Vince Bell’s 75th

Vince Bell brings his new spoken word/music album Break My Heart live for the first time to the city it was recorded. An intimate evening with Texas native musician/poet Vince Bell and guest musicians from Break My Heart and OJO, Vince Bell’s two spoken word/music albums, expanding his rich, acclaimed music catalogue. Ojo was produced in 2018 in Brooklyn, New York, by Bob Neuwirth, Dave Soldier and Patrick Derivaz.  Dedicated to Bob Neuwirth, who died in May 2022, Break My Heart also recorded in Brooklyn in 2024, produced by Soldier and Derivaz, released in 2026.

A Texas native, Vince was an emerging star from the Houston music scene in the 70s; Anderson Fair was home, an incubator for legends in roots americana – Townes Van Zandt, Guy Clark, were his friends and mentors, Nanci Griffith, Lyle Lovett, Lucinda Willaims and many more graced the stage and ate the free bowls of spaghetti provided for all musicians, all featured in the acclaimed documentary, “Anderson Fair: For the Sake of Song.” Known as a singer songwriter, a roots and americana troubadour;  from the beginning his lyrics, prose distinguished him. His Houston friend and mentor Townes Van Zandt called him a poet; references like “his songs are more Jacque Brel than Woody Guthrie”; Nanci Griffith, Lyle Lovett and others from those 70s Houston/Anderson Fair days recorded Vince’s songs, Griffith saying, “he was the best of us”.

A car accident in Austin, 1982, hit by a drunk driver after a session recording a demo for his debut album, changed the trajectory of Vince’s life. A six-year recovery turned into 12 to heal his body, relearn how to play guitar; and relearn how to use a mind with a serious traumatic brain injury. Vince wrote voraciously during this time, in notebooks, scraps of paper, anywhere he could write. This became his memoir of the experience, One Man’s Music, which also was developed into a one-man show and DVD, and was choreographed by the Houston Ballet.

Vince was introduced to Bob Neuwirth in 1993. In Neuwirth, the celebrated producer/artist/musician, whose vision of producing was more as a “generous instigator” and “collaborative catalyst” (Pitchfork). In Neuwirth Vince found his kindred spirit. His history includes Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Review, muse for Patti Smith, Janis Joplin, and much more; Neuwirth produced Vince’s long awaited debut Phoenix in 1994 and he was the incandescent presence in Vince’s life  until the day he died in 2022.

Neuwirth never stopped encouraging Vince to write more – he’d tease “you don’t want to be writing music sets forever do you? Moving to Santa Fe in the early 2000s was pivotal for Vince, the adobe house in the mountains became the birthplace of Vince’s WayWords. Bob recruited producing, musician veterans Dave Soldier and Patrick Derivaz, also engineering, an exceptional top shelf of players to record OJO. Though dubbed a poet by Van Zandt, T-Bone Burnett calling OJO “shamanism”, it is with Break My Heart that Vince deepens his commitment to the written word, always pushing himself to create something new.

As Vince says in Create the Love:

Create the libretto and you’ve written an opera. Create the outline and you’ve written a book. Create more time and you’ve made room for tomorrow. Create a fresh perspective and you can change the world.