Back in the day, the old Guthrie Theater was known for presenting the coolest and often hippest music acts. They sold concerts by Led Zeppelin, The Who, James Taylor and Elton John long before they became household names.

For one particular show in May 1971, after filling in for Neil Young, Miles Davis and Laura Nyro earlier that year, the Guthrie drew a sparse audience for Kris Kristofferson. Too few people knew the Nashville songwriter’s growing reputation thanks to his album ‘The Silver Tongued Devil and I’. John Denver, then an Edina resident (remember, his then-wife Annie was from Minnesota), was sitting across from me. Because if you knew it, you knew it: Kristofferson was something special.

He didn’t have much in the way of stage style or dynamics. But his lyrics penetrated like the poetry of Charles Bukowski. Lively stories of ordinary people who are often going through difficult times, told in a lived-in voice.

Mr. “Take Me Home, Country Roads” to Mr. “Help Me Get Through the Night”?

“I remember him in my dressing room at halftime and he just stared at me and didn’t say a word,” Kristofferson told me in 2009. “He looked like he was just shaking his head and wondering what this was all about. ”

Kristofferson, who died on Saturday at the age of 88, was on the Mount Rushmore among country songwriters.

On Sunday night, Jimmy Webb, a fellow member of the Songwriters Hall of Fame, took the stage at the Parkway Theater in Minneapolis and immediately announced, “I feel weird tonight.” He spoke about the loss of Kristofferson who, along with Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings and Johnny Cash, recorded his song “The Highwayman” as a country supergroup known as the Highwaymen. Webb opened his concert with that selection.