Is this heaven, Kevin? No, heaven’s not this cold.

January 28, 2009 | Iowa,Kevin Costner,Music

That’s what you get for writing a song about Leland, Iowa, and not, say … Palm Springs.

The thing about living “in the middle of nowhere” is that not all celebrities fly over. Some drive through on a tour bus. Some actually stop.

That’s exactly what Kevin Costner and his band, Modern West, did. They’re on tour up this way (and they’ll be in Tampa on Jan. 31, my Florida friends), and they stopped in Leland on their way from Minneapolis to Omaha.

Why?

Band member John Coinman has relatives in the area, and he wrote the song Leland, Iowa, for the band’s album Untold Truths released in November 2008. Besides, the local radio station called and asked them to come.

So … who knew I’d be living 10 minutes from where Kevin Costner would sing? For free. In a barn. (Yes. A barn. This is Iowa.)

:::Go to the diner, and they will come:::

The barn could only hold 200 or so people, and Leland residents with tickets got first dibs. The rest of us froze outside for 45 minutes (which is about the time it takes for frostbite to set in), waiting to see him maybe walk from his warm bus to the warm barn. Even better. He stopped and thanked us for waiting so long in the cold. (Everyone was quiet because, well, our lips were numb. I couldn’t feel my toes anymore.)

Then he said he felt bad that there wasn’t room for us in the barn. So he said, “Go to the diner, and we’ll play some songs for you there.” So we did. So did he.