Stoll Vaughan Bounces Back from RV Blaze

Garnering comparisons to Townes Van Zandt and young Bruce Springsteen, and with an opening spot on the Fall 2006 Journey/Def Leppard tour, it wouldn't be a long shot to say that young singer-songwriter Stoll Vaughan's career is smoking.

Unfortunately, however, "smoking" is exactly what his tour RV was doing recently while being towed after it broke down outside of Atlantic City, N.J.-- just before it burst into flames.

Although the Kentucky-born, introspective alt.country fledgeling was unable to salvage anything besides his now slightly-toasted Gibson Hummingbird guitar-- everything from Vaughan's own computer to photos and video from the tour and the songbooks containing his lyrics were destroyed in the blaze-- his veteran tourmates came to the rescue.

Just in time for the tour's next stop in Boston, the bands and their crews took up a collection to offset the cost of Vaughan's personal losses, and Journey guitarist Neil Schon donated a guitar to ensure that the show would, indeed, go on.

Vaugahn says he's taking the tragedy in stride, noting that the unintentional purging of his catalogue may actually have positive repercussions. “This is just an unfortunate event, but there’s a lot of positives in my life. When you have nothing, the closeness to your music becomes more apparent,” he said in a statement. “You can’t lose your songs, they’re ingrained in your psyche – at least the good ones are. The bad ones were meant to be lost."

Vaughan's second album, Love Like a Mule, was released on September 16th, 2006.

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