I remember years ago I was spending some time in Los Angeles and one night I was out with my cousin Bob and we went to a club. I had been staying with him for the past week and was thinking about moving to LA and the night before I headed back to Indiana he suggested we go to this club he liked. I don’t remember the name of it now, but I certainly remember what happened there. Bob had come home with a couple of tickets he said he got from work. It was for a concert that was going to happen at the bar that night. I asked who was performing and he just said some chic, he didn’t remember her name. Since it was my last night in town I decided to I might as well go. I hadn’t seen or heard much of the local music scene while I was there and that’s the one thing Bob remembered, that she was local.

We grabbed some food at Angeli’s on Melrose Ave. If you’re wondering how I remember the name of that place but not the club, it’s because we went there about every other night while I was in town. It’s one of my favorite places in LA and the food is incredible. I always ordered the ravioli with a tomato basil sauce and Bob always got the lasagna. Sometimes we ordered an appetizer, though I don’t remember if we did that night. At that point in the evening we weren’t expecting anything extraordinary to happen and the whole thing would have just blurred into an overall memory of that time in LA, but then we headed to the club.

There weren’t a lot of people there but the ones that were seemed like they were there specifically to see the performer. I don’t remember why I thought that. And then suddenly, and I know this sounds exaggerated, my world changed. This woman with the most incredible voice I have ever heard in my life took the stage and never let go. I asked Bob to check the tickets again to find out who it was and he told me her name was Beth Hart . I had never heard of her before and then she sang the LA Song, which I had heard on the radio a few times. Her album Screaming For My Supper had just come out, or had been out a while and she was just beginning to make a name for herself. I’ll never forget that night and I’m a life long fan of Beth Hart’s. Last year I was in LA again, and though I knew I wouldn’t find her playing in a club I thought about her as I flipped through the paper in one of the luxury Los Angeles hotels .