In 2006, my friends at Infernal Bridegroom Productions collaborated with Austin musician and outsider artist Daniel Johnston to create a rock opera based on his work. The result, “Speeding Motorcycle,” was a local hit. It traced the arc of Daniel’s “Laurie” material through to a burst of extravagant joy delivered in a new song Daniel wrote for the production (“Lovin’ Feelings”).

This show was one of the finest things I’ve ever seen in my life. It was beautiful and wrenching and touching and true, in all the ways that good theater can be. I saw it many times (board membership has its privileges), and always left feeling emotionally spent but happy.

A high point of the show was a solo piano performance of a song called “Peek a Boo,” which is a stark and occasionally brutal view into Daniel himself and his battles with depression and mental illness. It is deeply personal, but also beautiful and affecting even if you just read the lyrics. My friend Cary literally taught himself enough piano to play it in order to get it into the show, and he absolutely slayed the audience every night with it. You could hear a pin drop during the quiet passages. It was extraordinary.

That show — twenty years ago this summer, I am shocked to note — was extended, and then restaged in Austin with some of the same cast (including Cary) the following year, and then it was gone, like all theater.

In 2019, the successor company Catastrophic restaged it, and while it was glorious to see it live again the glory was bittersweet because our friend Cary died back in 2008. His part (like many others) was recast. The new guy was talented and fine, really, but those of us who had been in the rundown, ramshackle Axiom in 2006 I suspect all had trouble seeing him as something other than “not Cary.” Even so, having “Motorcycle” again was still fucking amazing.

In the 2019 revival, my friend Joe took over “Peek A Boo.” Cary’s raw emotion hit like a hammer in 2006; Joe’s performance coupled with the loss of Cary gave the 2019 version an order of magnitude more weight for those of us who remembered the original. Not that new audience members got away scot free; there were few dry eyes in the house after either performance.

So why talk about this now?

Turns out, one of my new favorite musicians is also not just a fan of Daniel Johnston generally, but of this song in particular, and apparently works a cover into her sets whenever she plays Austin. There are several versions on YouTube, but this is the cleanest. Enjoy now Phoebe Bridgers’ version of “Peek a Boo.”

(Fun fact: Bridgers was only 12 when IBP staged this show.)