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My name is Norie Guthrie from the Woodson Research Center, Fondren Library, Rice University. I am interviewing singer songwriter Vince Bell. Today is November 1st, 2016. This is part of the Houston Folk Music Archive oral history project. To get started, could you tell me a bit about

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your early life? I spent my early life here in Houston, Texas out at Memorial, uh, playing football, doing the newspaper and uh, uh starting bands. Ok. So then, how did you get interested in music? Music was always the thing mom had, uh, played the piano and,

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uh, uh, had, uh, music, uh, folks around most all the time. And, uh, so I became interested, uh, especially after the Beatles happened. Uh I wanted to write songs like, uh Lennon did and, uh, so it became a driving force early. Did you end up attending

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some of like the, the Houston Folklore Society? No, music back then was a renegade kind of thing. It was, you did it because you didn't want to do anything else. I didn't want to play on the football team anymore, so I picked up the guitar and

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started, uh, uh, standing in the corny red light in the corner and uh playing. So, and uh so you learned it yourself. You didn't learn music, uh, like I learned how to play the trumpet in junior high school. You learned music by ear and uh listening

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on to your uh AM radio and uh that was how you picked up stuff as it were. And uh and you started writing your own stuff and uh then it became consuming and you found others that were consumed as well, Townes Van Zandt, uh, at all. And uh

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so uh you became one of the, one of the people, one of the, in, in un-describables, one of the free people. Uh now, I mean, you, you lived in neighborhoods where you couldn't be found if you didn't want to be found. So it was uh it

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was that kind of a thing. It was uh it was uh not regular, not normal, not outside the loop like here in Houston. It's uh everything was inside the loop. You were on a bicycle. Uh Your friends were on bicycles. It was the gas down at the corner

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cost 19.9 a gallon. So it was an interesting part of the world to uh be free to like, say what you wanted to say, playing in the music that you wanted to write and uh no one could tell you better. So, so how you've touched

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on a little bit, so how would you describe Houston's music scene when you started? Catch as catch can. It was, we were all just making the, the rounds, making the disciplines, inventing the theme and uh the music and, you know, brave that way because we were all

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young and penniless and had no influence over anyone else but ourselves. And, but that was enough. And uh we were happy to be uh that way. And every year our works would grow and our, uh we would grow ourselves into music at large in the world.

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After a while, a lot of people admired our Texas way of doing things. People from New York City and from Los Angeles would look at us and go, you guys are out there way, way out there. You're getting away with all of this, you know, and

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it doesn't have anything to do with the, the way we do things, but it was a Texas way. How would you describe that, the Texas way? Um, a blend of musics. Uh The first garage band stuff came from Texas, I believe, where you mix the country

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and western with the rock and roll, with the jazz, with this, with that. And after a while you came out with something that was certainly like you but not like anybody else. So what were some of your favorite places to play in Houston? They were Sand

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Mountain Coffee House, the Old Quarter downtown, um Anderson Fair. Uh A fleet of other places to include Liberty Hall, the Texas Opry House. Uh I think you mentioned one, earlier in our conversation. There were Fitzgerald's. There was, uh, there were more clubs than you could shake

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a stick at and, uh, you just had to, like, qualify and be hirable at them. And, uh, and then you learned everything about the clubs. They were, uh, they were nice places to, uh, to, uh, invent your, your act. Yeah, it seems like there are actually

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a few people that would come through here and this is a place where people would kind of invent who they were going to be. Sure a lot of folks would, uh, would show up in Houston, uh, during that time period. Springsteen at the Hall, um, Little

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Feet at the Hall and, uh, the Hall was a big, big generator of, uh, of Texas music. People admired, uh, what they were doing over there. And, uh, we all wanted to be a part of it here and there. So, could you describe, um, the fans

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or the, the music community that existed? The music community was as important as the musicians. The people that came and watched the show were, uh, uh, drivers of the everything because when they smiled, you went home and wrote another one and, uh, you could, uh, you

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could count on it. They were, they were musically literate and, uh, into it as bad as you were. And, uh, but they were just, they were an audience. They were a first class audience. So, when did you start writing songs, both the music and the lyrics? Right

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from the beginning, when I took my first gig at the Sand Mountain Coffee House, I was already writing the songs and uh trying to build a catalog of uh tunes. It would take years, but it was worth uh every day of it, every night of it

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to uh make uh a repertoire happen. And so how did you go about kind of honing the craft of songwriting? Like, what were the techniques that you used? Yeah, they were like, you know, we influenced a lot of music in the seventies with finger picks with

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uh being able to control the bass and the treb and the passing notes with every chord with a few people, a few fingers here to, to do the job, uh made it uh pretty interesting so that uh we were, we were writing songs with a band

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kind of arrangement with just a six string guitar. Um So toward, so in your book, I was kind of trying to figure out like, you know, you really started playing in 19, around 1970 here in Houston and you play the colleges, you play the clubs and

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um then around 76 was it kind of, you started kind of floating back and forth between Austin and Houston. Certainly, Austin was like, Austin was a draw for people outside of Texas and uh not from Houston or Austin. So Delver McClinton from Fort Worth was there. Uh

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Ray Hubbard from Dallas was there. We were all kind of collecting in Austin because the guys in Dallas didn't like Houston. The guys in Houston didn't like Dallas. It was the, it was the Aggie thing. You know, there were good guys and bad guys and for

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no particular reason except you didn't, you didn't know anything about it. So it was obviously a bad thing. So and so Austin was kind of the collecting place where we all got together that Ray Hubert could get together with me in, in uh in Austin. And

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we had a, a whole new relationship to explore based on living in Austin, Texas, which was very different from Houston and Dallas both. So, Austin was a good and a good collecting place. Uh People would come from all around the world and uh get caught up

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in the Austin, Texas routine. So it was very accommodating that way. And business tried to be there in Austin as much as anywhere in Texas uh at that time as well. Um It's where South by Southwest is now. And so, uh that's an awfully big uh

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you know, musical conflagration. So, uh it's, uh it's, it's held on to, it's uh it's mystique as a uh what do they call it? A Texas live music capital type thing regardless of how much bull that is. That's uh that's what they, that's what they say.

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And that's great. I mean, there were never any more serious players or better players than they get people from Houston. And I'm sure Ray would tell you the same thing about the people from Dallas where Willis was from and others. So that uh Bill Hearn, you

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know, Bill and Bondy back then. So uh there was lots of uh, lots of music from lots of places in Texas, but Austin was the place we all went to sit down together and have Mexican food. So, um, so toward the end of the seventies, you

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worked on the rock ballet, Bermuda Triangle. You, yeah, can you talk a little bit about that? Bermuda Triangle is a song of mine. And uh I took it to Jim Klauser here in uh Houston and uh trying to pitch it for uh a ballet work and

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uh he took the bait and uh um we ran that ballet for four nights in May 1980 for about, well, many thousands of people. Herman, the uh Miller Theater is uh an excellent facility and uh we enjoyed uh doing that there with the group from Austin

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Passenger that uh that we hired to uh uh be the backing band. So I actually stood out in front of the backing band. Did my best to hang in there were those excellent musicians, Austin musicians? OK. Very interesting. Um So over the decade from 1970 to

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1980 how do you think the folk scene changed in Houston? Some of us began to like get national attention, Lyle, Nanci, uh others. And uh so everything started to expand. The bands got bigger, the songs changed. They weren't about fuzzy things so much anymore, or odd

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things so much anymore, but they were about pleasing a target audience and perhaps that act was trying to corner so they could keep doing these concerts for years to come. And uh so you had, you grew out of Texas, you didn't like, grow away from it,

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but you grew out of Texas, out of necessity, you needed to play to a larger group. So you need to accommodate people and you needed to be simpler. You need to be more direct and uh less plus artie, more practical so that, so that you can

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actually, you know, in engage that person from Indianapolis, you know, North Texas. So Northeast Texas. Yeah. So did you, um, did you ever think about moving, you know, in around the, the early seventies, there was a lot of an exodus towards Nashville. Um Did you ever

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consider doing that? Not, not then I moved to Nashville much later in the nineties. Uh where uh there's a Nashville is full of Texans. So it's, uh, you know, you can't get around that. There's, you know, it's like football, you know, it's, it's uh let's go

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watch our Texans play their Texans. That's how it is, that's how it works. And uh uh so Nashville was very accommodating and I could, like, stay there in the nineties for an album and a book and it was, uh, more than worthy and, uh, I was

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more than comfortable at finding myself working with people that weren't from Texas, but they were like, folks from Texas and, uh, I didn't make the move in the seventies, but I was definitely looking and, uh, looking as far away as places like New York and, uh,

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I think in the seventies as well, I, uh, hitched up with the National Coffee House Circuit in New York City and then went and played their gigs around America and, uh, for a while, a year or two and, uh, help me get a good idea of

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just how, you know, how blessed the Texas people were to have such great live music all the time. And, uh, I mean, in the, the club next to the shoe store in the strip center, you could find great music at a club up there by Oklahoma.

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You could find great music and, uh, that was, uh, when I went out on the Coffee House Circuit, sobered me up a couple of years worth of America. It just made me go, I, I can't wait to go back to Texas where there's a better playing field

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for somebody doing what I'm doing and, uh, writing the, the whole thing myself and, uh, and, and presenting it as well. So it was, uh, seventies was a good time for uh Texas folks. And uh if you, uh if you worked, you could uh uh play

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all over the state all the time. We did. We'd be in Wichita Falls and Fort Worth and Dallas and Nacogdoches, and Houston and Austin and San Antonio and Midland. You know, everywhere it was uh you know, uh a great live music scene just uh and we

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all made it ourselves. It was because we were doing, what we were doing and, uh, couldn't be done any better. Can you talk about the accident and how you work toward where you are now? It was, uh Christmas week of 1982 in Austin, Texas. And, uh, somebody

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knocked me into the, the nineties, uh, in an automobile and an auto wreck after a recording session there with people like Stevie Vaughn and, uh, others. So it, uh, made me, made me work for about 10 years to, relearn how to walk, talk and play the guitar

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again. And, uh, then one thing led to another and after a while, what I had regarded to be as such a tragedy in my life to have a wreck like that. I've, I've found everybody has trouble, everybody gets brought knocked around a little bit. So, um,

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it's, uh, it was a great lesson. It was a good, a nice lesson to learn in life that you can be knocked out of the park. And, uh, if you want back in, you can get back in, you know, it might take a prohibitive amount of

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effort. But, you know, if you want it, you can have it. So you do have your guitar here and it might be interesting to kind of talk about the changes that you had to make to your music after the accident and how that might have changed,

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how you play and then how you write songs. Yeah. When I began to play again after the wreck I couldn't play with uh, finger picks or a flat pick with any consistency. So I couldn't uh uh do the songs that I wanted to do. And so

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I invented a pick style. Call the Claw stopped by to say hello. To someone I used to know, I didn't have change to call, I took the Liberty to drop on by. Unannounced. So, trough some strangers' Kitchen screen. The same old neighborhood. Yesterdays follow me. Up and down familiar streets in my heart.

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Big buildings scrape the sky. Recalling you and I, When I look at them, now is well. And Bicycle Royalty. Poor as mice, But we owned this town We called the shots. We made the rule. Spaghetti bars were our music schools, But there's no one left to tell. The faces have all changed

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from. So that pick style, that claw that I'm talking about. I invented that pick style in the wake of this wreck so that I could play. And it actually was pretty neat because like a frail on

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a banjo. As you notice, I'm down stroking some of this stuff as a uh as a move in the to make music. And so uh uh this gave me a better pick style to work with on the acoustic guitar than I was probably playing before the

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accident. So, kind of funny how a little tragedy will step into your life and make you wake up and figure it out. But that is uh contrasted to, for instance, this piece called "Poetry Texas", which is more of a finger picking song. Dallas in the mirror

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Winter morning, cold as hell,. Me and my six string. No one else. Collar to the wind, Future in the breeze. Hardly seems that far away, you know what I mean. Highway 59, Yeah. Drove just like a dream, asphalt tops, Yellow lines still call me. Post office box, Poetry, Texas Yeah. Wandering

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and working, Living off the cuff. Some things never change. I can't get enough. The train's in Kansas City, New York's a parking lot. You can tell where I am, By where I'm not. Post office box, Poetry, Texas So you can do just about anything with this pick style that

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I invented. You can slap it, you can pick it so it can be sweet. It can be tough. It's got a little back beat to it every measure of the way. So it's kind of like having a, somebody tapping along to what you're playing and, uh that influenced everything

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because that made everything easy. And then one day I tuned the strings down a whole step. Like my buddy Stevie Ray Vaughn did on his big old uh stratocaster and uh he turned down a whole step to play that stuff for you. And uh, so I went,

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I'm gonna tune my guitar down a whole step. I go, Stevie did and it made it easier and more approachable to, uh, play and it, it made the notes that I played more resounding. Larger, bigger, sweeter prettier because they weren't so taught. They weren't tuned up

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to A440. They were tuned the whole step down from that. So it, uh, became easier to play and then I'm playing with this pick style from the right hand. So all of a sudden everything is a little different from the early model of Vince

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before the wreck. I was a good, uh, a good player before, but music became even more engaging and I got better at it. The second Vince around. I like that. The second Vince around. So, what is your songwriting process? Now? Is that something where you spend

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a little bit each day? Kind of working on songs? You kind of, Im a streak writer, you really focus on the music, I mean, everybody is pretty much, but in other words, I'll get on it and I'll start writing a song and then all of a sudden another tune will come

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in and then another guitar part will come in. And now I have three things that I'm working on all the time when I'm addressing it. And, uh, uh, I'll write for months, uh, and then I'll get tired. I'll go, I'm not writing any more songs for,

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I'm in one of those periods right now. For instance. And it's uh I'm not writing any songs, but I'm writing whole albums worth of music that I'm doing in New York City, for instance, right now and then my latest album will be me doing spoken word

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and the players will be uh impro improvised jazz music from New York City as well. Flamenco music is in there. Uh All kinds of interesting music types that aren't uh folkish or guitar. I uh no bass drums and uh rhythm guitar type stuff. But instead, flutes

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and uh flamenco, like I mentioned, and pianos, string basses, uh Japanese drums, uh uh African drums, um all kinds of things like that that aren't typical and uh are totally improvised. My recording session in New York was uh the producer would stand in the middle of

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the room and say play to two or three people to a bass clarinet from Paris and uh uh David Mansfield, you know, from uh Rolling Thunder Review on guitars and they would just start playing and then he would point over to me in the isolation booth

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next to the board and say, read and I would start reading with these folks and punctuating what they were doing with my, my uh prose. And uh uh so it's, it's an interesting album. I'll be looking forward to you. Uh you being able to hear this,

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you'll, you'll go, this is not folk music. So why did you decide to take this new route? Because I've played all of the folk clubs in this country and abroad. Pretty much as many as I've, uh I've had time to do and I've been playing for

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35 40 years. So, um, it's kind of like this is art and this is supposed to impress me first. And, uh, so I wanna do something different with my art. I wanna, I also have a backlog of, of theme uh in prose. I've written a book

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or two or three. And uh so I'm not above the prose routine. And so I've got things lying about in my greater scheme of events that I go. I want to use this, I don't want this to language in my catalog and end up, uh you

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know, in my, in my archive, you know, never having seen the light of day. I, I think this, I thought it was good when I wrote it. Let's see, let's just see how, how good it is. And uh all you have to do is press the

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case on something and uh it will float to the top or it won't. So you can, uh it's not a hard question to find out if it's good enough or not. But I do have a prose leanings. And uh now with music, this producer uh of

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mine uh uh has expressed interest in, in seeing me do more of the, he said a while back, he said we need to do another album Vince Vinny, we needed to do another album, but I don't think another folk album is gonna get it. We've done

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great ones but, you know, it is not, you know, burning the house down. So, uh, this next one that, that you do Vinny, I don't think you're gonna be able to take you out and play. Well, we'll see. But he, uh, inspired me. He said, you

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don't wanna write just three verses that are refrain forever, do you? And I went, I understand. And I do have a lot of theme that doesn't lend itself to that three verses that are refrain, kind of uh treatment. So it's not pop music. And so this

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is my first album. It's not pop music. I mean, I began to, I learned how to write from the radio like I told you and uh that was uh pop music. And so I wrote pop songs regardless of how long they were involved they were, what

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their subject matter was about. They were pop songs. And uh now this album has like, let me, this is not the kind of album that you put. Cut three on. You know, this is the kind of album you start at the beginning and you end at

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the end. And that's a, it's a, it's a story. It's a line of poetry and prose from a word go to the end. And uh it's uh it's regarded as such, it's a 90 minute show it's not a two set night. So, and, uh, and I'm,

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I'm, I'm grateful to be able to do this. I mean, I have, you have to have this stuff where you can't get people's interest to produce things like this. I mean, uh, these people that, that are on this album are from as far away as Japan

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and Europe. So there's a lot of craziness on this, uh, this routine that transcends a lot of musical lines like straight folk, straight rock and roll, straight this straight that these people are from jazz backgrounds, impro improvisation, you know, uh background. So, uh this is uh

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um a real accomplishment for me to have been able to pull this off because uh um there's more to the writing that I'm doing than just thematically um like a pop music type of approach and say, thank you so much for coming out traveling all as

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far as you did and doing history.