Things have taken their toll. I met him for the first time during the TSOAD tour at my local show. I told him who I was and to my surprise he hesitated a second and looked up and said "Oh, you're one of the good ones!". I said "I'm trying, not always easy!" (meaning, at that point I was hip deep in a discussion here and being called a "fanboy" and whatnot, but after I realized that he might have taken it as "not easy because you're always making things difficult" and that was not at all what I meant). But I was hanging around after the SOA show in Worcester, and even though there were only about five or six of us (in the rain) we got the impression that they were waiting us out (one of the women with us, her nephew or some shit was working the venue and he said that "any meet and greets were family only" whatever that means).
I certainly hope that he is okay and that there wasn't bad news for him, but whether it's just meeting the same people over and over, or bitter from the last seven, eight years, I get the impression that some of the shine has worn off the ol' fan/artist interface.