Sometimes you have to give it a minute. Or fifteen years. Or thirty.

I wouldn’t say I thought this guy was psycho, but I kept him at arm’s length when he first approached me as a fan. Which is what I do with most people anyway, so no offense to him. Over the next few years, I played a couple private shows for his crew in Atlanta, as well as the first dance at his wedding. I still didn’t really know him back then, though. That was over fifteen years ago, best I can remember.

And now I’m in the Atlanta airport, headed back to San Diego after surprising him at his first real show, a night 30 years in the making. After decades of learning to play and sing, sitting in with musician friends, and plowing through covers at neighborhood BBQs, he finally mustered the courage to walk into a small bar and ask for his own show.

Reinvention doesn’t care when you invite her in.

He planned to play all covers, with one exception: one of my songs, called The Table. He’d posted a video of me playing it a decade and a half before, which is how we met, and that song carried a particular weight now. Over the last couple of weeks, he’d prepped what amounted to my life story as an intro, without having any idea I’d be there.

So he was a little unnerved when I showed up. Excited, yeah, but I could tell he was having a WTF moment, especially when he realized we got the table right in front. But he did great, and when that full-circle moment came, I sang The Table with him.

There’s a lot of connective tissue between the cold December night he first saw me open for Shawn Mullins and my flying out to see him play in a small bar…and us actually doing a show together there January 16^th (details soon, Atlanta…it’s a 40 person room and will sell out quickly).

But the connective tissue isn’t the point here.

The point is sometimes you have to give it a minute.

Or fifteen years.

Or thirty.