Meant To Live.

Switchfoot are my friends. They will be on Letterman tonight. I couldn't get tickets to the show. I couldn't find a way to get hold of Jon. They don't know I'm here!!

The band and I met over the telephone right after I graduated from college in Nashville in 1997. They were talking about a management situation with the artist manager for whom I worked. (I'm glad they didn't go with him.) I moved to Northern California shortly thereafter and the record label I was working with hosted a concert tour for which they opened. The sound guys treated the band quite badly. I nearly offered to take over the sound board myself. I've run sound for Sixpence None the Richer! Anyway, it's standard, at least in the Christian market, for a tour's opening acts to get lesser sound quality than the headliner. I guess couldn't have helped them with that.

Nevertheless, we'd finally met in person and when I moved to So. Cal., I phoned them up. I spent a day off of work wandering the San Diego Zoo and then went to the Foreman's house nearby where Jon played me a demo of "Amy's Song." (It showed up on their second album.) I ate dinner with the fam. And Jon and I went swing dancing at a Cherry Poppin' Daddies concert at Belmont Park. Lots of fun!

Not too long after that I moved back to Indiana. They toured with my friends Five Iron Frenzy and I drove near and far to see all my pals. In fact, we started getting a real kick out of my showing up at a new, random place to say "HI!" I interviewed Jon and wrote a story for 7ball Magazine about A New Way To Be Human and then went back to Nashville again when I worked for their record label. (I wonder if they think I'm a stalker...) In fact, while I was at that label, I went out with a nice young man who I'd met in California though he lived in Nashville. He said he'd not asked me out before because so-and-so said I was dating somebody from the band Switchfoot.

I panicked.

I told my boss I was panicked. And he laughed.

I e-mailed Jon and apologized and said, though I didn't mind the rumor, I hadn't started it. He was cool about it. I don't think he'd even heard it. He was about to marry my friend Sarah's younger sister Emily, and what kind of girl would I be to let that stuff get around!?