Long Way From Home

You are locked into The Vaughan Brothers and a cut that still feels like a letter from the road, "Long Way From Home," track six on Family Style. This is the only studio album the Dallas brothers ever made together, and it landed on Epic on September 25, 1990, just under a month after Stevie Ray Vaughan was killed in that helicopter crash outside East Troy, Wisconsin. The song runs three minutes and fifteen seconds. Stevie takes the lead vocal. Both brothers play guitar. Al Berry holds the bass, Larry Aberman keeps the drums, and Richard Hilton sits in on piano. Nile Rodgers produced it and mixed it with engineer John Goldberger. Bob Ludwig mastered the album. It is blues-rock with a tighter pocket than the Double Trouble live fire, and it still sounds like Oak Cliff.

Stevie Ray Vaughan and Doyle Bramhall wrote it. Bramhall was the longtime Dallas writing partner, drummer, and vocalist who had already co-written so much of the Double Trouble book, and he plays drums elsewhere on Family Style. Here the drum chair belongs to Aberman, a New York player Rodgers brought into the sessions. The lyric is a traveler's complaint with a crossroads in the middle of it. Look over here, look over there, friends on every side, and none of it points the way home. Somebody is always telling him where it is at. He has heard that speech before. He is standing at the crossroads, about to move on down the line, a million miles from nowhere. Then Stevie leans into the mic the way he used to on a bandstand and calls the room in: are you ready, let's go. The solo that follows is not a marathon. It is a short, singing break, Stratocaster tone with the edge sanded just enough that Jimmie's rhythm guitar can sit under it. Hilton's piano fills the spaces the way a Texas roadhouse piano should, never crowding the brothers.

Family Style was recorded in 1990 at three rooms: Ardent Studios in Memphis, the Dallas Sound Lab, and Skyline Studios in New York. Rodgers, the Chic guitarist who had already produced David Bowie and Madonna, was an unusual pick for two Texas blues guitarists, and that was the point. Stevie had talked for years about making a record with his older brother. Jimmie Vaughan had come up first, out of the same Oak Cliff living room, through the Swinging Pendulums and the Fabulous Thunderbirds, the man who handed Stevie records, showed him licks, and then watched the younger brother become the bigger name. The album was the handshake they had been promising their mother. The printed notes close with a line that still stops a room: thanks Mama V. for letting us play. Martha Vaughan raised both of them. That dedication is the whole story in one sentence.

The record peaked at number seven on the Billboard 200. It won a Grammy for Best Contemporary Blues Album, and the instrumental "D/FW" won Best Rock Instrumental Performance. "Tick Tock," written by Jimmie with Rodgers and Jerry Lynn Williams, was the single that carried Stevie's voice onto the radio after he was gone. "Long Way From Home" never had that kind of push. It sits on side two of the vinyl, right after the steel-guitar instrumental "Hillbillies From Outerspace" and right before "Tick Tock." On the original Epic LP, catalog Z 46225, it is the first cut of side two. Listeners who bought the disc for the hit often found this one later, the way you find a back-road cut on a KZEW album hour. It does not shout. It states the distance and keeps walking.

Jimmie Lawrence Vaughan was born March 20, 1951, in Dallas. Stephen Ray Vaughan arrived October 3, 1954. They grew up in Oak Cliff, a few miles from the clubs that would later book both of them. Jimmie was the record collector and the older hand on the guitar. By the middle of the 1970s he was the stingy, tone-first guitarist in the Fabulous Thunderbirds, the Austin band that cut "Tuff Enuff" and made Gulf Coast blues swing for a national audience. Stevie came up behind him, through Blackbird, Triple Threat, and then Double Trouble with Tommy Shannon and Chris Layton. Texas Flood in 1983 turned the younger brother into the guitarist every rock station in America had to play. Couldn't Stand the Weather, Soul to Soul, and In Step followed. In Step, released in 1989 after Stevie got sober, is the record where the singing and the writing caught up with the hands.

The brothers had shared stages for years. They traded solos. They sat in. They argued the way brothers argue and then got back on the bandstand. A full album was harder. Schedules, labels, and the simple fact that each man had his own band kept getting in the way. When the Family Style sessions finally happened, Rodgers kept the arrangements spare and the tempos honest. Stevie did not have to burn the fretboard on every chorus. Jimmie did not have to play the Thunderbirds book. They met in the middle: Texas blues phrasing, a New York rhythm section, a producer who understood a hook. "Good Texan" let Jimmie sing. "Brothers," the closing instrumental, let them talk with guitars and a little spoken word. "Long Way From Home" is the quiet confession in between, Stevie out on the highway with Jimmie riding shotgun on the rhythm.

Stevie Ray Vaughan died on August 27, 1990, after a show at Alpine Valley Music Theatre with Eric Clapton, Buddy Guy, Robert Cray, and Jimmie on the bill. The album was already finished. Epic released it on September 25. Jimmie has said in the years since that the world misses the music and he misses his brother, and he has kept the Texas blues chair warm with the Tilt-A-Whirl Band, solo records, and the Grammy-winning work that followed. A documentary, Jimmie and Stevie Ray Vaughan: Brothers in Blues, tells the story in their own circle: Jimmie, Clapton, Rodgers, Jackson Browne, Billy Gibbons, and the early bandmates. The statue on Auditorium Shores in Austin and the park in Cockrell Hill, near the old Oak Cliff streets, are the public markers. The record is the private one.

"Long Way From Home" is the cut you play when the request line wants the brothers and not just the hits. It is three minutes of a man who has friends everywhere and still cannot see the porch light. Stevie's vocal is close to the mic, a little frayed, no shout. Jimmie's guitar answers in short phrases instead of speeches. When the solo ends, the last verse comes back and the distance has not closed. A million miles from nowhere is still a long way from home. That is the whole song, and it is why it belongs on a freeform rock station that still plays album sides.

The Vaughan Brothers made one album. This is the deep cut on it. Spin it loud, then go read the rest of the story with the people who keep the music in the room. The Zoo is at https://thezoorocks.com/. Stevie Ray Vaughan's official site is https://srvofficial.com/. Jimmie Vaughan's official site is https://www.jimmievaughan.com/. Jimmie on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jimmievaughanofficial. Jimmie on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jimmievaughanofficial/. Jimmie on X: https://x.com/JimmieVaughan. The Brothers in Blues documentary site, the fan-facing home for the Vaughan brothers film, is https://brothersinbluesdoc.com/.