About Stevie
The Stevie in StevieSnacks refers to the one and only Stevie Ray Vaughan. I pretty much assumed that anyone who finds this site already knows that, but just in case, let me write my personal thoughts on who he was.
What Stevie Meant To Me
Stevie Ray Vaughan’s music rescued me from something I couldn’t identify because I didn’t know what it was. That thing was depression. Looking back now, I remember even as a teenager having severe bouts of depression when it felt like my world was caving in. Times when I couldn’t sleep, didn’t feel like eating. There was a pain inside that I thought was just the result of bad luck with girls. But the way it affected me was on another level from simple teenage heartbreak.
Those feelings would come and go, but I knew there was something inside of me that I couldn’t explain. Couldn’t put into words. Didn’t know any music that could express it. For that matter, I didn’t even know that it was something to be expressed. All I knew is that it hurt, bad. The pain of having no way to show how you really feel inside because you’re also desperate for people to like you.
I heard Stevie’s music right before my first year of college. The album was “The Sky Is Cryin”, and the song was the same. I was working at Clair Brother’s Audio in Lititz, PA a the time, in the speaker department, building these huge speakers for some U2 tour or something. We had a serious sound system there for testing the speakers, and the album was cranked. I remember clear as day telling a co-worker: “Now THAT, is how I want to play guitar”.
Fast forward a few months. I had already seen Stevie on SNL playing “Say What”. I had already been transfixed as I watched him destroy that stage with his guitar and wah-wah pedal. I had already caught the bug. But I still didn’t know why.
Then one day while visiting my parents on break from college, I rented “Live at El Mocambo”. I watched with some interest until he got to Texas Flood. Again, I was glued to my seat. I couldn’t move. In the words of Neo from the Matrix, I felt “Something’s different”. As Stevie ripped into the solo, he starts off with his trademark bend, the Albert King influence coming through strong, and as he begins the response to the first bend, he starts bending that big fat 12 gauge string up, up, till you think your soul is going to start bleeding. The camera looks down the neck at the guitar, he leans front turns his face to the camera and I saw something that changed my life.
At 29 minutes and 36 seconds into that DVD, my life made sense in a way I had never experienced before.
In that instant, Stevie looked exactly like how I felt. His guitar sounded like how I felt like screaming for reasons I didn’t even know. For the first time, I was watching someone do something that looked and sounded the way I felt inside . If you could paint a picture of what I felt all those times I was angry, frustrated, and felt like my world was caving in, it would like like Stevie in that moment, bending that string, giving it everything he had.
After that day, I still had plenty of times where I felt that dread, that anxiety, that depression. But I knew that there was a way for me to let it out.
Some people learn to play like Stevie because they are amazed by his skill. I learned because I had to.