I have Jackson Browne in my Contacts. It makes me smile to type that. The only thing I have in my Contacts under his name is his picture (third row seats at the Fox Theater, from around 2010?), but I’m hoping. No, I’m not really hoping- that’s just a funny line. It amuses me to have him in my Contacts, and it tickles me that my husband Bob rolls his eyes when I say it. He tells me that Jackson Browne is the only person he worries about showing up on my doorstep and me taking him to bed. He doesn’t need to worry, and I do tell Bob that.

I feel like I grew up with Jackson Browne. When I came out of my craziest teenage time, and entered college, he was one of the first artists I fell in love with, while working at the campus radio station, KCLC. He was young back them (in ’69, he was 21, and he called the road his own), as was I. So beautiful his face was, and the music even more beautiful.

When I graduated college in 1977, I went to work in a record store, Peaches Records and Tapes. Jackson Browne’s album “Running on Empty” came out a year later, and when he went on tour, the store kept the best tickets for the employees who wanted to go, and that was my first time seeing him in concert. It was the old Keil Auditorium, they were recording the show, and he stopped in the middle of a song to tell someone to shut up. This was the tour with Rosemary Butler and Doug Haywood singing back-up, and David Lindley (so incredibly talented) on steel guitar, and the hilarious falsetto on “Load-out/Stay”.

I have no idea how many times I’ve seen Jackson Browne over the intervening 45 years. Maybe 15? I have 6 tickets stubs, none dated earlier than 2008. Bob got to see him one time that I did not. He was in Knoxville on work, the night that Jackson (can I call him that? He’s in my Contacts) played a small venue, an acoustic tour, and Bob took the opportunity. I don’t blame him, but I sure wish I’d been on that work trip. The next month, we drove to Springfield Missouri, about 4 hours away to see him at the Gillioz theater, the same tour Bob had seen in Knoxville, as a way to make up to me.

I have all his albums on vinyl, through Hold On Hold Out, with album cover edge frayed from our cats who used the albums in Peaches crates as a scratching post. There was a period when I stopped buying and listening. His songs were completely political, but also that time period coincided with having two children and working full-time, so that may have been why I took a break. A lot of the stuff I loved went by the wayside for a bit. I guess we were just on different paths.  Kids out of the house (heck even the youngest grandchild is ten), retired, and more time on my hands, I get the opportunity to reflect and write. Over the years, I’ve come to appreciate the albums that I had missed buying.

Recently, I woke up, thinking of those crazy young years I had. I was just so aware, not of the horrific things that happened (and there were those), but of my aliveness and curiosity and exuberance. Jackson’s (can I call him Jackson?) song “Giving that Heaven Away”, sends me right back to those days, and I’m so grateful for the line “I’m gonna go down singing, and giving that heaven away.” It’s a reminder that I’m still that person. So are you, and the years don’t really matter. We’re still alive.