Picture it. The Colonial Inn. Saginaw, Michigan. Spring 1975.
My dad was 22. He was at a nearly empty bar with a girl. There was another couple on the other side of the room, and a trio of guys in the corner. One of the guys left for a moment, came back with a guitar and handed it to one of the others. He started playing and singing a bit, and Dad thought, “Wow, he sounds just like John Denver.”
“I’d just started listening to John Denver,” Dad says, “and I didn’t know what he looked like. But man, he sounded just like him.”
The guy played for about an hour. If he’d known for certain, Dad says, he would’ve bought the guy a drink. But he wasn’t sure.
Until the next day, when he saw in the paper that John Denver was playing at the civic center.