Alan Paul - Texas Flood: The Inside Story of Stevie Ray Vaughan

Unless otherwise noted, all quotes in this book came from interviews conducted by one or both of us. The only exception are the quotes from Cutter Brandenburg, which were adapted from his memoir, You Cant Stop a Comet, with permission from his son Robert.

Texas Flood represents three decades of work for two writers and musicians who have dedicated our lives to understanding and spreading the gospel of the music we love, music which has been at the very center of our lives. As important as Stevie Ray Vaughan has been to each of us, we came to his music from slightly different routes.

I didnt get Stevie Ray Vaughan when I first heard him because I was a young, dumb blues snob, and, like all snobs I was oblivious. I thought Stevie was too loud, too rocked up, and, frankly, too white to be legitimate. But a funny thing happened as I began meeting and interviewing my blues heroes: one by one, they told me how great Stevie Ray was. I heard it from Albert King, Buddy Guy, Albert Collins, and Johnny Copeland. Eventually, this blind man saw the light. Then I smacked myself for not having been in the front row of every one of his shows within a hundred miles of me.

I went in deep, and was fortunate enough to see Stevie and his brother Jimmie play together at the 1990 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival. They were terrific together, and I looked forward to their upcoming album, Family Style. I was in the middle of begging magazines to let me interview the Vaughans when I heard the horrible news of Stevies death at Alpine Valley. A few months later I started working at Guitar World, which gave me an opportunity to further immerse myself in Stevies music, even though it often filled me with sadness; his absence was profound, a ghostly presence hovering over many of my interviews and interactions with guitarists who missed him dearly.

When Jimmie launched his solo career a few years later with Strange Pleasure, I found solace in the joyful, swinging music. It was proof that music can overcome grief. Lengthy interviews with Jimmie around his album release and the tribute concert he organized for his brother helped me begin to understand him, and to form a vision of who Stevie really was. I was honored when he asked me to contribute writing to two great releases: 1996s A Tribute to Stevie Ray Vaughan and 2000s SRV box set. It was clear from our first interview how difficult yet important it was for Jimmie to talk about Stevie. His insights are at the heart of this book, for which we are deeply appreciative.

Stevie continued to have an outsized pull on me when I moved to Beijing in 2005. During my time there, I hired a young musician named Woodie Wu to repair one of my guitars. As we spoke, I saw familiar letters poking out from under his shirt and asked if I could see his tattoo; he pulled up his sleeve to reveal the letters SRV sitting beneath Stevies face, which covered his left triceps. He had bought a cassette of Texas Flood as a teenage metalhead, drawn to the gunslinger on the cover. He had never heard of the blues and didnt know where Texas was, but the music flipped his world upside down.

I couldnt believe I had found a Chinese blues guitarist with a tattoo of Stevie. He couldnt believe the guy who wrote liner notes for his favorite musician had walked into his shop in a Beijing suburb. We became soul mates, formed a band that toured China and changed each others lives in too many ways to count. I credit Stevie.

Pondering a follow-up to my book One Way Out: The Inside History of the Allman Brothers Band, I knew it had to be about someone whose music had impacted me in a similar manner and whose story I found equally compelling. It had to be Stevie, and I knew that to do this right, I had to partner with my friend and Guitar World colleague Andy Aledort, who interviewed Stevie four times and had spent decades immersed in the music. I believe that working together, we have truly presented the inside story of Stevie Ray Vaughan. May Stevies music continue to inspire people from one end of the earth to the other.