A ballet--"Bermuda Triangle"--had been fashioned around his work. His songs have been covered by Griffith, Lovett and a host of others. In December of 1982, he was in the studio recording his songs with hired guns Stevie Ray Vaughan and Eric Johnson. While driving home after a session in the early morning of December 21st, a drunk driver (traveling in excess of 65 mph) broadsided Bell's '64 Ford Fairlane, setting events in motion which would eventually lead to not one, but two of the greatest comebacks in memory.

The first comeback begs comparison, and frankly, only that of Lazarus comes directly to mind. 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 "closed head injury" which caused massive, long-term swelling about his brain. His "death" was inadvertently reported in the local paper. Comeback Number One.

Awaking from a coma a month later, Bell embarked on a courageous, decade-long journey to re-claim his identity, his music, his career--in short, his Self. Initially unable to balance, to stand, to speak, to taste food, to remember his own music or to manipulate his reconstructed arm, Vince Bell set about rebuilding himself with the aid of family, friends, physical and psychological therapists and, above all, Herculean will and determination. The whole terrifying but ultimately uplifting saga is told by Bell himself with extraordinary candor and insight in his gripping 1998 autobiography, "One Man's Music."

Rarely, if ever, has the old saw "that which doesn't kill us makes us stronger" been more fitting. With the aid of producer Bob Neuwirth and a luminous aggregation of musical friends (including Geoff Muldaur, Stephen Bruton, Mickey Raphael, John Cale, Victoria Williams and Lyle Lovett), Vince Bell punctuated his "second comeback" with the critically-acclaimed "Phoenix" in 1994 on Watermelon Records.

Itself a moving chronicle of his long ordeal, Phoenix eschews self-pity or back-patting, opting instead for epiphanous glimpses inside one man's struggle. The generally-stingy Musician Magazine cited Bell's songs as recalling "Robert Johnson in their stark intensity and Hank Williams in the country simplicity." Yikes.

Produced with crisp clarity by Robin Eaton, 1999's brand-spanking-new "Texas Plates" finds Vince Bell right back where he should have been all along-comfortably ensconced in the upper echelon of the songwriting guild. His singing voice continues to gain strength and expressiveness, and his writing voice expands deeper and broader into sublimely cogent observations. Despite (or perhaps because of) the long, hard roads traveled, there is glowing evidence of a heart as big as Texas in every corner of "Texas Plates."

But if those recordings showed Bell to be an inspirational singer, an astute bandleader and yet another skin-tingling Texas tunesmith washed in the blood of Townes, "Live In Texas" may qualify as Vince's debut as a high-wire act. Accompanied only by his own idiosyncratic rhythm guitar and the spare, yet breathtakingly lovely electric guitar lacework provided by Cam King, Bell places most of the considerable weight of nine terrific new original tunes and a pair of well-chosen covers squarely upon his battered suitcase of a voice.

There are, of course, myriad ways to deliver a song effectively. There are the lucky ones, the natural singers like The Mavericks' Raul Malo or the late Roy Orbison, who can dial up any note they can dream of, at any time, and with no perceptible effort. At the other end of the spectrum, there are those, best exemplified by Bob Dylan or Neil Young, who have more than compensated for their less-than-dulcet tones through hard work, timing, phrasing, a storyteller's ear and a large dose of that thing called "soul."

Well, Vince surely ain't no "Big O," but his inner drive is Herculean, his talespinning gifts are hypnotic and he's got more soul than a Muscle Shoals church picnic. Like a Victorian pump organ with a couple of mouse-holes in its bellows, Bell's vocal instrument is compressed and reedy, fairly reeking of the intense effort and passion with which it is charged.

All of which underscores the previous "high wire" allusion--Bell's music, while hauntingly beautiful, nevertheless creates an inescapable tension with his audience; there is an ever-present fear of falling which makes the listener lean into Vince's songs, to urge them on while holding one's breath. This is truly a magical thing--it is show business, and it is dangerous.

Throughout "Live In Texas," Vince Bell will have you mesmerized as you root both for him and for the subjects of his songs, and he does it all with only a mere slip of a net. He pulls if off with sweat and grace, and--to borrow a line from Bruce Cockburn's "Rumours Of Glory"--he "comes out shining like gold, but better..."