“I opened for Elliott Smith towards the end of his life, which was such a huge honor. The shows were strange. We’d go out and do our set and then Elliott would come on afterwards, but he was pretty far gone and he’d barely make it through 2 or 3 complete songs. It was so sad to see such an amazing, gifted musician losing his mind. One night, his girlfriend came backstage and said ‘you have to go out and help him, he can’t play!’ … I said I didn’t know how to play any of his songs, and she just screamed, ‘well just go do something!’… So I went out and I played a handful of Neil Young songs I knew by heart and he stood over the microphone singing them in his beautiful haunted way, ”See the lonely boy…” I’ve replayed the scene in my head many times. It was a rare moment of magic, that felt like an out of body experience, where I was both the famulus and a witness to the spectacle.”

Imaad Wasif