Intersection Column | Guess Who’s Coming to Town
- mtlmagazine
- 1 hour ago
- 3 min read
by Becca Kinzer
“He’s coming! Dave Barnes is coming! I can’t believe he’s coming!” Honestly, I don’t remember if those were the exact words my friend said back in 2022 when she found out Dave Barnes was coming to her house.
All I remember for certain is my exact response. “Who?”
“Dave Barnes.”
“Who?”
“Dave Barnes!” Didn’t matter how loudly my friend shouted his name, I still didn’t know who he was. “Yes, you do,” she demanded before listing off a few of his songs.
Turns out he’s a singer-songwriter in Nashville and maybe I had heard of him.
“Why’s he coming to your house?” My friend lives with her husband and kids on the outskirts of Tremont, Illinois. Not exactly a bustling area for celebrity sightings.
That’s when she explained how she had seen Dave Barnes make an announcement on Facebook about doing a special tour that upcoming summer. People could make bids for him to come perform a concert in their backyard. My friend made a bid. He accepted.
Wow. The excitement started kicking in. “You’ll never believe who’s coming to my friend’s house,” I was soon bragging to my coworkers. “Dave Barnes. Isn’t that so cool?”
To which they of course replied, “Who?”
Meanwhile my other good friend started losing her mind. She couldn’t wait to meet Dave Barnes. She was pretty sure she even knew one of his songs. I don’t know why—none of us knew why—but she decided she was going to make a pickle dip to bring to the concert because suddenly her greatest dream in life was for Dave Barnes to compliment her pickle dip. (For the record, we’ve been friends for over twenty years, and she’s never once asked my opinion about her pickle dip.)
Sadly, I could not attend the big event due to a prior family commitment. I had to wait until the next day to find out how everything went. I’m sure you can imagine the torture. What did Dave Barnes think of the pickle dip?
He apparently didn’t get the chance to think anything. My pickle dip friend hid as soon as he arrived and never said a word to him all evening. But that didn’t stop her from stealing the towel he used to mop off his sweaty face throughout the performance. It’s been nearly four years, and she still refuses to wash it. (Or let anyone touch it.)
I’m sure it’s no surprise we’ve been laughing about this event ever since. And while I couldn’t be in on the fun that night, I certainly had a whole lot of fun writing Not What We Pictured, a story inspired by all the excitement and amusement this backyard concert provided.
Warning—Dave Barnes does not make an appearance in my fictional little town of Bugle, Tennessee. The characters in Not What We Pictured have wrangled up an entirely different celebrity, and let’s just say the town couldn’t be more excited.
Doesn’t matter that most of them are saying, “Who?”
About the Author
Becca Kinzer lives in Springfield, Illinois, where she works as a critical care nurse. When she's not busy taking care of sick patients or using up all the storage on her phone with pictures of her dog, she enjoys making up lighthearted stories with serious laughs. She is the author of multiple titles including Dear Henry, Love Edith, which won the 2024 Carol Award for debut novel. Not What We Pictured is her fourth novel. Visit Becca online at beccakinzer.com.
About the Book
Photographer McKenna Boston is enlisted to help her sister’s boyfriend stage the perfect proposal. But when her best laid plans go awry and a handsome stranger accidentally ends up with the heirloom ring, McKenna hops on a flight to retrieve it. The last thing literature professor Nate Lambert needs is a gorgeous, determined photographer searching for a ring he doesn’t have since the airline lost his luggage somewhere on his route from Nebraska.