Last weekend Bill and I attended a concert in Olympia, by my friend, Janis Ian.  This week she’s in LA.  Rather than bounce back and forth to Nashville between gigs, she and her road manager spent the weekend with us.

I grew up in Bisbee, Arizona, watching Ozzie and Harriet.  When Rick Nelson turned into a singing sensation, I thought he was terrific, but the idea of being able to call him a friend and have him drop in to spend the weekend was something that was beyond comprehension.

If you’ve been to one of my presentations and heard me sing Janis’s iconic song, At Seventeen, you’ve heard how our friendship came about.  In the late seventies and early eighties, I was living in Arizona, selling life insurance, and struggling with the decision of whether or not to divorce my first husband.  I drove from appointment to appointment, listening to the music of Helen Reddy, Gordon Lightfoot, and Janis Ian. So many of her lyrics were about broken hearts, and they hit me where I lived.  I sang along with them and knew the words to every track.

I was six feet tall in seventh grade.  I was smart.  I wore glasses.  That was a lethal combination as far as social inclusion was concerned.  So Janis’s At Seventeen, written about not being one of the “in” girls, really spoke to me.  Once I started writing and doing signings, I began ending my presentations with that song.

In 2008, I was invited to be the keynote speaker at a writers conference in Idaho.  That engagement had been on the books for over a year, but then my husband’s bilateral knee replacement surgery was rescheduled.  On the day I was supposed to be in Boise, he was being transferred from the hospital to rehab.  At that point, I tried to back out, but my daughters said, “Nope.  We’ll look after Dad.  You go keep your promise.”

And so, muttering under my breath, I went.  I did my keynote at noon on Saturday, ending the presentation with my rendition of At Seventeen.  What I didn’t realize was that in the audience was a woman from Nashville who was a fan of my work and of Janis Ian’s.  She went straight back to Nashville and squealed on me.  As a result, on Sunday evening of that week, an e-mail from Janis Ian showed up in my computer.  “Hey,” she said.  “I heard you sang my song and that you did a good job of it.”

And that was the beginning of our friendship.  She’s visited our homes; we’ve visited hers.  What we’ve discovered is that despite our many differences, we have a great deal in common.

A few years ago, she came to the Tucson Festival of Books and the two of us were invited to do an event at Saddlebrooke.  Since she’s four-ten and I’m over six feet tall, we called it the long and the short of it.  We have it on good authority that we were the “hit of water aerobics.”

This past weekend, Janis was telling us how, for the last several years, she and her wife have spent a number of months in Florida, starting in October. “Hey,” I told her.  “I’m doing the Tampa Bay Book Festival in November.” To which she responded, “Maybe we should reprise the Janis and Judy show.”

And we’re going to.  I sent a note to someone at the festival and we’ve now been officially invited.  It’ll be fun.  I’ll be with my friend.

Details to follow.