Oct 22 2005
It Wasn’t Danny Schmidt
The hotel I stayed in last night at Southfield, Michigan has free breakfasts. As I entered its dining area this morning, I exchanged glances with a guy sitting at a table drinking coffee. My first thought was, “Holy shit, that looks like Danny Schmidt“. If you’re the regular reader of SWT (Hi, Phillip), you know who Danny is.
So I get my orange juice and bowl of cereal (they were serving biscuits and gravy as the hot entree. For breakfast. Ugh), and sit at a table behind this fella about 15 feet away, this fella who looks like Danny Schmidt. As I eat breakfast I’m thinking: This guy has black hair, a scraggily, unshaven look, wears a brown hat, and wears casual clothes. Sorta like Danny. How can I find out? If it IS Danny, I’ll regret not going up and saying, “Hi, are you Danny Schmidt? I’m Jody Cairns. You know, Phillip’s brother.” And he’d either say “Fuck off” (this IS the Detroit area) or “You got to be fucking kidding me!” What to do, what to do… I mean, it’d be REALLY cool if it was him. Shit.
Well, I thought too long about it; he finished his coffee and left. I checked Danny’s website for his touring schedule, hoping he wasn’t in Michigan now, and he wasn’t; he’s in the U.K.
Normally I wouldn’t think of approaching anyone famous-ish (he’s an artist I respect. That’s “famous” in my book); I don’t care about them nor they about me. But in this case, he would know me. He sang a song for my daughter while doing an interview at Whole Wheat Radio. Maybe Phillip will post the MP3 some day.
I have high quality WAV files of the 4 songs Mr. Schmidt played during his interview thingy on WWR. I’d have no problem posting them here as MP3s (they’re a real treat: a kids’ song, two songs with Esther on flute, etc.), but I guess you’d have to ask Jim and/or Danny. It could seem a little “I’m your #1 fan, please let me post your songs” kind of thing. Not sure if I want to go there. Ah, who cares — I’ll send an email and see what happens… probably nothing.
It’s funny how we react to people who are famous-ish. Christ, if I saw Jim having coffee at a resturant, I’d probably do the same thing. “Oh may gawd, is that Jim, from Whole Wheat Radio?! What am I going to do? Should I say hi?! Will he recognize me? Nah, probably not. It’s probably not even him.”
i asked this dude i play soccer against “hey, are you Chris, my old soccer coach?!” and he was like “i don’t think so, my name is scott”
it was awkward…..