Stevie Ray Vaughan’s meteoric career has been the subject of several books and documentary films, but none of these biographies had the cooperation of the person who knew Stevie best — his older brother Jimmie.

Until now. “Jimmie and Stevie Ray Vaughan: Brothers in Blues” has enjoyed the full support of Jimmie Vaughan, from sitting for interviews to sharing never-before-seen family photos, but also contains the memories of Stevie’s contemporaries — Eric Clapton, Billy Gibbons, Jackson Browne and Nile Rodgers — as well as a host of the Vaughan brothers’ early bandmates in Oak Cliff.

Last month the historic Paramount Theater in Austin hosted the premiere of the film to a sold-out crowd of 1,200 people, which included pop music artists Kathy Valentine of the Go Gos and Gary Clark, Jr.

The screening is the culmination of nearly five years of work by Fort Stockton resident Kirby Warnock. You don’t normally hear “Fort Stockton” and “Hollywood” in the same sentence, but Warnock was able to pull it off with the help of the internet and Jimmie Vaughan.

Interviews were filmed in Los Angeles, Austin, Oak Cliff, and Midland. But, all of the editing, audio mixing and film correction was done via the internet using the app, Adobe Premiere.

The application allows for several people to work collaboratively online to edit a film without having to be in the same studio.

“I did all of it from my little office about six miles out of Fort Stockton,” Warnock said. “Sandy Schwartz and Chase Arrington helped me edit it from their studios in Miami and Los Angeles, then Frank Pittenger did the audio mix from Dallas. But we were all working from the same digital file that was up in the cloud. It’s just amazing that this new technology permits this.”

The film was picked up by Freestyle Media, which is owned by Byron Allen out of Hollywood, and is now available on AppleTV, iTunes, Amazon, Vudu, Sling and YouTube to rent, or purchase. DVD copies of the film may be ordered from Amazon.

Interviews with Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top were shot at the Midland Horseshoe Arena just before a concert there, while Eric Clapton was filmed at his hotel in Los Angeles the day before a concert at the LA Forum. Jackson Browne was interviewed in his studio in Santa Monica, while Nile Rodgers was captured in Dallas just before his show at the American Airlines Center.

Unlike other Texas blues players who went on to national fame after moving to California (Janis Joplin, Johnny Winter and Steve Miller), the Vaughan brothers remained in the Lone Star State, playing Texas nightclubs without the media coverage of Rolling Stone, Creem, Circus or The Village Voice.

Although Jimmie and Stevie built up a large and rabid fan base, it was all located in “flyover country” decades before the Internet, Tik-Tok or cell phones. That made getting signed to a record label much more difficult.

During this time, they built a reputation among the greatest rock stars of that era as being “a guitar player’s guitar player,” and soon celebrities such as Bob Dylan, Dickey Betts, Duane Allman, Billy Gibbons, Robert Plant, Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi, Mick Jagger and Muddy Waters were flocking to their shows in Texas bars at The Rome Inn, Antone’s and Mother Blues.

Now, the entire tale, with plenty of neverbefore- told stories, is available for streaming online at https://www. freestyledigitalmedia. tv/ film/brothers-in-blues/.

For more information, call 214-600-5861 or email kirby@bigbendquarterly. com.