It's after sunset in Austin, Texas, and a blues fan might think she'd died and gone to heaven. The smell of barbecue wafts down the street from the front door of Antone's; inside the club, roughly the size and shape of a barn, pictures of legends like Stevie Ray Vaughan and Albert Collins adorn the walls. Legendary Texas songbird Marcia Ball introduces singer Toni Price, who came to Austin from Nashville in 1989 and has since become a mainstay of the blues community.

"Blues has a pretty good foothold [in Texas]," says Price. "I think it was even stronger 10 years ago." That's something of an understatement; Texas blues is as much a sound as it is a region, and it's one being explored by musicians who aren't from Texas themselves.

Call it the Stevie Ray Vaughan Effect. Though Vaughan wasn't the first well-known musician to come from Texas, and it remains to be seen whether his influence will be as long-lasting as others' (W.C. Clark, Albert Collins, and Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown come to mind), his brief but overwhelming star status has led many to equate him with the Texas sound.

But as outstanding as Vaughan was, there's more to Texas blues than his instantly recognizable big-guitar sound. Austin guitarist Guy Forsyth's 1999 release, Can You Live Without, is an appealing mix of flavors, of which blues is only the most predominant. Like Price, who began with rock and country music in Nashville, Forsyth likes to mix a bit of country into his material, with forays into swing and rock. "You want a song to take you somewhere," Forsyth explains. "If the music is comprised of too many recognizable parts, like a Stevie Ray Vaughan guitar sound and a big-rock drum kit, it's hard to get people past that." Forsyth favors a more low-key approach that's still evocative and intense, as on "Calico Girl" where the music supports the images described in the song's lyrics.

Price, too, favors the evocative approach. "I think of myself as an interpreter," she says. Not a songwriter herself, she works with a variety of material, some of it well known (as with "Comes Love," on her 1999 release Lowdown and Up), and much of it written for her by songwriter friends. "Most of the songs I do, no one else has ever recorded," she explains. "It's all me telling stories, you know? That's what I do." Price's vision of herself as a storyteller suits her style very well, as she's equally at home with country ballads and upbeat blues.

But then, variety is the spice of Texas blues. W.C. Clark, called the "Godfather of Austin blues," is equally comfortable with soul and R&B, while longtime Texas mainstay Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown dislikes being called a bluesman, for the very good reason that the term describes only a part of what he does. On his 1999 release Blackjack, Brown is all over the musical map, roaming from blues to jazz to country and back, performing on guitar, harmonica, and fiddle with equal aplomb.

That's not to say, though, that there's no room in Texas blues for that straightforward, guitar-driven Vaughan sound--even if the guitarist's heirs apparent are from somewhere other than Texas. On their 1999 release Things We Do, the band Indigenous, led by guitarist Mato Nanji, are bidding fair to assume the Stevie Ray mantle. This is especially evident in their live shows, for while the album is chock full of good songs and strong performances from all four members, in concert they go into full overdrive. And, like Vaughan, they're on the road almost constantly.

Walking down Austin's famous Sixth Street on a cool night, music pours from almost every door. A lot of it's blues. A lot of it isn't but owes something to a music that has achieved a vibrancy in Texas quite unlike anywhere else. "I worked for years to get a foundation," Forsyth says. "To know how to play different types of roots music, from country to Cajun to all the different types of blues ... if you just say blues, that has so much in it."