With the recent passing of country music star Joe Diffie due to complications of coronavirus COVID-19, the country community has come together to remember him — most recently Jimmie Allen.

Jimmie took over the official iHeartCountry Instagram account to go live and play a few songs for fans. With his acoustic guitar, he performed a cover of Darius Rucker's "Don't Think I Don't Think About It" and his hit song "Make Me Want To," and towards the end of the latter, Allen added a break down while singing Diffie's name. He then talked about meeting Joe for the first time and revealed the valued advice he received from the late star. He recalled:

"Shout out to Joe Diffie's family, and make sure y'all keep them in your prayers. He's a cool dude, man. I remember the first time I met him, I was like, 'You're Joe Diffie!' We opened up for him. He was like, 'Yes I am.' I said, 'Dude, love your music.' And he's super cool, man. He gave me so much advice and just like, 'Look, Jimmy, keep doing what you're doing.' He said, 'It's going to be people that like your music and people that don't. The cool thing is, man,' he said, 'there's somebody out there that needs to hear what you have to say from your point of view.' And, it meant a lot. The last show we played together was in November, we did the Carolina Country Music Cruise. So, cool dude. Love that guy. But, definitely keep his family in your prayers."

Jimmie also talked about Kobe Bryant, and getting to talk to the late basketball legend a few times. Before playing his song "Why Things Happen," Allen said, "I wrote this song with my buddies, Brandon Day, Cary Barlow and Tate Howell. Tate's the bass player in my band — cool dude, great songwriter. We wrote this today after Kobe died. I met him a bunch of times, and we hung out before and had a bunch of conversations, and every time I hung out with Kobe, I left more motivated and inspired. So many people asked me where my motivation comes from and how do you, through different ups and downs in your life, how do you stay motivated? And there's so many people that overcame so much stuff, and for me, Kobe's whole Mamba Mentality thing meant finding the silver lining in every situation. Like even in the midst of all the social distancing and stuff right now — I hate saying that phrase, social distancing, we need to come up with a new word for that by the way — it's finding the silver lining in everything. Like right now, use this as an opportunity to get that family time. And people always ask for, I wish I had more family time. I know a lot of people have different side businesses and different ideas they want to work on — now's the time to do it. So, I wrote this song when you don't quite understand everything that's going on, a song called 'Why Things Happen.'"

About Dave Taft

B-93 · Grand Rapids & Kalamazoo Country