… and it’s Lyle Lovett.
In Texas Monthly’s roundup of tributes to Jerry Jeff Walker, Lovett said:
Whenever one of your heroes treats you like you belong there with them, it gives you a real boost of confidence.
That’s exactly been it for me. An artist I’ve admired for years, decades, comes over, says hello, puts his hand on my shoulder, says it’s nice to see that I made it there.
His guitarist hollers hi to me from across the bar.
I sit with a friend, watching one of the best songwriters to walk the Earth, and some friends of his join us. All of the friends are talented musicians; one of them is a few years away from becoming a household, one-name word. She invites us to join her and her friends club-hopping and then brings us back to her place to dance the night away. A couple of months later, as she’s touring to promote her new CD, she recognizes me and chats.
A guy who, decades earlier, lost the ability to speak and who uses Magic Slates to scrawl out his conversation warmly clasps my hand and grins when I introduce myself. We’d been on the same listserv, but our conversation continued in private emails, then moved to Facebook, ribbing each other until he was gone.
Away from music, a 1960s provocateur has written a book and has a speaking and signing engagement at the institution that employs me. I elbow everyone else away from the PR assignment, show up plenty early to make sure I get my copy of his most classic book signed; I savor, 35 years later can still picture, how he cradled the book, gently and lovingly, admiring that it was both well used and well cared for, before signing the title page. I thank him and sit down and, when he isn’t tending to a paying customer, we banter and I soak up stories. When we part, his handshake is firm and his eye contact is appreciative.
Back to Austin: On the way back to my friends’ table at a restaurant, I see the restaurant owner, himself a bit of an Austin legend, and stop to say hello, compliment his chow, chat for a moment about his history; I note that I have a videotape of the concert that took place the night his old bar closed, and he says, “Even I don’t have that.” I offer to send him a copy; he regards me for a moment. “C’mon with me,” he says. We leave the restaurant, and go to the building out back, his office and his warehouse, and he loads me up with posters and T-shirts and paraphernalia. I thank him and tell him the tape will be on its way a week or two after I get him, and go back to our tables. My friends look at me, loaded down with souvenirs. “Heck of a pit stop, Bob.”