I let out a huge breath saying, “Go have breakfast with the band.”

His face got soft.

“Kiss me before I go.”

Lyla:

I kissed him before he went.

I’d fallen in love with their music by then.

Obviously, after Audie and Lynie Live On.

[Smiles sadly]

But I think it was more.

I was getting older, maturing.

Preacher matured when he was nine years old.

It takes maturity to write the songs he wrote.

And it takes maturity to understand the stories these people tell.

You have a pen and paper. [Nods head to interviewer] I know you’re taping this but to make it easy, write these titles down and go to your hotel and listen to them tonight. You’re into music, so you’ve undoubtedly heard them before. But this time, make a note of what they make you feel, if anything at all. What you think they mean.

Don’t look it up. Don’t read what someone else thinks they mean. What they make someone else feel.

Only you.

Then keep those notes, and when you run across those notes again, listen to those songs before you read what you wrote and see what you feel then versus what you felt when you wrote those notes.

Ready?

[Waits until she gets a nod]

“American Girl,” by Petty. “Heroes,” by Bowie. “Me and Bobby McGee,” Joplin, but Kristofferson wrote it, and listen to all the versions, including Gordon Lightfoot’s. “Because the Night,” Springsteen and Smith. “Fire and Rain,” by Taylor. “Bloody Mother Fucking Asshole” by Wainwright. “Gold Dust Woman. “Into the Mystic.” “Living in the City.” “Walk on the Wild Side” “What’s Goin’ On.”

I promise you, what you get out of those songs will not be what you got out of them after you have more life under your belt.

You will fall in love, and fall out of it, and back in, and get a broken heart.

You will lose people you love in slow ways that will feel like someone opened a tap in your heart to let the blood drip out and in fast ways that will set you spinning so you’re so dizzy, you don’t think the earth will ever rotate the same again.

And you’ll be right.

About both.

You will hear of, and witness injustices.

You will be betrayed.

You will do things that will make people feel ways you never wanted them to feel, but you were so stuck in your life or your head, you didn’t pay attention to what you were doing.

You will say things you wish you could take back.

You will hear things you wish you never heard.

See things you wish you could unsee.

[Draws in breath]

Do things you wish you could undo.

They did covers. They always did covers. They were musicians [grins] and musicians like music.