Running On Empty

I don't spend as much time reading blogs these days, although I still try to at least visit a few of my friends' sites. I also still check in at the DailyKos to see if any new attempts to dislodge the miserable failure from our windpipes have begun to take shape. Alas...

This morning, however, I came across a post to which I had to respond as my memories of a night in 1978 remain fairly clear to me still.

First, I'll note that I first learned of Jackson Browne as I perused records in a K-Mart in Oregon, Ohio back in the early 1970s. I saw his first record (in LP form, of course) and liked the imaginative cover — the wine flask design with his graphically-rendered face — and I picked it up, looked at it and saw that Graham Nash and David Crosby (amongst a few other names I recognized) had contributed to the recording. I almost bought it without having heard a note or a word (I've been pretty lucky at buying music that way over the years) but didn't.

Shortly after that, on my way home from (high) school, "Doctor My Eyes" played on the radio (is there a chance that that song would be played on commercial radio in this day and age?) and the deal was cinched. From that day forth, Browne became one of my most favourite writers and singers, and surely has influenced my own songwriting. I've only seen him three or four times in concert, but all have been gratifying shows.

While in college in Bowling Green (Ohio), I saw him during the tour that promoted his Running On Emptyalbum, and after the show, a bunch of us (my then-girlfriend Robin Wilson, Scott Hilyard, Ed Nolan and a few others) decided to go look for him at the nearby Holiday Inn. We hustled into the lounge and waited a bit, hoping he'd simply saunter in and make our night, but he didn't. However, Karla Bonoff, the opening act, did happen in. I was a journalism major at the time and I had a story due for class, so I took the chance and walked over to her table.

I introduced myself and asked her and (I assumed) her manager if I could ask her a few questions for the article I needed to write. She was polite as I recall, but her manager was a bit on the snotty side and brushed me off and away rather brusquely.

We then went skulking around the motel looking for signs of Jackson, never finding him. We did run into his piano player Craig Doerge, however, whose door was wide open to the outside, so we chatted with him briefly.

I still have the t-shirt I bought that evening! Actually, my son has absconded with it, and he wears it often and I smile.

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