The following article appeared in the July 2002 issue of the Illinois Entertainer, the interviewer is Arsenio Orteza.

Of all the people of whom it might be said that their not owning a turntable is a shame, the Chicago-born guitarist James Vincent is chief among them. "Yeah, I should get one sometime," he remarks casually via phone from his Idaho home. "I have a ton of records I’ve played on over the years."

Vincent, 59, is neither bragging nor exaggerating. Before establishing a successful if short-lived solo career on Caribou Records with Space Traveler (1975) and Waiting for the Rain (1978) -- albums that blended jazz, R&B, spirituality, and Vincent’s superlative singing into rich, soulful concoctions -- he’d been a studio guitarist at Chess Records (under the name Jim Donlinger, a truncation of his birth name, Dondelinger) and performed with the psychedelically experimental Aorta (Aorta, Aorta 2), Lovecraft (Valley Of The Moon), Jerry Garcia and Howard Wales (on their Hooteroll? tour), Cesar Ascarrunz (Cesar 830), and the Latin-rock combo Azteca (Azteca).

Judging from the "guestbook" at jamesvincent.net, Vincent isn’t alone in remembering his past fondly. "I played the hell out of [Space Traveler] when I was a disc jockey in the 70's and 80's in Dallas," writes a fan. "The music has stayed in my mind ever since." Writes another: "There has always been something very special and unique in your playing and composing. It was there in the first Aorta album and has carried through to this day, drawing me into a search for everything you have recorded. My collection numbers 11 albums so far." Writes a third: "In the circles I travel on the Internet, the first Aorta album is considered a psychedelic masterpiece, and in our humble opinions should go down in rock history as one of the all time greats, right up there with Sgt. Peppers’ and Electric Ladyland." And a fifth: "Stellar site! Didn't know you wuz another son of the South Side. We’ll have to chat more later on such topics as Old Town, Wabash, Michigan Ave, the rooming house at 18th & California...." The website itself, in fact, is the creation of an Australian Space Traveler fan. "He offered to do it for free of charge," says Vincent. "I was kind of blown away."

Despite the gratification Vincent takes from such appreciation, he launched the site not for nostalgic but for commercial purposes, namely to make available CD versions of his long-out-of-print solo albums and to notify his fans that as of 1997 he has been back in the music-making game. His first release was the mostly instrumental fusion-jazz Second Wind, followed last year by the career-spanning Greatest Hits and the all-new Pure Satisfaction. Mystery of Love -- which he describes as "kind of inspired by the Song Of Solomon" -- has just been completed.

As the guestbook comments indicate, people remember Vincent as much for his work with Aorta and Lovecraft as for his solo LPs. It was, however, his membership in another seminal Chicago band that would eventually affect his career the most. "The Exceptions was the band that I was in with Peter Cetera in the 60's," Vincent recalls, "but we had a parting of the ways. It was at that time of transition, when bands either wanted to stay secure in their little club gigs and do cover tunes or break away and do original material, and Peter did not want to break away. He wanted the security of $300-$400 a week, which back then was a lot of money. So we fired him."

Vincent laughs at what hindsight and numerous multi-platinum Chicago albums have revealed to be a trick played on The Exceptions by the hand of fate ("I even referred him to Terry Kath for what was called, at the time, the Chicago Transit Authority," he says). Vincent’s connection with Chicago-the-band, however, would eventually turn out to be significant. His friendships with Robert Lamm and James William Guercio (Chicago’s original overseer and Caribou Records CEO), for instance, led to his playing on the former’s 1974 album, Skinny Boy, and the latter’s financing his solo-album deal, respectively.

But it was his friendship with the band’s original guitarist that made Vincent privy to the darkest chapter in the Chicago story. "I was closer to Terry Kath than [I was to] anybody else in the band," he recalls, "but I felt like I’d failed the guy. I could see things coming that nobody else seemed to know, yet I didn’t give him the comfort he was looking for, and when he shot himself it blew my mind."

Official versions of the 24-year-old tragedy leave open Kath’s motives and state of mind at the time of the shooting (the chicagotheband.com website calls the self-inflicted shooting "accidental), and Vincent himself stops short of absolute certainty. "But I’ll tell you what happened. He went over to two of the roadies’ houses, and he always carried a 44 Magnum. He was playing around with his gun, and they said, ‘Terry, quit screwing around with that gun,’ and he said, ‘Don’t worry. It’s not loaded.’ He put it up to his head and pulled the trigger. That’s what happened. You go figure."

There had always been, according to Vincent, an understanding that he would be offered the guitarist’s slot should Kath ever leave the band, and six weeks later he was asked to join. He declined. One reason was the "huge Columbia contract" the group had hanging over its head at the time, a contract that required the formulaic cranking out of more music than they had in them. Another is that he had, in the wake of Space Traveler’s success, become a Christian. So unappealing to him was pop superstardom at the time that Caribou practically had to force him to record Space Traveler’s follow-up. When he did, it was only with the stipulation that he be allowed to express within it his newfound beliefs. "They said, ‘Oh, no problem,’" Vincent recalls, laughing, "but they didn’t quite know what that meant until Waiting For The Rain actually came out. They liked the music, but the words were quite offensive to a lot of people."

In retrospect, it’s hard to understand the objections. Not only were the formal qualities of the music as high as Space Traveler’s, but the lyrics, especially by the haphazard standards of "contemporary Christian music," were notably well crafted. Nevertheless, Vincent soon found himself without a contract, and not long after recording another excellent Christian album, Enter In, for Sparrow Records in 1980, he retired.

He hadn’t played for years when in 1986 he was asked by Danny Seraphine to audition for Chicago again. He didn’t get the job, but his interest in performing was re-awakened, and a decade later -- his professional, personal, and spiritual conflicts finally resolved -- he founded BRJ Records and began work on Second Wind. "Space Traveler and Waiting for the Rain created kind of a cult following," Vincent observes. "Some days I’ll get a lot of orders, and some days I’ll just get a couple, so I can’t say, ‘This is my retirement, ’ but it’s doing quite well, and it seems to be growing."

For Vincent fans both old and new, such news is good indeed.