Kindness from Tater

As most who read The Star know by now, I wrote a story about local hillbilly bluegrass band Tater for Thursday's Star. The story was the idea of City Editor Graham Cawthon, he wanted to have something on the band in the paper as sort of a lead in to the band playing Thursday's Alive After 5.

So, knowing that i'm very much a Tater Head, Graham asked if i'd like to do the story. Of course, I gladly accepted. A few days later I had a two hour interview with the entire band at Guitar RX, which, if you don't know, is right across the street from Mi Pueblito's. Stories were told, laughs were had and a few pictures were taken. And oh yeah, I got a ton of information for my story.

Fast forward a few weeks later to when the story appears in the paper. My dad, being the sneaky person that he is, called Amanda Edwards, the wife of Tater's lead singer Luke Edwards, and hatched an apparent plan. He wanted to get a copy of the paper autographed for me and have it waiting for me when I got to Alive After 5 yesterday. He knew I wanted to get it done anyway, so he figured he'd "help out" and get it done for me. No complaints here, by the way.

In any case, while I was hanging out around the stage with the other Tater Heads Luke came running towards me with a flimsy piece of paper in his hand. Keep in mind, they were about to be introduced to the audience to start performing. He hands me a laminated, signed cut out of my story from Thursday's front page, shakes my hand and with a big smile says "Thanks so much Adam." I hardly had time to get a thank you out of my mouth before he had to run back to the stage to start performing. Of course, all the Tater Heads gathered round and started looking at the cutout with the signatures and everyone was congratulating me.

Needless to say I was rather happy. Tater went on, blew a circuit somewhere in the PA system, went off stage, fixed the PA, then got back on stage and continued playing. At some point I saw a few Star employees, Graham, Cherish, Kristy and Brittany, and went and sat with them in the grass alongside the stage. Then, as we are sitting their goofing off, I hear my name over the PA system.

"First of all we'd like to thank Adam Fenwick for his great article in The Star!"

Yup. That's what I heard. I'd have to ask Cherish or Graham, but I bet my face was red as a cherry. After Tater went off stage I went over and shook Luke's hand and thanked him for his kindness. It was the least I could do.

To sum it up the story was fun to write, much like the band Tater is fun to watch and listen too. I'd do it again in a heartbeat.