by Amy Smith, Alloway, NJ

In 1990 I was home from college in Ann Arbor MI. It was late August. Some girlfriends of mine bought tickets to an outdoor concert in Wisconsin and invited me to come along. It was Stevie Ray Vaughan, Eric Clapton and Robert Cray. We put sleeping bags in the trunk and drove about 5 hours to get to the show.

I wasn’t a huge fan of any of those artists before the show, being more of a punk/goth/euro person, but the show was amazing. Stevie Ray blew Clapton out of the water, even though Clapton was the headliner, and I remember him saying something about living every day like it’s your last. His brother Jimmy was on stage with him for some of the songs, and Stevie was really sweet and humble with him, saying his brother was a better player than him, and taught him everything he knew. For the encore, they all played “Sweet Home Chicago”.

The night was really foggy — I remember we had to drive about 10 miles an hour leaving the show. We had met a nice guy who lived nearby and let us sleep in his house. The next morning, driving back to A2, we heard that Stevie Ray’s helicopter had crashed in the fog. I felt so lucky to have seen him play live, and the “live fully” message and generosity of that performance have stayed with me.