He was a friend of mine (for David Stuart Owen)

It never fails. I find myself pondering someone I’ve not seen in a long time – friend, acquaintance, old coworker or even celebrities – and bad news drops.

My old friend David Owen died of cancer Feb. 1. I lost touch with him several years ago, but for a period of time, he was among my closest friends. For a year or more, I spent a night every week hanging out with Dave – he lived in Worthington, a short mile from my apartment. He’d say the word, and I would pedal up the hill.

After the newspaper hired him, Dave approached me at a happy hour and introduced himself. We got talking about music and soon he presented me with a number of Ryan Adams discs I had never seen before, mostly culled from concert soundboard recordings. Another batch of CDs included Neil Young’s infamous Massey Hall show in Toronto, which I since bought on LP.

Music held a special sway over Dave. He loved sharing, playing and analyzing the songs that meant the most to him. I spent a lot of Mondays in his living room, digesting new music and debating the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Tom Waits, Wilco and whatever new popped on our musical radars. Too many nights we debated Beatles songs and lamented the deaths of John Lennon and George Harrison. With Dave, the music never ebbed.

In my last months in Columbus, when Wilco’s Sky Blue Sky neared release, he provided a stream of concert recordings of new songs, some I wouldn’t hear again for years.

He had an impish side – I had a little housewarming when I moved to a new apartment. With July 4 days away, Dave fed a steady supply of bottle rockets into the sky. I had my beer, he had his whiskey but we always had music.

 After I moved, we only saw each other a handful of times. We exchanged packages of burned CDs every few months. He always talked about trip to Nashville, none ever realized. My trips to Columbus grew less frequent. We still talked on the phone, but trying to replicate our music dialogues over the phone was more exhausting than either of us expected. Finally, we just lost touch a few years ago. He didn’t join social media and our calls dwindled down to sporadic e-mails, then nothing.

Anytime I looked through my books of CDs, I ran across something he burned or introduced. “Bill, you got to hear this”- I can’t count how many times I heard that from Dave.

With his passing, I’ll think back to my last year in Columbus, when most Mondays found me drinking beer and talking about music and life with David Stuart Owen. Every time I hear the Beatles’ Rain or Comes a Time by Neil Young, Dave won’t be far away.

I’d like to think he would okay knowing that his passing has placed Willie Nelson’s version of He Was a Friend of Mine into continuous play. Nothing else seems so appropriate.