Jimmie Vaughan is living in the past, and he's OK with ...

Jimmie Vaughan is living in the past, and he's OK with that

Jimmie Vaughan is living in the past, and he's OK with that
July 2, 2010
By ANDREW DANSBY
Houston Chronicle


AUSTIN - Jimmie Vaughan steps out of yesterday, unfolding from his 1932 Ford Five Window Coupe. His hair is thinner than it was when he last made a record, but it's still piled into a proud pompadour. He's dressed in jeans, boots and a black V-neck shirt you won't find at the Gap. His eyes are blockaded by bold, black sunglasses.
His appearance is that of a man who has ignored every style trend from the Summer of Love to the present. The only nod to today is his iPhone, encased in black, of course. But even this concession is tempered with terminology that sounds old. When Vaughan recommends a video clip by a late forgotten balladeer he says to "punch it in on YouTube" as though the website were a jukebox.
Vaughan steps inside a cafe just west of Austin and takes a seat. He puts his stylish scribble on a photograph for a fan who recently had heart surgery. He then reaches for a guitar to sign for a giveaway by his label.
"Problem with your own guitar line," he says with an inverted triangular smile, "you don't want to give 'em up." He props the Fender Stratocaster on his thigh and picks at it briefly. His fingers look like the legs of a cellar spider, working with such studied and nimble grace that time seems to slow. Vaughan, 59, says he plays every day. He places the guitar flat on his lap and picks the Sharpie back up but is reluctant to write on the front of the instrument.
"I just feel like you sign the front, omebody's just going to hang it on the wall," he says.
A guy who looks like 1959 personified, Vaughan is adamant about keeping music's past off the wall. That was his plan for Jimmie Vaughan Plays Blues, Ballads & Favorites (out Tuesday), his first solo album in nine years. The album includes a new Vaughan instrumental nestled alongside spirited interpretations of songs previously recorded by his heroes: Jimmy Reed, Johnny Ace, Roscoe Gordon, Roy Milton and Willie Nelson. He intended to have it sound like a vintage jukebox.
They're largely songs from an era that predated radio consolidation, a time of smart songwriting, regional hits and barnstorming ace players who Vaughan heard as a kid. Some were great pickers, others were great singers, which makes sense because the album includes Vaughan's strongest singing yet.
"I have to work really hard on the singing," he says. "I didn't start singing until I was 40."
The length of time between his last album and the new one isn't really of note, Vaughan says. He's often on the road, and during the quiet spell he got married and had twin girls. He was just slow to get around to it. But the sessions for Jimmie Vaughan Plays Blues, Ballads & Favorites were productive: He's already three songs into another album.
The music industry's implosion has granted him a certain amount of freedom to be who he wants to be. "There's no pressure on me," Vaughan says, "I want to play what I hear, and I want to play what I like."
The music is beautifully spacious, with little interactions throughout. Sometimes it's Vaughan's voice twisting about with Lou Ann Barton's ("we sound like a couple of hillbillies"), other times his guitar licks around some brass. All of these conversations have little breaths in between.
"We get rid of more (expletive) than we keep," Vaughan says. "Excuse me, stuff."
Like so many guitarists who favor the blues, Vaughan's relationship with his instrument is informed by his love of saxophone players such as Gene Ammons, an expressive tenor saxophonist who recorded his best work in the late 1940s and 1950s.
"I don't like guitar players," he says, maybe half kidding. He points out that before amplifiers gave the guitar its muscle, the saxophone was the best way to project sound from the stage. "The phrasing that comes out is so good, too, because you have to stop and breathe," he says. "It's more like talking."
Vaughan heard a lot of that brassy music from his father, an asbestos worker, who favored big band and jazz. His mother preferred honky-tonk. He says they loved to dance, and music was usually sung at home.
"I had the perfect stuff around the house to get me interested and make me look for the real thing," he says. "And I'm still on that ... quest.
"I just play what I like. I like the phrasing in songs, whether it's jazz, country rock or blues — it's all the same to me."
His parents sometimes played dominos at a neighbor's house in Dallas. The neighbors' son was in the Navy and had left his band's gear. Vaughan would get shuffled off to the music room, where he'd tool around on guitars and drums.
He dabbled in football. "I didn't know anything about football," he says. "Still don't." But a broken collarbone put him off it. While recovering he got his first instrument from the neighbors, a dinged-up cowboy guitar.
His brother would watch while he played. "He was four years younger," Vaughan says of Stevie Ray Vaughan. "When you're young, that's a big deal."
Vaughan tends to look right at you when he speaks, but when he mentions his brother he looks away. This August, 20 years will have passed since Stevie Ray Vaughan died in a helicopter crash. The few times Vaughan talks about his brother are followed by silences.
"He'd watch and ask, 'What are you doing that for?' I told him, 'This is called the blues, kid. Now get out of here.' Every time I'd put it down, he'd pick it up."
When Vaughan left home at 15 to be in a band, he gave the cowboy guitar to his little brother, who took to it, to say the least.
The brothers shared a certain rootsy sensibility - when new wave took hold in the '80s they were successful anomalies playing roots-based rock, Vaughan with the Fabulous Thunderbirds and his brother with his band Double Trouble. Still, they were very different guitarists, represented in the way they presented themselves and the way they played.
Vaughan remains rooted in mid-century. "The '40s, '50s and early '60s, that's just what I like," he says. "The clothes, the cars, everything. I'm not trying to be nostalgic, it's just what I like. I just kind of ignore everything and pretend this is going on."
He saunters back to his coupe and offers a history for the vehicle, his telling short and filled with flair, just like the songs.
Then he fires up the engine - it's very loud -and drives off, steering the past through the present.

Copyright 2010