jimmie vaughan car collection

jimmie vaughan car collection, The last time Jimmie Vaughan sat down with the Chronicle at Iron Works Barbecue, a violent thunderstorm erupted. No sooner had the food arrived than the thunder rolled out and boom, boom! Out went the lights.

That downtown blackout was seven years ago, hot on the heels of the guitarist's first solo album, Strange Pleasure. Since that time, Vaughan has been through almost as many life changes as the previous five years, when he left the Fabulous Thunderbirds, got sober, and his brother Stevie was killed in a 1990 helicopter crash just before the debut of their one and only joint recording, Family Style.

The lightning changes kept coming after Strange Pleasure. His marriage of more than 25 years ended in divorce and was followed up by a new girlfriend named Robin, who takes an active part overseeing his Web site and who is likely responsible for the misty romance of his new album, Do You Get the Blues?

Meanwhile, Vaughan expresses renewed pride in his grown children, daughter Tina and especially son Tyrone, a local guitarist with whom he collaborates on Blues. It was an experience he agrees "could possibly" lead to a second-generation Family Style recording. Then there are the cars he loves to build and race, and guitars he loves collecting.

The notion of a homebody family guy doesn't quite jibe with the image of a multi-platinum guitarist, but here is Jimmie Vaughan talking about his down time, when the guitar is out of his hands: "I go to car shows two or three times a year. Do stuff with the kids. You can't get up early enough to do all there is in life. Clean your house, wash the car, go to the cleaners."

That said, the guitar is not out of his hands often or for very long. In fact, his may be the best job in the world. Winning awards, selling millions of albums, reaping critical adulation, and playing all-star sets with every possible living legend is The Dream Come True.

After years of toiling the blues in Austin clubs, Vaughan rode the rocket to success in the mid-Eighties with the Fabulous Thunderbirds' monster hits "Tuff Enuff" and "Powerful Stuff." Family Style, his first album after leaving the T-Birds, won a Grammy. The critically successful Strange Pleasure was followed by 1998's Out There and his latest, Do You Get the Blues?

That's a mighty success story for the son of an itinerant oil field worker who moved his family for the jobs until settling in the Dallas suburb of Oak Cliff. It was there, during a convalescence, that Jimmie discovered his natural affinity for guitar in his early teens. Soon after, he was playing Beatles and the Rolling Stones songs with an area cover band called the Chessmen, using the money to buy B. B. King records.

Vaughan even did a stint as "Freddie King Jr.," playing the Texas guitar hero's hits on the chitlin circuit for an audience surprised to see a white boy "playing like Freddie King but unable to sing any of the songs." In his later teens, he joined Texas Storm in Dallas, which became the Storm in Austin. When Storm split, Vaughan re-emerged in 1975 with the Fabulous Thunderbirds, Antone's was born, and the promise of the blues was wild and free.

"It was maybe the first time Muddy Waters came to Antone's, and the Thunderbirds were opening," he recalls. "We knew our way around Louisiana and Chicago, musically speaking, and we wanted to play good stuff, but we didn't want to play his stuff -- not in front of him. In the old Antone's, you could see upstairs to the dressing room overlooking the stage. We got to one song. I forget which it was, but I did the Earl Hooker slide thing."
Vaughan demonstrates in air guitar, leaning back on the patio bench overlooking Waller Creek. "Dyeer nyeer nyeer nyeer" he sings.

"I saw the dressing room curtain upstairs pull back and it was like, 'Gulp.' The next night Muddy came down and walked behind the stage and grabbed me around the neck. He liked it! Later that night he told me, 'When I'm not here, I want you to do that. Show people how I did that.'"

That moment was a rite of passage for Vaughan. It wasn't his intention to get into music for that purpose -- meeting girls and playing blues were their own pleasures -- but he says, "I never thought I'd actually meet Muddy. I had his records, but meeting him was as far away as the moon.

"It's still that way," he continues. "I get onstage with Eric [Clapton] or B. B. [King], and I am terrified. You couldn't drive a nail in my ass with a sledgehammer. Don't repeat that, it won't come off very good. But there's kind of a natural protection while doing it onstage, and later that night when you go home, it's like, 'Damn, I just played with B. B. King!'"

Yes, Jimmie Vaughan plays the blues. He doesn't noodle around with pop or rock & roll or feel the need to add a country song to prove his versatility. He just sticks with finger-poppin', hip-swayin' blues rhythms purveyed by his fat, iron-fisted playing. There's no post-teen angst or lingering adolescent trauma to his music, no political statements or philosophical underpinnings. It's music about love and women and men and life being tough sometimes. Ask him what his music is all about and he'll tell you it's All-American. Do you get the blues?

jimmie vaughan car collection 2013-05-22T03:50:00-07:00 Rating: 4.5 Diposkan Oleh: My Videos Tube