The Timothy White Interview

Stevie Ray Vaughan: Talking with the Master By Timothy White

    It was a kind of a World Series of archival cutting contests. Stevie Ray Vaughan, hunched over his "sweetheart" axe, a chocolate brown ’59 Stratocaster with a ’58 Gibson jumbo bass neck, sat in a semi-darkened Manhattan studio trading licks with the greatest heroes of yore. He swapped lacerating Robert Johnson-derived lines with Elmore James on "Goodbye Baby," merged growling riffs with Howlin’ Wolf on "Moanin’ at Midnight," barked out a shifting cadent blues alongside John Lee Hooker on "Boogie Chillen" and huddled with Lightnin’ Hopkins to share a tart Texas shuffle on "Gimme Back My Wig (I Bought You Babe, and Let Your Doggone Head Go Bald)."

    Stevie Ray’s musical cohorts were present in spirit courtesy of a vintage Kent Records compilation album called Underground Blues, but the fact that Vaughan could accompany these legends, duet-style, on a blink’s notice, spoke volumes about the kind of artist – and appreciator – he surely was. This interview with Stevie Ray Vaughan took place in October 1989 at Sound on Sound Studios on West 45^th Street. The entire conversation unfolded with Vaughan’s guitar cradled in his arms. The encyclopedic grasp he had of his heroes’ myriad individual styles was further deepened by a unique tenderness toward their individual intentions. Stevie Ray was as understanding of the reasons why a person played the blues, the needs and desires behind the notes, as he was of the end results. A student of humanity, he also knows that it’s the amateurs who usually make the most history by inventing their own place in it.

    As the last strains of Underground Blues faded away, Stevie Ray looked up from his guitar, smiled broadly and said, "Man, that album is a journey – just fantastic. You got any others like that here?" No, he was told, but we had him as a resource to continue the trek through the living musical heritage he so loved. This talk with the late, great Stevie Ray Vaughan is a moving reminder of how much we lost when we lost him, and how much he left behind for us to learn to appreciate.

MUSICIAN: 'Riviera Paradise' has a beautiful bittersweet quality. But no matter what you're playing, fast or slow, you never crowd your notes and phrases. Everything's rounded out, right on the dime. Is there a philosophy to that sort of attention to detail in your playing?

S.R.V.: What I'm trying to do in those things is find that clarity, when I can let go of whatever it would be, ego or self-consciousness. Since I can't read music, I find I do the best when I just listen to where I'm trying to go with it and where it can go. And not try to rush it. Not try to make up things as I'm going necessarily, but just let them come out. Then I'm a lot better off. If I start trying to pay attention to where I am on the neck and the proper way to do this or that, I end up thinking that thing through instead of playing from my heart. When I've played from my mind I get in trouble.

MUSICIAN: There's a nice sense of intuition in your playing. It's the idea that you feel so close to your instrument, you're trying to think out loud with it.

S.R.V.: I don't know if it's think really, but just feel and express. I've spent many years married to these guitars, especially this one... I found this one in '73, 1 believe, at a store in Austin. I had my first Stratocaster at about that time and I was having problems with the intonation and it was driving me nuts! I went to get it worked on, but as I walked up I saw this guitar just hanging there in the window and looking at me, and I was looking back. I walked straight up to the counter and handed the guy my guitar and said, "Will you trade me this guitar for that one over there?" He said, "Yes." And I said, "Even?" and he said, "Yeah" and I said, "Give it to me!" and I picked this one up and went and plugged it in and it sounded just like I wanted it to, just like I thought it would. It felt just perfect for me-had it ever since.

MUSICIAN: "Riviera Paradise" is like good brandy going down. How did you come to write it?

S.R.V.: It's actually like an extension of the style of "Lenny," off the first album. Originally I came up with it about '84 and I was looking for those same qualities - there were some rough times going on at home. A lot of us go through really drastic up-and down hardships between relationships, when we don't know really how to love someone right. "Lenny" was written to soothe, and "Riviera Paradise" comes from the same place. I wasn't wanting to just copy myself, I was wanting to go ahead and say something with the song and it was down to where if I couldn't find the chords I needed, I started just sticking my hand on the neck, pushing my fingers down and saying, "What's that sound like?" The song went through a lot of different meanings between '84 and now. Finally I got back to where I was coming from originally, which was looking for the willingness to make things right with the people that had been hurt in these relationships. That's really where it comes from.

MUSICIAN: Yeah, it seems to come from a very humble, very compassionate place, wanting to build those bridges and keeping those bridges strong.

S.R.V.: Yeah, building bridges instead of tearing them down, that's exactly what it's about.

MUSICIAN: Your vocals on 'Crossfire' were as strong and new as your playing had always been.

S.R.V.: Well thank you, man. The way I see it, it’s a learning process every time I go in the studio, actually every time we do a gig or I'm just walking around the house or in the shower or whatever, trying to learn how to sing. I've always wanted to work that out. It's something that doesn't come quite so easily as guitar playing to me. And a lot of the direction that I've had has been of course through records and through contact with a lot of the people that I've really looked up to all of my life. But a lot of it really goes to Doyle Bramhall who I had the pleasure of writing a lot of the songs with on In Step. I've known him since I was about 11, 12 years old and always really liked the way he sang, and his influences were a lot of the same singers that were mine. Everybody from Ray Charles, Bobby Bland, B.B. King, Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters. I've always liked how they sang and I've always liked how Doyle sang, but for me it's just taken a lot more work.

MUSICIAN: It's interesting where you pick up these bits of inspiration both from people who are right there in the fabric of your own life, like Doyle, and from the old records. People might not realize that even old heroes of yours like Magic Sam learned to play the blues by listening to Muddy Waters and Little Walter records. So many people did that; even, back to the earliest days when they were playing the oldest Robert Johnson 78s, that was a tradition.

S.R.V.: Yeah, and you can also go and see the people. But by listening to the records you can sit at home and start it over, find where you're coming from. It's a real neat deal! And you can dress up like you want to in your room and nobody knows! [Laughter]

MUSICIAN: "Let Me Love You, Baby" is so focused, both Buddy Guy's famous 1963 live approach on Folk Festival of the Blues and your modern interpretation of it. His music obviously brings out a lot of spirit in you it's a good place to build from because it's so direct.

S.R.V.: It's the simple direct things that seem to get to the point, and it's not all polished over with over-production or anything. I don't know what I would have done if I'd had to start off my learning process in music with so much production going on. I wouldn't have known what to do. I'm really glad that my crystal radio worked real well to get Ernie’s Record Mart [in Gallatin, Tennessee] and things like that! And back in the time when you'd hear B.B. King and Jimmy Reed and Buddy Guy, things like that on Top 40 radio-I was just real fortunate in that way.

MUSICIAN: I know a big influence on Buddy Guy when he was coming up was T-Bone Walker. How would you contrast their approaches?

S.R.V.: T-Bone was aggressive. Buddy can go from one end of the spectrum to the other. He can play quieter than anybody I've ever heard, or wilder and louder than anybody I've ever heard. I play pretty loud a lot of times, but Buddy's tones are just incredible. But Buddy's style is not necessarily such a technical style; it's just more like raw meat in a lot of ways. A lot of his earlier records seem to be really toned down and to-the-point.

MUSICIAN: Like "One Room Country Shack" with Junior Wells?

S.R.V.: Yeah! And part of the tone thing has to do with, the way he puts it, that he was told to turn down for those records-they wouldn't let him go crazy. [laughter] He may or may not like this, but from a guitar player's standpoint I'm really glad I got to hear him that way as well because he pulls so much emotion out of so little volume. Buddy's just got this cool feel to everything he does.

MUSICIAN: He's got a real proud style, a strut quality.

S.R.V.: Oh yeah, and when he sings, it's just compounded. Girls fall over and sweat and die! Every once in a while I get the chance to go and play with Buddy, and he gets me every time, because we could try to go to Mars on guitars but then he'll start singing, sing a couple of lines, and then stick the mike in front of me! What are you going to do? What is a person going to do?! [laughter]

MUSICIAN: Another tradition in the blues is cutting contests. Years ago at Chicago's Blue Flame Club Buddy Guy walked off the street and Otis Rush and Magic Sam were there and he just got up and played in what was essentially their style! That was the beginning of his reputation in Chicago. Have you ever had the chance to get together with Buddy in this kind of cutting contest?

S.R.V.: Yeah! Not too long ago, I got to do it at his new club called Legends in Chicago, and before that it's been times at the Lone Star [in New York City] or at various different Antone's-it's moved several times- around Austin; and we've gotten to do it at the Chicago Blues Festival quite a few years ago. Every time I get to run into Buddy that's pretty much what we end up doing. We go for the throat, and I just love it! But then he always starts singing again [laughs] and then it's all over, you know?

MUSICIAN: Was your first guitar the Gibson Messenger you got in '63?

S.R.V.: That was my first electric, yeah. That was Jimmie's First electric as well, and he just handed it down when he got a 330 and later on he probably changed to Les Pauls and Telecasters. Gave me a '51 Tele, a cross between a Broadcaster and a Tele that I rebuilt and ended up letting someone talk me into selling and I'm still kicking myself Still looking for it, by the way! So if somebody finds a guitar that says send to "Jimbo" on the back and it's the right one, it's the real deal-you can come rape me for it, or my pocketbook anyway!

MUSICIAN: Do you recall the first song that you worked out on electric guitar? Maybe that '51 like a Tele?

S.R.V.: A lot of the stuff I was learning early on had to do with Jimmy Reed kind of things. Early on Jimmie and I did learn something that I ended up playing with Dick Dale not long ago.

MUSICIAN: Dick Dale from the Del-Tones, the surf guitar king?

S.R.V.: [Plays some surf guitar lines] Yeah, those things were popular then, but it was just a lot of fun to learn that stuff-Ray Sharp and the Razor Blades. It's the real simple things, you know? Then of course the Beatles came out and we heard about the Bluesbreakers, and at the same time we were starting to hear about Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf, Buddy Guy, B.B. King, Freddie King and Lonnie Mack and on and on. "Wham" was the first record I bought. Somebody was in the right corner upstairs on that one 'cause I finally ended up getting the chance to work with Lonnie. Things like 'Why' still kill me. And then on Lonnie's Strike Like Lightning, the song "Stop" was just a killer. Nobody can play a wang-bar like that. And then along came Albert King records. It's funny, because when I was about 12 1 had been a dishwasher for a while and part of my job was to clean out the trash bin. That involved standing on these big 55-gallon barrels with wooden lids on them, where they'd put all the hot grease. And one day I was out there cleaning out the bin, having a blast, and the top broke and I fell in.

    Just as I finally got out I'd been up to about my chest in grease-they came with two fresh hot vats of boiling grease and I got out just in time. If I'd taken a break later I would have been a fried guy! The woman fired me because I broke the lids on the barrel and right then and there I decided, "Wait a minute, this is not what I want to do. I want to play guitar like Albert King!" And that's the last job I've had other than playing guitar. So, thank you Albert for helping me there. [laughs]

MUSICIAN: Talking about Albert and B.B. King and these kind of high-bent string-squeezing single-note lines-a song on Soul to Soul, 'Ain't Gone 'n' Give Up on Love,' has a bit of that flavor.

S.R.V.: Some of my favorite stuff, man, is to play Albert King things and be able to do 'em in 1989 or whatever, 2010! I hope that style of music and the reality of blues-everybody goes through those ups and downs-never leaves our music. Hope we don't decide as a mass to get rid of all the real things and just put in the synthetic hypnotic music and leave those things alone. I hope that never, happens.

MUSICIAN: Let's go through a little personal history and weave a little Texas blues history into it. You're the second son of Jimmy Lee and Martha Vaughan and you grew up in the Oak Cliff section of Dallas. What is the Oak Cliff area like?

S.R.V.: It's not like JR’s joint! It's more of a down-home neighborhood. It was actually another town separate from Dallas for many, many years and Dallas grew around it. In another part of Oak Cliff, across the tracks I suppose, was where T-Bone Walker was from, and Leadbelly. All these people were from there: Charlie Christian, Freddie King. Oak Cliff was a breeding ground for a lot of music, lots of culture that's been torn down to make room for sky-risers.

MUSICIAN: What was your first instrument?

S.R.V.: My first instrument was shoeboxes and pie pans, with clothes hangers for sticks. And then it was when Jimmie got a guitar, and then my parents got me a lap steel, which I had no idea what to do with. And then I got an acoustic guitar, one of those little Roy Rogers models made out of Masonite, and it wouldn't tune, so we took half the strings off and struck it more like a bass and tuned it down. Jimmie kept playing his guitar-I believe it was an Airline box acoustic-and over the years I kept trying to fool around with drums here and there.

    Jimmie plays drums better than I could. He's one of those guys who, when he picks anything up it just sounds right, you know? And it doesn't look like he's doing anything! [laughs] He kept on playing guitar and picked up several types of instruments, everything from steel guitars to cornet, fiddle, '51 Chevys [chuckles] and he's a great bass player as well. I played bass for a while in Jimmie's band called the Texas Storm. It was just a few months, but I learned a lot there, mainly steel guitar, little bit of drums.

MUSICIAN: You were about 10 when you were in a group called the Shantones. And then in junior high, you were in a group called Blackbird. What did those bands sound like?

S.R.V.: Well, in the Shantones, we thought we had a band and we finally played a talent show and realized in the middle of our song that we didn't know the whole thing. [laughs] We weren't together very long! We went through different bands and really started learning what was going on. Blackbird went through so many different people, like one of the springboard deals: I learned how to play with someone until the energy was gone and before it was a really deadbeat kind of thing, we would have the sense enough to go ahead and change members so we could keep fresh. It was a real neat growing experience. Blackbird ended up moving to Austin New Year's Eve of '72. It was great. We decided to move there on the way there and I moved into a club called Rolling Hills that a friend of mine owned. I slept on the pool table, the stage, the floor, whatever the weather permitted. And to tell you the truth, it was some of my favorite times. I didn't have a dime, but who cares? I was doing what I wanted and around people I wanted to be around and it was always good music. A lot of other bands had gone to Austin because in Austin you could play what you wanted and that was all there was to it. You didn't have to go by some club owner's idea of what you ought to sound like or play this list of songs that he handed you. You might as well have had a quarter slot in your ear, you know? The whole scene in Austin was when someone needed a fresh bit of energy in their band-kind of like every three to six months, something like that-all the bands would just shuffle the cards of players. Everybody learned a whole lot, and eventually everybody found slots with other musicians that they really wanted to stay with.

MUSICIAN: You were roughly 17 or so in '72. Wasn't it a little on the cold side that winter in Austin?

S.R.V.: Yeah, it didn't bother me, though. I don't know. I don't think that I really want to lose everything right now, but it was a real neat thing for me, a real growing experience, and it's something I never could regret.

MUSICIAN: People know Austin as a place where rock and country kind of got together in the '60s, places like Threadgill's Bar, Armadillo World Headquarters. But there's also a real rich blues and R&B tradition coming out of that town, a lot happening in the R&B bars on Sixth Street.

S.R.V.: There always has been. W.C. Clark's one of the people who's been involved in that for years and years, as well as the Jets and Bill Campbell. There was a real rich deal. Like you said, it's been going on for years and years before I knew about it, obviously, but that's where Jimmie had moved, probably late '60s I guess, maybe as late as '70. He had been involved with a lot of that. It's still going on there. There's a new phase of it, a lot of young kids growing up and doing the same thing. Now Sixth Street, even though it can be a little bit, uh ... I don't know ... it seemed as if it was going to turn into more than a Bourbon Street and get out of hand for a while. But now it seems there's a lot of clubs lining Sixth Street and you can just walk up and down the street and hear all kinds of young cats playing what they're really trying to find home with. It's happening all again. It's a great thing. But in Dallas blues clubs like the Cellar, if you were black you could not get in! Thank God we got to get out of Dallas and go down to Austin, where that whole hypocritical deal wasn't so evident.

MUSICIAN: Was there any song that you put together in those early years that turned up on one of your albums later?

S.R.V.: "Pride and Joy" was kind of funny. I'd written the song in the studio, recorded it right then and brought it home to the girlfriend that I'd had at the time. I don't know what the problem was but she didn't think it was really about her and we got into this big argument, so I got back in the car and went back into the studio and rewrote some words to the song-I'm carrying for the demo where I'd put these different words over the same track-and brought this home and went, "Here." [laughter]

MUSICIAN: Songs While-U-Wait!

S.R.V.: Songs While-U-Wait - you got it! I'm glad to say it ended up going back to the original version. [laughter]

MUSICIAN: "Rude Mood," another, song from Texas Flood, is like a crash course in modern Texas guitar technique. It's got fast shuffles on it, tight picking, those slippery chord combinations. If someone wanted to get the whole textbook in one place, or at least a good chunk of it, that would be a good song to start.

S.R.V.: Well, it's actually like an extension of something I'd heard years and years ago of Lightnin' Hopkins called "Lightnin's Skyhop," and it's just me trying to not only remember what I'd learned from his styles, but to carry that on and take the song further. It's faster and it's got a few more tricks in it and this and that, but it's basically a take-off of that song.

MUSICIAN: Jimi Hendrix is obviously a hero of yours. You've kind of embraced his style but found new applications for it.

S.R.V.: Well, his tone, his touch, his application of chords, his rhythms, his taking the idea of blues songs and turning them into modern-day things. Like "Manic Depression"-to him, that was a modern blues song even though it was a waltz. [starts strumming languid, Jimi Hendrix type chords] That's pretty inventive kind of stuff to me, and the way he used a wang-bar was completely different than anybody I had heard do it. his soft, clear touch, you know...

MUSICIAN: It was a very tender touch that wasn't happening in rock'n'roll, certainly not at that point in the '60s.

S.R.V.: And I believe he took tones a lot further than anyone had. If he couldn't get it out of a straight guitar he would find an effect. I think he opened up all of those doors. For instance, the use of what's called an Octavia. He opened all those doors by being able to tell someone what he wanted and making use of fuzzes. What he ended up doing with all that was the same thing that people go for. Listen to 'The Star Spangled Banner"-if that's not where people got the idea to try and go for synthesizer sounds, I'm not sure where it would be from. Imagine what that's opened up for everyone! I think he just continued to try and take things further and he wasn't afraid of talking about spiritual things in his songs and trying to grow. Even though we sometimes defeat our own purposes by our lifestyles, or the different myths that we believe.... Like his dying because of drugs-some people think he was trying to. I think it was a mishap that happens to some of us whe n we get up in that whole deal. But it's obvious to me that he was trying to grow spiritually, and I think that was a new thing in rock music. He stretched all the boundaries.

MUSICIAN: There's a wonderful song on Soul to Soul called "Say What " that's got really eloquent wah-wah work in it. There's a nice shading of Hendrix’ inspiration in it.

S.R.V.: Well, it was definitely inspired by him. If you listen to a lot of his stuff, you could hear the roots coming, a lot of the sounds sounded old and brand-new at the same time. The emotions seem to be not dated at all. And I think that's what he was tapping into as well when he headed off into jazz areas, and what he was trying to do towards the end. I say "at the end" who can call it that? I get the idea that all he experienced is kind of like what fusion's supposed to be, you know? I mean, he seemed to not only play guitar on guitar, but he played everything on guitar. I don't know what else to call it. He just played music. No matter how many walls he knocked down to get there.

MUSICIAN: Let's talk about Texas R&B and blues, about Texas music as you experienced it. The backbone of Texas music is the blues shuffle.

S.R.V.: One of my favorites has always been [starts playing some shuffles] Freddie King's "Hideaway," things like that. Albert Collins' "Don't Lose Your Cool." A lot of music that came out in years gone by, I don't know that it's so much this way now, but it seems to me that music used to be more based on common everyday occurrences, like a train sound going down the track, someone walking down the street, things like that. A horse walking, you know? That's where these rhythms came from.

MUSICIAN: People take this stuff from life. Jimi Hendrix used to say he got some of those sounds from his days as a paratrooper. The door of that plane would fly open and whooooshh, and he'd go, "Whoa, let me think of a sound that makes me feel the way I feel right now before I jump!" And in listening to you play those various shuffles, there's such a hopeful sound to it. It's like, "What's next? I'm ready for whatever comes around the corner." Such a thing of optimism in those great Texas shuffles.

S.R.V.: Even though Texas music in a lot of ways is rough-and-tumble, it also seems to me to be about feeling better. Like there's always a good time in it. Even if it's a real down blues tune. Albert King described something to me one time that really made a lot of sense: No matter whether it's a real down song about everything going wrong or whether it's the upside of it-found something new or got it together with my woman, or whatever it's all to soothe, the blues is all to soothe. Whether you got to get mad first or you've already been mad, it's all to soothe. And I think that's one thing that a lot of people miss about blues.

MUSICIAN: One of my favorite songs from Couldn't Stand the Weather is "Scuttle Buttin'" There's so much energy! How did that come about?

S.R.V.: Actually, that's me trying to say thank you to Lonnie Mack, basically. 'Scuttle Buttin" came out of me trying to figure out how to play "Chicken Pickin'." [laughs] It wasn't like I was just trying to steal him blind or anything, it was just like me kind of trying to say thank you and we ended up doing it a lot of times if we got to run into each other.

MUSICIAN: People may know the name of your band comes from the great Otis Rush song, 'Double Trouble.' Otis is from Philadelphia, Mississippi, but is best known as one of the kingpins of the post War Chicago blues sound. It's interesting how Texas and Chicago have shaken hands in so many ways in your music.

S.R.V.: You know, the tie between Texas, Louisiana and Chicago, all those areas had a lot to do with train lines, railroad tracks, and I think there was always a lot closer connection than a lot of us realized. Because it was always a migratory route. Freddie King made it in Chicago in a lot of ways. The two styles of music are a little bit different, but these days it's a lot more intertwined, and I'm really glad I've gotten to know a lot or those people, like Otis Rush, Buddy Guy, gotten a chance to play with them. I don't think I've seen anyone caress a guitar and hug it and play it like Otis Rush. And then he opens his mouth. He's another one of those people who opens his mouth and you just ... shudder ... Because it's so to the bone. [Starts playing "I Can't Quit You," and singing} I'm glad I remembered the words! [laughs]

MUSICIAN: How did you record Stevie Wonder's "Superstition"?

S.R.V.: One day while we were rehearsing for the Live Alive album we started playing around with "Superstition" and one of the crew members got all excited and said, "If y'all do that song it'd be a hit." It felt real good and two or three days later we recorded it. And then as we were trying to find the right mixing studio, a friend of mine told me that we ought to just call Stevie, call up Wonderland and say, "Hey man, I'm a fan of yours and really looking for a studio. Is yours available?" We finally did and it was just incredible. They welcomed us in, gave us a better rate than anybody else around, treated us well, gave us the studio for 24 hours a day. I had met him at the Grammies or wherever, different places over the years, and all of a sudden I would get these great phone calls in the middle of the night. Imagine this: being dead asleep, picking up the phone and Stevie Wonder is singing to you! Making it up as he goes! It's continued like that and I finally got the chance to play on one of his records. There's nobody like the man-to just sit there and watch him write these things on the spot. And the funny thing is he'll do this while carrying on a conversation on two different phones and with a couple of people in the room, while he's playing a couple of different keyboards as well. Plus he's programming his computer to pIay the song that he's fixing to play in a few minutes! And he's doing all this at the same time, cognizant of everything going on. You get up and start to tiptoe out of the room and he goes, "Where you going?" It's like, who needs eyes, you know? And he's so full of love and so full of truth, it's a real neat thing.

MUSICIAN: You've played with Jeff Beck too. Is there a Jeff Beck song that you've played over the years, in a band here, a band there?

S.R.V.: [Starts playing "Guitar Boogie"] This was actually a Chuck Berry song that Jeff took and re-did, called it "Jeff's Boogie." All the gunslingers in the world had six strings on their guns. Every time you'd walk into a club like The Cellar, if somebody new walked in it was like, time for everybody to pull out their gunslinging material, and everybody would play "Jeff's Boogie." You'd play it part of the way, then double-time it and double-time it again. It was just kind of a staple of what I grew up with. [Starts playing "Jeff's Boogie"] I Actually, Chuck Berry's version was a lot more tame, but Jeff Beck took it and it had wild guitars and echo and the whole bit. He's another one of those guys that could play incredibly beautiful and incredibly ... just mean, you know?

MUSICIAN: Like an explosion.

S.R.V.: Yeah! Very much. And he can play some of the weirdest stuff I’ve ever heard and make it completely work. I don't know whether he's riding a wave or if he can think that quick to think it out first, but it doesn't really matter, you know? Incredible.

MUSICIAN: There's a lot of personal wisdom in "Wall of Denial."

S.R.V.: The musical part of it started off as me just trying to find a new way to play a 6/8 kind of a feel. The more I played with it the more I started looking for something I could use lyrically that really meant something, instead of just..."got a new car" or "got a lot of money in the bank"-who cares? I started looking through lyrics that I'd come up with and ideas that I'd found that had really helped me in my life, and pulled these pieces and parts together. Not necessarily in a song form, but as pieces and parts of something that could grow. Doyle and I went over the thing at one of our get-togethers, which was basically he and I would sit down and talk about what was going on in our lives for a few hours and boil it down to the real and what we could use-we would write it down. I pulled out these pieces and parts of songs that I'd had, or just ideas that we had written out but not tied together, and a lot of the things we came up with were things that were really helping us. We would just insert them and the whole thing would start coming together and there'd be a song. We didn't have a title. Doyle was driving home, pulled out his little pencil and just wrote "Wall of Denial" on top of the piece of paper. And he came back and said that to me. I was talking to my manager on the phone telling him what all we'd gotten done and what we were going to work on next. I said, "Well, I think we're going to work on..." All of a sudden Doyle goes, "A wall of denial..." and I went, "I'll see you later," hung the phone up, turned around and said, "What?!" And we went from there, started the very first part of the song and I pulled it out and said, "Here's the first verse-you got the chords?" And then we got back to the "wall of denial" part and put in the second verse and it all fell together just like that.

MUSICIAN: There's a really beautiful couplet in there: "We're never safe from the truth, but in the truth we can survive."

S.R.V.: That's something I learned just looking, you know, looking for things that really could help me, and just anyone, in recovery with addiction and drugs. The idea is out of a real spiritual book called The Course that's been real helpful to a lot of people. The principle is just as plain as it can be: We always - well, many times try to hide from the truth, thinking we can; that we'll be safe by covering something up when in fact if you try to cover up those things that really are too hard to look at, they end up coming out like razor blades or explosions in our lives and tear things up. And the sooner we can learn to go back to the truth we'll be a lot better off - then it sets us free.