and a severe traumatic brain injury. Not only was his debut album waylaid for a dozen years, life as he’d known it would never be the same.
In detailing his recovery from the accident and his roundabout climb back onstage, Bell shines a light in those dark corners of the music business that, for the lone musician whose success is measured not by the Top 40 but by nightly victories, usually fall outside of the spotlight. Bell’s prose is not unlike his lyrics: spare, beautiful, evocative, and often sneak-up-on-you funny. His chronicle of his own life and near death on the road reveals what it means to live for one’s art.
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About the Author
Vince Bell, Texas singer/songwriter has written songs performed and recorded by such diverse talents as Little Feat, Lyle Lovett, and Nanci Griffith. In addition to releasing five critically acclaimed albums of his own, a ballet has been set to his work and his story turned into a musical. He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with his wife Sarah Wrightson.
