Hey, if any up-and-coming pop culture website were to, y'know, ask me…

But it wasn't just power, or speed. There was such precision. On the solo demo of “Kick The Stones,” for instance, it sounds like there's at least two guys playing, maybe three.

(Nick Drake had that, to—muzzy little whisper of a voice and hands that could bend a quarter in half.)

And I just can't wrap my head around what he's doing with his tunings. I worked out a halfway-decent version of “Living with the Law” in a simple drop-D, and was feeling pretty proud of myself; then I found out the tuning he was actually using, and I couldn't make heads or tails of it.

The magician shows just how he does it, and somehow it only deepens the mystery; that's one hell of a trick.

Whitley was one of those few artists that I knew from the beginning that I would buy whatever he put out, always picking it up on release day. I first saw him open for Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers in 1991 and was appropriately blown away. I was a newbie to the concert scene, but I knew I had been given a gift. Those were the high-gloss commercial days, but after the band gradually left the stage during the coda of “Bordertown” I knew I had to devour everything I could get my hands on.

I have the strongest connection to that first album, but Dirt Floor and Reiter In deserve to be hoisted to the top of his catalog. I honestly didn't get a whole lot from most of his albums, but the richness of LWTL dictated that I owed a debt to Chris throughout the rest of his career, which I happily paid.

I saw him live several times, sharing a double bill with Toad the Wet Sprocket, or between albums keeping his name out there and finally during the Rocket House tour, a day or two after an infamous meltdown in Portland. To say that he struggled with “demons” would be a quaint way to put it and the show that night was listless and uninspired. I left early, but there was always something about Chris Whitley that kept me coming back. He was a confounding artist, but he's one of the few that I discovered on my own and kept close to my heart for reasons I'm still not sure about.

I shook his hand after a show, just a few years after Din came out. His hands were enormous and strong and it was clear that they were his greatest asset – the way he made his living. It's not surprising really, considering the way he abused that National. They felt like what I imagine the hands of John Henry felt like – and for my money Chris Whitley deserves to be an American legend on that level.

But we happened to see he was playing in a tiny little place in 2000 (or 2001… I forget exactly), just him, his guitar, and his feet beating time, and he just owned all of us from the first note. He was something to experience.

As for “Perfect Day”…it's a covers record. Not your typical covers record, sure, but that was why I didn't cover it when I originally wrote this, and yesterday when I was fleshing it out, I thought it was more important to add “Reiter In” and “Dislocation Blues.”