Cheeseburgers with Jackson Browne

I have a friend named Chris Wettle with whom I've probably seen about 60 concerts since high school.  I got a call one afternoon in 1989 or 1990 from him while I was interning at NCR in Dayton.

"Hey Bryon.  Want to go to a concert tonight?"

I thought for a moment and responded, "The Jimmy Buffett concert in Cincinnati?"

"No," he replied, "The Jackson Browne concert in Columbus."

Two hours later we were driving East on I-70 to Columbus in his piece of shit Mercury Bobcat, without a map to guide us, on our quest to find the Ohio Theater.

It took us a while, but we found it eventually.  We had never been to Columbus before and I had never seen a theater like Ohio theater.  It was beautiful.  Years later, I would see Mary-Chapin Carpenter perform there and it has wonderful acoustics.

We walked into the auditorium and looked around to see if anyone was trying to sell tickets.  After a few minutes of seeing the crowd and no one selling any, we walked up to this ticket window.  I asked what tickets they had left and he showed me a map of the auditorium.

Chris tapped me on the shoulder.

"This guy has tickets."

I excused myself from the gentleman at the window and we stepped over to talk with the guy.

"You need tickets?" he asked.

"Yes, two," we answered.

"I have two.  You want them?"

"Sure," one of us answered.

"How much?"

"No charge."

"Nah, let us pay you something for them."

"No.  No charge.  I was waiting for these girls I met in Cincinnati last night, but they are not here and I have to go in."

He then put them in our hands and we thanked him.

After he walked away, a gentleman walked up and asked, "Do you know who that was?"

We answered, "No."

"He's in the opening band."

His name was Jorge.  He had played on Jackson's 1986 album "Lives in the Balance."  I am not sure to this day if it was Jorge Calderon or Jorge Strunz as I read the liner notes of the album on Wikipedia today.

I walked to the bathroom while the lady seated Chris.  When I came out Chris came walking back shaking his head.  "Oh my God," was all he could say.  She walked me down the aisle and we got closer and closer to the stage.  We stopped at the ninth row and we were dead center.

The show was amazing.  We watched the opening band Sangre Machehual and we were mesmerized by their guitar play.  Jackson also came out and played "Lawless Avenues" with them.

After Jackson blew us away with his acoustic show, this was the "World in Motion" tour, the lights came up and we saw Jorge.  We walked up to the stage and thanked him over and over again for the tickets and told him how awesome his band was.

Jorge offered us tickets and back stage passes for the show the next night in Indy, but we knew we could not make it.  We decided to take the time after the show and wait by the tour bus with only about a dozen people.  Jackson came out of the theater and seemed kind of blown away people were standing there hoping to greet him.  We basically all shook his hand, told him we loved the show and then Chris and I were on the road back to Dayton.

The next day, I am walking across campus and I bump into Mike Ferrari.  He stopped me and said, "I heard about last night; that was so cool!"

"Yeah it was," I replied.

"Can't believe you went to a bar and had beers with Jackson Browne!"

I was struck speechless.  That didn't happen, but Mike had walked off before could say anything.

Later that day I ran into Ted, Mike's house mate.

"Dude, heard about last night.  Holy shit that is unbelievable!  I can't believe you had cheeseburgers with Jackson Browne!"

"What?"

"Jeff told me about you and Chris going out after the show because Jackson invited the two of you to have cheeseburgers with him."

I called Chris when I got home.

"So did you tell Jeff about our trip to the show?"

"Yeah."

"Did you tell him he had cheeseburgers with Jackson Browne?"

"What?"

"Ted walked up and was in disbelief and told me he could not believe we had cheeseburgers with Jackson Browne."

Chris just laughed.  He called me later and told me Jeff wanted to make the story more exciting each time he told it, so he embellished it each time.  We all had a laugh about it.  It was actually quite funny.

Last I heard, Chris and I were supposed to join Jackson Browne on tour for the next leg, but that never materialized.