Ed Harris

Ed Harris in "Apollo 13"

In the fall of 1984, I was standing in our dressing room backstage at the Grand Ole Opry, when a pleasant fellow walked over and struck up a conversation. We had just performed on stage and he said, "I enjoyed your work. You play really well." I thanked him for his comments and made some small talk, all the time trying to figure out where I had met him before. He could have been the older brother of one of the other musicians, or a friend of a friend, but I couldn't quite place him. He mentioned that he was from L.A. and enjoying his visit in Nashville, and he looked awfully familiar-

Finally, when he'd said goodbye and drifted out, one of the other band members came over and said, "Hey Dave, I just saw Jessica Lange and Sam Shepard out in the hall. They're here doing research on her role in a new film. Hey, you know who you were talking to all that time, don't you?" I sheepishly said "no". He said, "Oh man, that was Ed Harris. He played John Glenn in "The Right Stuff", and there's a new movie on HBO that he's starring in." Turns out he was right. The actors were checking out the Opry to prepare for their roles in "Sweet Dreams", the life story of Patsy Cline. And although I hadn't seen "The Right Stuff" yet, I remembered that I had seen Ed Harris in an HBO movie in which he played a mercenary tough guy, and just a couple of weeks before. He was so pleasant and unassuming; it never dawned on me that the reason he looked so familiar was because I'd just seen him on TV.