I have only had one experience in my life with a stalker type figure. During my sophomore year in college, an on-again, off-again boyfriend of one of the girls who lived next door to me misinterpreted my relationship with the girl. Through an act of cunning, ie he remembered her IM password, he found out some information about me, and the next thing I know, he was sending me emails. These emails were sort of what you’d expect from a guy of this caliber: embarrassing stuff about her, vaguely threatening stuff about the world in general, and thinly veiled insults directed towards yours truly. One of these bullet points I remember in particular: “She says you’re really skinny, and maybe a 6 out of 10 on a scale of looks.”

Soon after this email was received, I found myself sitting on the couch of my apartment, watching TV with an acquaintance while my roommates went to buy beer. I made some sort of derogatory remark about the girls next door, and the acquaintance responded, “I don’t mean to be a dick, but weren’t you and her…” misinterpretting the situation, much like the stalker had. I set him straight and related to him the contents of the last email. “Conor,” he said to me. “Look at it this way. Take the best looking man in the world. He’s you ten. You’ve got to figure that the best looking you’ve ever met in real lifeis what, an 8? And you’re just down two notches from him? That guy paid you a compliment.” (Drag from cigarette.) “I’d be thrilled if someone told me I was a six.”

And that bit of sage advice, ladies and gentlemen, was the first time I met Wynn Walent.

Obviously, my relationship with Wynn has grown since then. We even founded a holiday together. One time he almost beat my friend Danny in RBI Baseball. I told Wynn that I had never been proud of him before in my life, but that that night I was closer to being proud of him than I had ever been. It took a while longer to find a legitimate event to make me proud of the man, but the first time I ever heard him play his music live in New York City, I was proud of him. And I would be remiss in not sharing with you the song that I heard him play that made me proud.

“The Well Is Always Dry” (MP3) was the song he opened that night with, and it is the song that his new album, (that I just got sent last week) opens with as well. It’s tremendous. I don’t particularly like describing music that I really, really like, and it’s even weirder to do it to a friends song. But listen to it and imagine that you’ve just showed up in the big city for the first time in years, and you’re walking in some strange neighborhood to go see a dear friend of yours play music, which evidently he does all the time there. And from the moment he starts playing, and everybody shuts up, and you really start to hear him, you realize that he’s on to something, that he’s been putting the past few years to good use, and that, by god, you’re proud of the guy.

Once you get by that powerful moment, you can order four more drinks, demand he plays a song as catchy as “David and Goliath” (MP3) and be humming it in your head the whole damn next day.

So there you have it. In all likelihood, reading this will be the first time that you meet Wynn Walent. One can only hope it’s as memorable as my story. In fact, if it’s only a 6 on your scale of memorable moments, I’ll be content.

Wynn Walent myspace

Buy his New CD at cdbaby