It was sad yesterday to hear of Sam Butera’s death, and sadder to do so in Las Vegas (where I’m on vacation) and not have anyone talking about it. When I told my wife, no one around who were clearly within earshot responded because the Vegas he knew and loved died before him.

I interviewed Butera before his Jazz Fest appearance in 2002, and it was a great experience. Not necessarily a great interview, but an occasion when he was being 100 percent himself with little regard for consequences. He was grouchy, but he explained that he lived with back pain. He also told me that the back pain had become bad enough that 2002 was going to be his last year of performing. He had to sit down too much on stage, and he didn’t like that. Unfortunately, it did occur to him after he said that to tell me that was off the record, so it wasn’t in the Fest Focus. When I asked him why he had never played Jazz Fest before, he said it was because they wouldn’t pay him enough. I don’t know if that’s true, but the question became moot in 2002 because he then said that was off the record, too.

… and in unrelated news, in today’s “Weekly Beat,” it mentions an interview with Gary Lightbody of Snow Patrol. Unfortunately, we couldn’t get our schedules together to do it before I went on vacation. Sorry.