Thinking Of Keith                    Sunday, November 18

I think I met Keith Shirasawa in 1996, around the time my first solo album came out. I was playing at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco and he came up to talk to me after the show.  Most of my Bay Area gigs have been in way less glamorous venues but for the last ten years, pretty much any time I've played in that part of the world, Keith has been there.

It’s a funny thing about being a touring artist.  So much is variable - maybe you’re having a good year and you’re playing the good places and people are coming out.  Or maybe for whatever reason you’re playing the not so great places and just a few show up.  Then things pick up again and it’s going swell.  Next time, not so. You wonder what happened to all the people who came and loved you the last time you were in town.  You can blame the venue for not advertising, or the record label for forgetting you, or the fact that there’s thirty other things going on in town that night, or that everyone spent their allotted going-out-to-shows money seeing the Rolling Stones for the tenth time. All these things go through your mind. Maybe you had a meltdown on stage last time and it’s no wonder people stay away.  Maybe your dad was right when he said you should get a regular job. Maybe you’re just not good enough.

But there’s some people who are a constant.  They believe in you, see you at your best and worst and know what you’re truly capable of when everything’s lining up right.  That’s the kind of fan Keith was.

I say was, because Keith died in August.  And I’m really going to miss him when we play in San Francisco next month.

It makes sense that Keith was a huge San Francisco Giants fan. People often talk about the connection between baseball and rock music. One similarity is how a person can believe in an artist the same way they do in a team.  They don’t evaluate you based on how you’re doing on any given night. They’re not judging you against this person who’s on top every year, or that one who is incredibly consistent, if a little predictable.  They’ve got all your stats and they know you’re more than the sum total of what you’ve done so far.  They have faith, even when things aren’t exactly looking promising. 

I used to break a lot of guitar strings.  And Keith was a musician, and worked at a music store, so he’d often come to the rescue by changing my broken strings.  He’d always bring lots of extra strings, or cables or pics or pedals to replace anything that was falling apart in the middle of a tour.  I’ve never had a roadie or a crew or anything like that but he helped make me feel like I had someone looking out for me.  And it meant a lot.

It turns out he had that sort of relationship with a lot of people, through his work at the store.  Gelb Music has a special remembrance page up for Keith.  He was loved by everybody!  Talk about fans - he has hundreds of them, not through some big attempt at making a name for himself, but simply by being a kind and decent person who cared about others, without need or ambition.

He’d met a lovely woman named Linda who he brought along to one of my shows and thankfully she liked me too.  It was clear he was very happy with her.  We kept in touch through email and he’d occasionally ask for recommendations on restaurants and good things to see in cities I’d spent a lot of time in.  The last email was to ask if I had ideas of stuff to do on the trip he and Linda were taking to NYC this past summer.  “Coney Island,” I insisted.  So when I heard he died after being injured riding the Cyclone, I felt awful.  I’ve ridden this roller coaster dozens of times and have always loved it.  But apparently there had been several injuries from the ride lately - I think Keith’s was the 3rd or 4th that week. He did manage to pull through an operation, and looked like he was going to fully recover when he died.

His girlfriend Linda was so patient and sweet when I called her.  I said I felt terrible, beyond just the sadness and shock of Keith dying, because I had told him to go to Coney Island.  “Who didn’t?” she asked.

It’s hard to believe that he’s gone.  I’ll really miss hearing from him, and seeing him at the SF show next month, and the time after that, and the time after that.  I don’t know if I’ll break strings or not, but if I don’t it won’t be for lack of trying.