Jimmie Vaughan: Tuff Enuff--and Then Some : Pop music: His playing has never been more direct than on ‘Strange Pleasure,’ his first solo album and his first recording since the death of brother Stevie Ray.

For all the talk one hears about music being the universal language, folks rarely get around to mentioning what’s actually being said with it.

In the interest of science, let’s take an average rock guitar solo--it scarcely matters which, just as long as it’s one with zillions of screechy notes and dive-bomb effects--and let’s run it through the universal-translator device to see what really is being communicated:

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“Hey, look at me! Me, me, me! Whooee, am I terrific or what? Hold on, here comes another thunderbolt from Olympus! Wow! I am one undisputed love monkey! Me, me, me! Look out, lawdy mama! . . .”

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That’s pretty much par for the course, though there are, thankfully, glorious exceptions, and Jimmie Vaughan is one.

For nearly two decades, since he emerged in 1975 as one of the Fabulous Thunderbirds, Vaughan’s guitar solos have been akin to the terse, lean prose of a good detective writer, the kind that’s steeped in cool but never masks honest emotion. And like all the best music, it defies literal translation, because it speaks with a directness that words can only echo.

Vaughan’s playing has never been more direct than on the current “Strange Pleasure,” the first solo album for the 43-year-old Dallas native and his first work since the 1990 “Family Style” album with his younger brother, Stevie Ray Vaughan.

Between the recording of “Family Style” and its release, Stevie Ray was killed in a helicopter crash, after a concert with his brother and Eric Clapton at Alpine Valley, Wis. It was a bitter loss, even for those who knew the man only through his music; for Jimmie and the rest of the family, it had to be a tragedy beyond words. It infuses “Strange Pleasure,” but not in any expected way.

One hardly could imagine a less blue blues album. Instead of wallowing, it addresses the joys of life--with everything from T-Birds-like party grooves to celebratory ‘50s-style R & B to gospel affirmations, and a conviction fired by having faced the grimmer alternatives.

On the phone from a tour stop in Texas last week, Vaughan--who will be at the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano on Thursday--said it took him a long time to arrive at the point he’s at now.

“I finally realized I had a choice: I could either dwell on all this and feel bad about it or I could try to feel good and change things. I went through some things and I came out the other end, and everything is going to be OK, and I didn’t know that for a while.

“I do feel good about being alive and playing music. I have a good life. It has to do with what glasses I have on, you know what I mean? You can feel bad or feel good, and I choose to feel good.”

Even the album’s song about Stevie’s death, “Six Strings Down,” has a positive outlook, speculating on the blues jams going on in heaven. The song came to Jimmie from the Neville Brothers, and he added a verse of his own.

“We’d run into the Nevilles at a lot of shows over the years,” Vaughan said. “I guess since we were brothers, we had that sort of unspoken family thing there. Art Neville and his brothers wrote the song very soon after Stevie’s accident and sent it to me, and I just sort of put it up. I couldn’t listen to it at first, though them doing it really touched me. When I finally heard it, Art Neville had said what I really wanted to say and couldn’t seem to get out.”

For the album (produced by Nile Rodgers) and his current tour, Vaughan enlisted some veteran groove-masters for a distinctive musical lineup: guitarist/keyboard player Denny Freeman, drummer George Rains, organist Bill Willis (who also provides the bass line) and backup singers Reginald Brisbon, Dennis King and Calvin Burns.

Emphasized by what Vaughan calls the “sanctified” organ sound and the vocal chorus, a spiritual thread runs through several of the songs on the record. The vocally driven “Two Wings” and the swampy “Love the World”--both co-written by Vaughan and Mac (Dr. John) Rebennack--sound straight out of the black gospel tradition. Meanwhile, on the moving soul ballad “(Everybody’s Got) Sweet Soul Vibe,” Vaughan sings:

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Did you ever feel the peace, ever love the fear,

Ever hear the truth that rings crystal clear?

There’s a place to go, where we know

That a river of love always flows.

Sweet soul vibe.

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While his brother’s music sounded at times as if it were trying to reach people’s hearts by burning through brick walls, Vaughan’s isn’t quite so declamatory. A self-contained serenity invites the listener in.

“I’m not trying to get anything across to people,” he said. “I’m just saying what I have felt. I’m not trying to get anybody else to do anything. I just sing and play what I know about, and I only know about what’s happened to me and how I feel. Every time I’ve ever played, it’s been that.

“I only play what I know and only write what I know about. It’s a completely selfish thing. When somebody you’re close to you gets killed like that, everything changes. I’m enjoying myself now, and I think the music speaks for itself.”

After his brother’s death, Vaughan all but disappeared, rarely turning up in public even to listen to music. Instead, he busied himself with his family and with handling his brother’s estate. It was described in the press as a “self-imposed exile,” but he didn’t see it that way.

“Actually, I was enjoying myself. I was with my wife and my kids and I was having a good time being a normal guy; I hadn’t been at home steady for 15 years. I think I’ve learned how to have a better balance, not to let the business rule my life. My main important thing in life now is to be happy and to be there for people.

“I never stopped playing guitar. I’ve been playing every day since I was 12. I just didn’t want to be out in public, because everyone wanted to tell me how sorry they were, and that got old, even though they all meant well.”

It was Clapton who got him performing again, first as a guest at a couple of Clapton’s own shows and then as the opening act for some of his concerts last year.

“After I had played those (initial) gigs with him, Clapton called and said, ‘Would you open some shows for me?’ and the guitar player in me came out and said, ‘Sure, I’d love to.’ Then after I hung up I realized I didn’t have a band or anything! He gave me the kick in the pants I needed to get going again.

“It came at the right time. I just had to wait for the right feelings. It needed to be for the right reason, which was that I had to do it because it felt right.”

With the Thunderbirds, Vaughan typically would stand to the side, shaping the music with this rhythm guitar and spinning leads in response to front man Kim Wilson’s verses. Is it difficult now being center stage, in the spotlight?

“To be honest, it doesn’t really feel different,” Vaughan said. “It just feels more . More fulfilling.”

In fact, he said it wouldn’t bother him at all if critics would finally stop singling out the “economy” of his playing.

“I always thought that was a whole lot of (nonsense). It was like one guy wrote that in the beginning, trying to say something complimentary about me, and everyone since then has repeated it. All I’m doing is playing exactly what I feel. I play a lot like Freddie King, and I’ve never heard anybody talk about Freddie King’s economy and all that, just because he didn’t play all over the place as fast as he could. They don’t say that about B.B. King. I’m not thinking about economy. I’m just trying to play what I’d want to hear, and that’s all.”

Before the accident, Jimmie and Stevie Ray had been planning to tour together. Now that he’s on his own, does he wonder whether audiences are expecting him to fill two pairs of shoes?

“I haven’t felt that at all,” he said. “I really feel like, at all the shows I’ve done, people have been genuinely glad to see me and had a great time. I’ve missed playing onstage, and I think it shows. We don’t have time to think about all that. You know how when you go out onstage, you don’t really know what happens until it’s over? That’s the way it feels. We come out and have a party.”

* Jimmie Vaughan plays Thursday at 8 p.m. at the Coach House, 33157 Camino Capistrano, San Juan Capistrano. $19.50. (714) 496-8930.