chris whitley died. and i didn't know. haven't been checking email regularly, or at least not the email that i would have gotten such news in. in an attempt to stay sane and focus on getting all my work done before leave kicks in and i got an email this morning at a mailbox i'm still good about checking and there that was.
i didn't even know he was sick.
which isn't to say that i should have. i was not a close friend of chris whitley's. i didn't know him well but i did know him. almost a decade, interviewing him for college radio and selling merch at shows and irregular contact here and there.
the last time i saw him was a show he did at the 400 in minneapolis. his mom had just passed, literally, the morning of the show and we sat on the stoop of the university holiday inn and smoked cigarettes and looked at the sky and talked about nothing and when he was wound down enough to call it a night, he smiled and gave me a hug, and disappeared into the lobby and that was that. i moved and things got crazy on every different kind of level and somewhere in there he was diagnosed with the lung cancer that would take him, aggressively.
he had this voice, this amazing, beautiful, cracked voice that was vulnerable, and hands that could play a guitar like no one's business, and big doe eyes and the most unassuming, shy personality that completely went against the way he commanded a stage, the way he could make an entire room go silent with a foot stomp and a single chord. he was sweet and kind and one of the best musicians i've ever had the pleasure of experiencing.
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