Sometime between the fifth and sixth songs, a warbly, cruel male voice yelled out a song request. The voice became louder and more frequent, even in the middle of a song during a hushed moment. It was impossible to ignore, being only one person up there onstage, two old-fashioned microphones turned up loud so I could play as quietly as I did. The voice got so loud that it was making its way into the mikes and shooting back to the audience. This dream show was turning into a fight to survive my own nerves.

By the time Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings came out to sing on my song “Bartering Lines,” the vibes were tense. We got to the quietest moment where it is just our three voices a cappella, and suddenly that voice yelled the song that would then follow me for nearly 15 years: “Summer of ’69,” by Bryan Adams.

Before I could start the next song, the voice bellowed again. I recall looking down the long, dark aisles to see the security guards doing nothing. Had this never happened before? People were yelling, and a small scuffle seemed to happen in the back. I so desperately just wanted to play.

I finally had enough and piped up: “Who is it? Who is shouting? Tell me who it is!” I asked the person to raise his hand so I could see him. He did not. Finally people pointed furiously to a seat not far from me in the front. I walked down the few wooden steps in front of the stage to the aisle where all the fingers pointed.

By the time I got there, I was so angry. I felt humiliated, but what else could be done? Either way I had lost something. Unlike a more seasoned comic or musician, I didn’t have the experience to ignore a situation like this, or to use wit to turn it around. I felt a kind of disappointment and disillusionment that I had never known — and it was in front of a thousand-plus people.

As I approached the heckler’s wooden pew, I was shocked. He was only a few years older than me. Unshaven, bleary-eyed. He had on a baseball hat and seemed so drunk that his limbs hung from his sides like a broken doll. His eyes were like two poached eggs waiting to break. The anger left me, and I instantly felt bad. No one was there for this man. No one stopped him.