Well it was very tough, because the financial situation that I was in was not great. I had a record deal for 6-7 years and not much had transpired. I had not hit a home run, I had not had a big hit and it was getting tough. But the neat thing I had in my back pocket was that I knew that I could always work.I could always get a job playing with somebody. I was never afraid about what would happen if it didn’t work out. I wasnt going to have to go work in the library, I could play music. So I spent those years struggling and there was tons of session work. I loved that and that was one of the things that I had always aspired to do. I love doing it and I still do a lot of it. And Mark came to see me play in New York City, and you could have knocked me over with a feather when he came up and said (Vince doing heavy accent) “We’d like for you to come and play with the Straits.” Do a world tour for a year and a half and I knew it would mean a windfall financially and steady work and all that, but I had just changed record companies from RCA to MCA, and I asked myself what to do. I new if I did this I would turn my back on my country music career for a while, but I had plenty of reasons to do that (laughing) - I wasn’t setting the woods on fire or anything, but in my heart that would have been admitting failure at being a country artist, and I wasn’t willing to make that leap yet. So I turned it down and I don’t know why. I had no reason to. But I made the right decision. The next that happened was “When I Call Your Name.” That one career record that everybody talks about, the song that blows every door open, and it did it. I feel like that was a powerful point in me not bailing on myself. There’s a side of me that thinks I should have gone and played music with Mark, what I could have learned and it would have been a great experience. I ended up working on his records, singing on ‘em and stuff. I git to work with him plenty and didn’t have to go on a tour. (Laughing)
15
You know Duane Allman was in that very same type of situation with Derek & The Dominos. He had invested every- thing into the Allman Brothers, and they had a self titled album out and a second record, Idlewild South, but they were still struggling. Then he recorded the Layla album with Eric Clapton, and Eric really wanted Duane in the band full time. It was basically the same decision. He could have the instant money and success with Clap- ton, but he followed his heart and stuck with the Brothers. That’s kinda neat. If you’re not going to be- lieve in yourself, who else is going to? You know, it worked out great. It worked out just right.
You chose to be a country artist, but you have some real blues tones in your playing. Do you feel like you are a blues man at heart? At the end of the day, I think that all of this is a derivative of the blues. The first artists in country music were really Jimmie Rogers and The Carter Family. To me, one was born out of the blues and one was born out of the
church.To me, that’s where it all had a chance to evolve. Jimmie’s music was all about hard times and the blues. To me, that’s always been the most appealing side of music, the blues side of it. It’s where all of the angst comes from, its where all of the emotion comes from. It’s where the majority of the soul comes from. I want to be moved by music. I had the opportunity to play over in Ireland and Scotland over there a few times, and that was
powerful.Those people feel that music way deeper than we do. It was the most spiritual thing I’ve ever done - receiving infor- mation back from people like that. So at the end of the day... I don’t know if I consider myself a blues man, but all I am trying to do
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