I Knew You When

And you had no idea I was watching—My Sunday Best #73

I met him when I was 14 years old. Actually, I didn’t really meet him, but I knew who he was. His name was Rex, and he played guitar in a local band called Load Limit. It was in the late ‘70s or early ’80s, and the band members all had long hair. They played Free Bird, and Gimme Three Steps in a smoke-filled room to an audience ranging in age from 18 years on up, and a few younger wannabes, like me. I was an awkward teenage girl and he surely wouldn’t have even noticed I was there.

Even though I wasn’t old enough to get into the bar that night, I had an older sister who was happy to sneak me in and slide me into the inside of the booth. Wouldn’t you know it, someone snapped a photo that night and it ended up in the yearbook—underage me, on the ski team, future honor society student, daughter of a high school teacher, stepping outside the lines and causing my mother countless hours of lost sleep. I don’t think I had a beer in front of me, probably a Coke instead. The bar was called the Cob Web. Looking back, it’s quite amusing that there even was such a thing as a 3.2 bar that served a lesser potent alcoholic beverage for a younger patron, and on top of that, one with a live band. But I’m so glad I was there because over four decades later I still remember the feeling I got when I watched and listened to that band play.

I was mesmerized. It wasn’t as if I hadn’t heard live music. After all, I’d already seen Fleetwood Mac, Bad Company, Bob Seger, and many others on the big stages—again, thank you to all you older sisters and brothers who let the younger ones tag along, even if it wasn’t your idea. But that night, seeing a local band crammed in a tiny bar, playing their hearts out, lit up something inside me. While other girls wanted to be the girlfriends of the guys in the band, I wanted to be in the band. I wanted to be like Rex. Little did I know, I would have the opportunity to tell him about it years later.

My teenage rock star dreams faded into more realistic (real-job) pursuits, and I never thought about Rex again, until his name came up in a conversation twenty years later. My husband Mickey and I were sitting at the bar listening to a friend of ours play music, talking to another friend and fellow musician, Bart, about our plans to move to Nashville. He told us to give his friend Rex a call. I wrote down the number. It just so happened Rex had moved to Nashville, where he and his wife Connie had several rental properties. So off we went. Rex introduced Mickey to a few people in the music industry and just like that we were in—with everything we needed to begin our new life in Music City.

We lived in three of their rental properties during our time in Nashville. Once we got a whim to go live in our 14ft camper on the Piney River. But thankfully, Rex and Connie kept the light on and had a place for us to come back home when we decided we’d had enough. The last house we lived in was right next door to them.

I loved hearing Rex’s behind-the-scene stories about being on the road with Waylon, Rascal Flats, Olivia Newton-John, and others. Once, I even ran into him in Las Vegas when I was on a girls’ trip to the National Finals Rodeo. Rex was pushing a Rascal Flats road case down the hallway of the MGM Grand Hotel.

Almost every time we went over to Rex and Connie’s house, Rex would pull out a guitar. Mickey would play it while they discussed where it came from, who played it before, the wood it was made out of, the frets, the sound, the strings, and on and on they would go. Then one of them would pass the guitar to me, for my expert three-chord opinion. Even a couple of months ago, when he was too weak to get it off the wall himself, he told me to grab his newest guitar off the wall. It had beautiful inlay work and of course, it sounded incredible. One thing I noticed about Rex’s guitars, is that they were ready to play—in tune, with new strings and a tuner in every case.

Of course they were, Rex was a guitar man. He made his living helping others shine on stage. And how he did one thing, is how he did everything from tuning a guitar to building a house.

Thank you, Rex. I thought of you last night when I was wrapping up cords trying to get things packed up quickly, as the moist Iowa air began to settle in on the equipment with a heavy dew just before midnight. A little girl, maybe 8 years old, barely tall enough to reach the edge of the flatbed trailer came up and asked if she could help load equipment. “Of course,” I said. I recognized the look in her eyes. She wants to be in the band, and loading equipment is an important part of that dream.

We never know the lives we touch, and who is watching from a distance as we walk through this life. Rex passed away earlier this week. His story has become part of my own, and isn’t that how it’s supposed to be? All our stories are intertwined, woven with colorful threads of time, place, love, and loss—all of it. It’s a stunning work of art.