Dear Ray;

I’ve hoped that over the years we could have crossed paths so I could share with you, in person, the impact you inadvertently had on my life. My whole life. If I could see you, it would have gone something like this…..

“Hi Ray! Do you remember back in the summer of 1973 when you gave me your one front row ticket to see John Denver at the Charleston Civic Center? You were writing for the Charleston paper and had a ticket to review the show, but couldn’t go. I was 11 years old—in between 6th and 7th grade. You knew our family loved live music so maybe that’s why you thought of me. Anyway, I went to that show. It was June 29th. I still have the ticket stub. It’s one of my greatest treasures.

You may or may not know this already, but my mother and my aunt escorted me and I guess they bought themselves a couple of tickets because I couldn’t go by myself. So they sat quite a few rows back. From the moment John walked on that stage I was beyond mesmerized. It was just John, 2 other musicians (Dick Kniss and Mike Taylor) and a rear-projection video screen. Certainly it was the most high-tech show I’d seen since we spent most of our time at bluegrass festivals. I don’t remember how long John played but I would have sat there for days listening to him. I loved his voice, his songs, his looks and his personality. Afterward I went to the side of the stage and got his autograph. (I still have that too.) It was just me and about four elderly ladies waiting for him. Obviously it was still quite early in his career.

Without giving you a day-by-day of the rest of my life, let me tell you just some of the things that that one night turned into for me.

From that moment forward I was determined to learn every single John Denver song on guitar. I worked at it for years and actually learned most of them. I was at the record store the second a new album was released and then I would take that new album home and learn every note on it.

Since we moved around a lot, John’s music and my guitar kept me from going insane. They were constant and I lived and breathed that music every day for years and years. In 1975, my folks bought me a beautiful new Gibson Hummingbird guitar.

My love of John’s music, and of making music, drove me into the music business. I moved to Nashville in 1982 while I was still in college. By that point I knew I didn’t have the urge to be on stage, but I knew I wanted to be around the music so I studied recording engineering and got my degree. Before I could even get a job in my field, I got a job in PR at RCA Records — the label that John was on and had been on his entire career. And of course, that was my first thought… I’ll get to work with John. I didn’t get to work with John directly, but we did work some of his records. I got to meet him again finally at Farm Aid in 1985. He had the same effect on me. It meant so much that after I met him, my hands started shaking and I burst into tears. It was more than being a fan. It was meeting someone that had absolutely set the direction of my life, in stone.

Over time I saw John in concert many times. The last show was about 6 months before he died. A friend and I drove to Birmingham, Alabama to see him at a performing arts center. At the time I thought that I wished I’d brought my 5 year old daughter with me. But then I thought, maybe next time. There wasn’t a next time. John died later that year, October 12, 1997. My dream of working with John on a day to day basis just wasn’t going to happen. Needless to say, I was devastated.

But it didn’t stop there…

One year after John died, they held a tribute show in Aspen, Colorado. A number of his old band mates got together at the Wheeler Opera House. One of my clients at the time was Jim Horn, the world-famous woodwind player who had also been in John’s band for many years. I got Jim to put me in touch with John’s tour manager, and in the end got the ok to be the publicist for the show. It was thrilling but bittersweet. It was as close as I was going to get to working a John Denver concert.

I was thrilled just to be around all those musicians. The ones I had seen so many times over the years with John, and heard on his live album. I even got to know Mike Taylor and Dick Kniss. The two guys that played the Charleston show. Sweethearts both of them.

We ended up doing that tribute concert for 15 years and I worked on every single production.

And the most ironic thing…..I met Pete Huttlinger at the first one of those tribute shows. He was John’s guitar player for the last four years of John’s life. Pete and I got married in 2006. So I like to tell people that I couldn’t be John Denver’s guitar player, so I married his guitar player.

It’s a good life. Thank you Ray.