Artists:Vince Bell

Having spent the '70s working the national coffee house circuit, playing "edge to edge" in the Lone Star state, and sharing the stage with fellow-travelers Townes Van Zandt, Guy Clark, and Lucinda Williams, the native Texan's star was on a rapid rise. Not only was Vince Bell a nimble guitarist with a one-of-a-kind voice, but his songwriting drew favorable comparisons to such disparate-but-remarkable tunesmiths as Randy Newman, Bruce Cockburn and Tom Waits. A ballet, “Bermuda Triangle” had been set to his work. Referring to Bell's fellow Texas songwriters Nanci Griffith said, "I always felt Vince was the best of us."

In 1982, he was in the studio recording his songs with hired guns Stevie Ray Vaughan and Eric Johnson. While driving home after a session a drunk driver broadsided Bell's '64 Ford Fairlane. Thrown over 60 feet from his car, Bell suffered embedded glass, multiple lacerations to his liver, broken ribs, a mangled right forearm and, most significantly, a severe traumatic brain injury. Awaking from a coma a month later, Bell embarked on a courageous, decade-long journey to re-claim his identity, his music and his career. The whole terrifying but ultimately uplifting saga is told with extraordinary candor and insight in his gripping 1998 autobiography, One Man’s Music. read more