I've met a few people here and there:
Comics folk:
Mike Kaluta
William Stout
I've had correspondence with
Wally Wood
Robert Loren Fleming
Trevor Von Eeden
Musicians:
Dave Cousins and Dave Lambert of the British folk/rock band Strawbs, just last month (and I've got pictures!). They had just done a live webcast in Lexington, KY. These guys are musical heroes of mine and it was a gas to meet them...
Billy Ray Cyrus, just before he hit it big with that godawful Achy Breaky Song. He's from Kentucky, y'know, and one afternoon, when I reported for my shift at the small alternative-format radio station where I DJ'ed part time back in the late 80s-early 90s, he was sitting there talking to the DJ before me. He had heard our station while driving back and forth between Louisville and Nashville, liked the music we played, and brought a demo tape hoping we would play it. To the best of my knowledge we never did, although one of the other guys might have played it in the morning when we had more country. Next thing you know, it was a month or so later– and there he was on CMT doing that goddamned song.
Randy Travis, at a Nashville Fan Fair. He had a line waiting to get his autograph that had to be a mile long. This would have been in 1990, at the height of his popularity. I was there because I had promised a girl I would get his signature. The things I do. Anyway, when I got there, I got the sig, shook his hand, said "The price of fame, huh!" which got a laugh. At the same fanfare I met the Bellamy Brothers ("Let Your Love Flow") and hooked up with an actual acquaintance who I hadn't seen in years: Bowling Green's own Bill Lloyd, who was then having chart success in Foster & Lloyd with Radney Foster. I went to a show they played later that night, and had a beer or two and caught up with Bill after the show.
Founding members of the 60s-70s alternative country group Goose Creek Symphony. You may or may not remember these guys, but they flirted with fame about '71 or so.
I met Slim Dunlop, who was Bob Stinson's replacement in the Replacements. Nice fella. I started to go over and introduce myself to Paul Westerberg but he was shitfaced drunk and so I thought I'd pass.
I met Vernon Reid and Corey Glover at a 1988 Living Colour show at the Exit/In in Nashville, months before "Cult of Personality" hit. They came out and mingled with people after their set. Earlier, a friend of mine, who was seeking an autograph on a promo single he had, got me to go with him to the Winnebago they had parked outside the bar. They didn't let us in, but they took the record and signed it, and we got a look inside the bus.
Jill Sobule, whom I saw open up for two different acts in the space of one year, for Joan Osborne and as the opener and member of Lloyd Cole's band, the Negatives. She was meeting and greeting people after the Osborne show, and I walked up and struck up a short conversation. It was the first time I had heard anything she had done, besides "I Kissed A Girl", and I've been a big fan ever since. I wanted to strike up a conversation with Lloyd Cole, but he had too many other sycophants around him and I had a long drive to get home.
Finally, one movie star: Vincent Price, who gave a lecture at Western Ky. University in 1975, when I was 15. I came up to him after the lecture and told him what a big fan I was of his movies, especially Dr. Phibes, and he accepted my gushing gracefully.
That's all I can think of...
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