In this respect, Tommy Shannon is one of the chosen few.

Known mainly for his 10 years as the strapping bass in Double Trouble behind Stevie Ray Vaughan, Shannon today touches people in many other intimate and personal ways. Since his days as a young bass player behind Johnny Winter to his struggles with substances to his musical ascendancy with Stevie to his descent into addiction to his recovery and spirituality today, Tommy Shannon can offer anyone willing to listen a template for surviving life’s trials.

Most everyone crowds Tommy to hear the "what was it like playing with Stevie" stories. Though he’ll readily share those, there’s a more crucial Stevie story Shannon is compelled to tell, the dark days of their drug and alcohol addiction that hindered every step the duo took.

Blues legend whispers of men like Robert Johnson selling their souls to Legba at dark, rural crossroads. Today’s musician sells to a different devil. "You don’t consciously think, I’m selling my soul to the devil. But as time goes on, you start realizing this behavior (alcohol and drug abuse) is not right. It violates all the values of human decency," said Shannon.

"That is one of the biggest errors of judgement in life. Not only for people who use drugs, but for everyone because today is really the only thing we have. It’s how we handle that and how we choose to look at life. I think the beautiful part is when you really make touch with the present. The now. And you realize that tomorrow is going to take care of itself. There will be pain, and there will be joy, and there will all kinds of changes and experiences; as it unfolds, just participate and don’t push your will on it and try and control everything. Instead, use everything to learn."

In the anything-goes Eighties, Shannon and Stevie found that also included any substance. As the band got more popular, people who had cocaine or drugs were easily granted back stage access. Those without were brushed aside. "When we were really still abusing all this stuff, the people that could really help us couldn’t get near us. Only people who had dope could come on back stage. I remember I was at this party one night, and I was kind of struck by this guy because he seemed real calm and clear minded. He didn’t stay very long. I started talking to him and I said, ‘Man, here you want some cocaine?’ He said, ‘No thank you, I can’t do that stuff anymore.’ I remember I just shriveled inside. And I thought, ‘Oh my God, what I’d give to have that kind of courage.’"

Shannon vividly describes the dark journey before getting to that new life as a living death with no control anymore. When you’re throwing up blood and hung over, the easy way to eliminate that pain is turn back to the alcohol or drugs. That endless cycle of self-destruction sneaks up you like a comforting friend. "We used to get high and party all the time, but even back then, you could tell no one was very happy. It doesn’t matter if you’re a musician or what you are, we are all human and we do have something in common. When we start violating our own spirit, it lets us know. It starts nagging at us constantly, either die or start living a life based on spiritual principals. There is no in between, no other way."

The insidious nature of substance abuse fools the user into believing the art created is breaking new ground. More often, the journey is blocked by the substance or the never-ending quest for the next numbing. "That’s a manic high that forces you into thinking, ‘I am so great right now.’ Deep down inside, I knew that someday I was going to hit that brick wall. Stevie and I hit it right about the same time. Chris and Reese were not as addictive in nature. They would drink with us, but they would wake up the next day and not do it. Take some aspirin and go on with their lives. We never stopped. We never had a hangover because we never stopped. There was no human power that could help us.

"I remember about six months before Stevie and I got clean and sober, we knew we were in trouble. It was about four o’clock in the morning and we were sitting in a hotel room in Dallas. We had this big pile of cocaine, probably two ounces, and liquor in the room. And we were sitting there trying to stop, trying to stop and we were scared, you know. We actually got down on our knees together and prayed. And it was a very sincere, deep prayer. It wasn’t a drug high prayer. It was a pure desperate cry for help. Now the thing is, we got up and went back and did some more cocaine and drinking, but the prayer was answered. It’s a wonderful thing to discover after you hit that bottom, that there’s a way out."

Shannon calls that prayer the turning point for both. Broken inside, they reached rock bottom. On October 13, 1986, they checked themselves into treatment, Stevie in Atlanta and Shannon in Austin, and began the 12-step program to recovery. But the question that nags every musician who is also a recovering addict was still to be answered, ‘Will I still be able to play my music?’

"Stevie and I were scared to death to go in and do that first record In Step, when we were clean and sober. We were terrified because we had never done anything like that in our lives. We were thinking, what if we just don’t have it anymore? Then as we started making the record we started relaxing a little more and had more and more fun, and we realized we could do this. We discovered a more disciplined and realistic approach instead of the manic approach that drugs gave. You can tell on In Step our playing is better than any of our other records. It’s like dealing with all the stuff for the first time with your eyes wide open."

"I was so nervous on our first live show that I almost threw up. I kept looking out through these curtains at this outdoor venue. There were about 10,000 people there, and I kept looking out there going, ‘Oh my God.’"

From that day in 1986, Stevie and Double Trouble set the music scene ablaze like a comet streaking through the night sky. In retrospect, Stevie became that comet, brilliantly lighting the night sky, then disappearing all too quickly. Shannon’s greatest test of faith was to come in August of 1990, the day after Stevie’s untimely death. "I was so devastated that I can’t even put into words how dark was my life was. If I heard the music on the radio, it made about as much sense to me as the sound of a chainsaw. I’d look outside and it’d seem like the trees and the birds were mourning the fact that Stevie’d died. It was so dark. Just like life was gone, a dark path. And the faith that I built in my program recovery crumbled."

At times like this relapse is almost expected, yet Shannon found a greater power guiding him through the darkness. "What’s so strange is it never once crossed my mind to go drink. All I can say is a power greater than myself was taking care of me because that would have been a perfect opportunity to do that. My faith was crumbled and I couldn’t hardly leave my house, get up and go the store, I was afraid to go outside or go get something to eat. It was like nobody talk to me, just don’t say hi, don’t say nothing to me, please. Just leave me alone."

"I learned a deep lesson there. The faith that I had had up until that time was very shallow. I had to develop a deeper faith and develop the complete reality of death and its impermanence and suffering in life. It’s a fact. Whether we like it or not, it’s the truth. So the faith that I have been building is based upon that reality. It’s not based upon getting everything I want. That’s not what it’s about. For the first four years, that’s the kind of faith I had. It’s hard to see at first when you actually live through it and you start working and keep working your program and start developing that deeper kind of faith."

"It’s not a pessimistic outlook, it’s very liberating. Sometimes I get caught up in the games, and when I do, I get miserable. And then I’ll work my way out of it back where I feel that I’m standing on the right ground again and I see the beauty of it. Everything changes. It’s like there is constant rebirth too. But if you attach yourself to things, it makes you miserable because inevitably, you’re gonna lose them."

"But there’s a certain beauty in seeing things as they are and letting them go, enjoying them in the moment and then when they pass, seeing the next moment as something brand new, a newness to life. That’s where true freedom is. That’s where the freedom and the faith really deepen. It’s like this old saying, 'if you can find faith in the middle of hell, then it’s real.'"

It took Shannon weeks to begin to play his music after Stevie’s death. "Maybe six weeks later I got to where I’d go out and listen to a band a little bit, and they’d ask me to sit in. I found out it made me feel better to just get up there and play. It wasn’t Stevie, which was a let down because nobody can do what Stevie did. But it’s like I was saying, you need to find enjoyment with what’s there. I started enjoying it and I noticed that it makes me feel better to play, so I started playing more and that started helping me more."

"Then we decided to put the Arc Angels together just like a little side project, just to play around town. None of us were even taking it seriously and then all of a sudden places we started playing were packed. But it was all like a big accident; a gift that came together for us that we really weren’t expecting."

Shannon and Stevie’s experiences go back to the 70’s on the Texas blues scene. The decades distill to single moments that epitomize SRV. "I saw that in him when I first met him. It was 1969 and I'd left Johnny Winter, flew back to Dallas and I went to a club called 'the Fog' where all my friends hung out. I was walking in and I heard this guitar player, and it just struck me."

"There was this real awkward looking, scrawny, 14 year-old kid up there. I knew then that he had something special. Back then he was like all kids. He was copying Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix and blues guys. He hadn’t developed his own thing yet, but Stevie was so passionate. He loved it so deeply. He put on a guitar and something happened. It’s like he went to a different state of consciousness. And you could see it and feel this pure source of energy go right through him."

Shannon saw Stevie again in 1978 and the growth was obvious. "In 1978, I hadn’t seen him in several years because I had gone through my own troubles with jail. I went to the Rome Inn in Austin where he was playing, and I could see he was already developing his own style. It just blew me away; I couldn’t believe how good he was."

It was almost a spiritual calling that forced Shannon into the band in 1981. "When I joined the band, it was Chris and Stevie and Jackie Newhouse was playing bass. They were playing in a club in Houston, and I was living in Houston at the time. I remember I looked in the paper and saw that Stevie was playing. I haven’t seen him in a while, so I went down there."

"I remember I walked in and it was like a revelation. Something just hit me right between the eyes, and I knew that’s where I belonged. I said, 'that’s where I belong,' and I told Stevie that. I had never done anything like that in my life. I’m not ashamed of it. I said, ‘Stevie, I belong in this band with you.’ And I didn’t care who was listening. I had to say it. He asked me to sit in, and we had a great time."

Two weeks later, Newhouse was fired and Stevie had his longtime musical idol in the band. "We were touring around the country in this milk truck we called the African Queen. We had a couch behind the front seats, and all our equipment behind that. And we had rigged up this bed where you crawled up there and every time you hit the breaks, the bed would slide forward. We were touring around the country in that thing making $200 each a week. But we loved what we were doing."

"We were like a family. Stevie was not the kind of person who liked to be on his own. We’d do anything for each other. Most important, we all had a common goal and drive. Chris and my role was to play the best we could for Stevie. Stevie never played anything the same way twice, unless it was the main riff of the song or something. But he would just all of a sudden go to a change knowing we’d be right there. He wouldn’t turn around and tell anybody. Sometimes I’d do a bass line running down, walk down and get it to go right down with him. So it was like this intuitive thing we were doing."

"I feel like ultimately that’s what a bass player’s role is, to be the bridge between the drums and Stevie. I don’t play all these real fast licks because there is nothing that feels as good as to just find that pulse. When you find that, you flow with it, and when the whole band is doin’ it, it feels wonderful. Like a sweet spot in time, and it doesn’t matter if you’re playing one note or a thousand, as long as you’re there."

After their 1986 rebirth and their spiritual vision 20/20, Stevie and Double Trouble embarked on a road schedule that introduced millions to his music, and the music Stevie honored since childhood. Austin had been the epicenter of Texas blues in the Seventies and Eighties. When Clifford Antone opened Antone’s and booked legends like Memphis Slim, Muddy Waters, Buddy Guy, Albert Collins and every other Chicago legend, Jimmie and Stevie Ray Vaughan were always in attendance. "Clifford has had a profound impact on this town and the whole blues scene here. If it wasn’t for him, I don’t think Jimmie or Stevie would have done as good as they did because when they were real young, he had this club and he brought in blues men like Muddy Waters and Jimmy Reed. Stevie and Jimmie’d be there. Sometimes they’d get to sit in and play with these guys. So Clifford put them through his school of blues."

According to Shannon, when the masters heard Stevie, they knew he had the true inner calling to play. "They could see it. When they’d come to our shows or we played shows with them, they’d be on the side of the stages smiling and kind of dancing along. You’d see them nudge each other, smile and point at Stevie like yeah, that guy is good. And he was so respectful of those guys too. Success never changed him. Those people were his heroes. He knew where that music came from and what his role in it all was. That’s one of the beautiful things about Stevie."

In an odd twist, it is Tommy Shannon who has been granted the opportunity to channel the music of Stevie and the masters he has shared the stage with like Muddy Waters. "I got to play with Muddy Waters when I was playing with Johnny Winter. That was before we had ever put out a record or anything. We were right here in Austin at the Vulcan Gas Company and Muddy Waters played there with his band. At the end, we had this big jam session. I got up there with Muddy Waters, and I couldn’t believe it. It’s like, I’m up here with Muddy Waters and he didn’t kick me off the stage. I was just twenty years old, and thinking this is unbelievable, Muddy Waters. It can’t possibly get any better than Muddy Waters. That is the purest. It’s the same with people like B.B. King and Albert Collins, those people were all truth. There are no added fringes on the outside. Pure current. And when it gets that pure, what are you going to do to improve it?"

Shannon’s story goes back even further. He grew up in Dumas, Texas, and moved to Dallas after he graduated from high school. At that point, his blues education was simple, a Jimmy Reed song on the radio or Sam Cooke’s soulful singing. "Before I ever heard the term soul music it dawned on me. It was so different, that stuff touches your soul. But I had no idea until I got out of high school and moved to Dallas just how deep it was. Working with Johnny Winter taught me the depth."

"When I got with Johnny, I was so ignorant about the blues. I’d listen to all these bands, Cream and all these new blues bands at the time, and I’d see the writers of the song were names like Robert Johnson and I’d think, he must be a friend of theirs. Johnny sat me down one night. He had a whole wall of records from current all the way back to field hollers. He took me through the whole collection, playing and explaining everything about it. He’s an encyclopedia of the blues."

"After I went through that process and I listened to all the stuff, all the way back to the beginning, when I picked up my bass and started playing the blues, it was just the most natural thing I had ever done. It just seemed to be there. But I owe Johnny that debt of gratitude. Because I had no idea until I got with Johnny just how and where things really came from."

At 20, Shannon was blown away by Winter’s appearance and talent. "I met Johnny at the same place I met Stevie in Dallas, this club called "The Fog" down on Lemon Avenue. I was playing in this soul band and Johnny didn’t have a bass player. Johnny blew me away. He was playing and singing his ass off. I thought ‘God, this guy is beautiful and he is talented.’ He asked me if I wanted to join the band, so I quit my gig, and I had a good paying gig, and moved to Houston. We starved our ass off for a while. We couldn’t get hired anywhere. Then we started getting jobs in the Fillmore in New York, the Boston Tea Party and I think the Back Bay Theater in Boston." Eventually, that led Shannon to be playing behind Winter at Woodstock in 1969.

As a rhythm section, Double Trouble is as well known and respected a duo for hire as the Memphis Horns. Put Shannon and Layton on a record and you have something special. From the Arc Angels early in the 1990’s to Storyville’s reign from 1994 to 1998, the pair has had its share musical exposure in the 1990’s.

Storyville was the all-star collaboration of a few of Austin’s finest musicians, Shannon, Layton, guitarists David Grissom, David Holt, and vocalist Malford Milligan. From their first Monday at Antone’s, there was a common purpose to the direction. In 1998, Storyville separated under friendly circumstances. After the break-up of Storyville in 1998, Shannon and Layton concentrated on their own recording. "Chris and I are doing our own record now. We’re not trying to recreate what we had with Stevie. There is one Stevie and trying to capture that would be a big let down for everyone and us. But what we’re trying to do is just make a good record. It’s gonna have some good blues on it. It’s gonna have some other kind of rock stuff that’s a little different, but it’s not a pop album by any means."

Happily, there is an optimistic ending to the years of personal suffering. Since he plucked his first bass note with Johnny Winter, Tommy Shannon, clean and sober since 1986, has been blessed with the task of interpreting the music of the legends he has hooked vibes with for three decades. New fans who’ll never witness the pure power surge of Stevie can still behold the magic through Shannon’s spirit.

"People have asked me what was the best gig you could ever remember with Stevie, and the only honest answer I could give them was the whole ten years I played for him. Every night he did something amazing. Nothing has been as rewarding as playing with Stevie. That was a once-in-a lifetime blessing. A perfect situation."