Katie Petroski of the Austin American-Statesman has written an elegant profile of Lloyd Dalton, a longtime telephone lineman by day and guitarist by night, who rediscovered his faith after a deadly shooting in a bar.

The details of Dalton's night in the bar are drama enough for his story to work: A man walked into O'Neill's Sports Tavern in Marble Falls, as Dalton and his band played "Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain." A bartender was killed as he tried to intervene. Dalton clutched his guitar to his chest and hit under a table:

Dalton said the gunman walked toward him, brandishing his weapon at chest level and pointing it at Dalton before running out the door.

"He looked at me, but I don't even know if he saw me," Dalton said. "He had to have been possessed by the devil. It's the only explanation."

Well, it's not the only explanation, but Petroski lets Dalton tell his death-defying story from his perspective of faith. She also digs deeper to tell of how Dalton lost a teenage daughter to a traffic collision in 1979. That loss has haunted him ever since, but it also helped him comfort the grieving mother of Michael Allred, the bartender who lost his life trying to protect a woman.

Dalton has no Web presence that I can find, but if you're ever near First United Methodist Church in Burnet, Texas, look him up there. You'll find him playing for people afflicted with dementia.

About the video: Lloyd Dalton does not appear on YouTube, but Bob Dylan does -- singing about surviving his own brushes with death.