Besides being a wonderfully memorable show musically, I have an even deeper memory of this show. I am a late comer to Willie Nelson, and most country music in general. But two bands kick-started my interest in this genre, The Geraldine Fibbers and Wilco. However, my love of Willie can be directly pointed to The Geraldine Fibbers and Carla Bozulich in particular, who at this time had just released her version of Willie’s Red Headed Stranger album.
As I mentioned in shirt #3, the “hipster” in me will not wear the shirt of the artist I am seeing. But I intentionally wore my Geraldine Fibbers shirt to this show as tribute to one of my favorite bands in the world, and for the #1 reason why I was at Willie that night.
I wanted to buy a Willie Nelson shirt, but the lines were really long. So during Ray’s performance, I quickly bolted to the lobby to buy a shirt and who should I pass in the very empty lobby but Carla herself. As we were crossing paths, she looked at my shirt and said “Fibbers!”. Stunned, I said “yup”. I was so excited, but thought I came off as a dope.
A couple of days later, Carla sent an email blast to the Fibbers list and recounted that very exchange. However, in her words I said yup “cool as a cucumber”. She went on to say it made her day. Well, Carla, that still makes my day remembering that. And wearing this shirt brings it all back.
your story telling (and default re-living) this story is far more entertaining and heartfelt than what wrote.
ReplyDeletelet me set it clear, what you wrote was concise and factual, but there were so many details...
basically, i can sum it up in one word: goosebumps!