The band's desire to experiment grew as they recorded "Soul to Soul", beginning in March 1985. Vaughan recalled using two wah-wah pedals for "Say What!", sitting on a stool and working them separately. Parts of the album featured work by Joe Sublett, Doyle Bramhall and Reese Wynans, who was hired as the band's keyboardist. The group's cocaine use increased however, especially Vaughan's, as witnessed by Bramhall, who recalled seeing "mounds of cocaine on top of the organ". He said of Vaughan's cocaine use: "Where I was doing a lot, Stevie was doing five times, ten times more than I was doing." Nearly 800 minutes of the studio recordings were devoted to the sessions and leaked into the collector's market. Released in September, "Soul to Soul" received mixed reviews from critics. Allmusic's Stephen Thomas Erlewine commented, "For all of its positive attributes, "Soul to Soul" winds up being less than the sum of its parts, and it's hard to pinpoint an exact reason why. Perhaps it was because Vaughan was on the verge of a horrible battle with substance abuse at the time of recording or perhaps it just has that unevenness inherent in transitional albums."