So good to read this thread. I didn't know Steve personally, but still felt a personal loss when he died.

A friend and I went to see -- was it Ian and Sylvia? Really? Maybe it was John Prine, but I really think it may have been Ian & Sylvia.... Anyway, Steve Goodman was the intro act. Ellen & I felt like we had struck gold. Steve played so long that I&S cut their act a bit short as I remember.... Generous of them. Steve had been VERY well received by the audience and they were totally relaxed and generous about it.

We thought he was incredible, went to see him several more times, once at the Cellar Door in D.C.

There were so many things about him, his incredible guitar playing, great songs, but more than anything his warmth and his crazy sense of humor ... and he enriched my vocabulary! -- I remember him telling a story of an evening when he "proceeded to get toilet-hugging drunk.... Spent the whole night driving the porcelain bus...." ... I always think of that expression, and his story about how "City of New Orleans" got nowhere until Arlo Guthrie started singing it, and his "Vegetables Ball" song, and just his total vitality and good humor.