The November 4, 2009 edition of the The Weekender featured two articles my me. I’ve been a fan, thanks to @SheliTwits, of the Tom Petty Appreciation Band for some time. A life-long Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers fan, I was secretly waiting for a tribute band to pop up locally (I actually have a name for one that I’ve never been able to use because my only musical talent is listening, so instead I turned it into a collection of short stories I want to write), so when I saw a Twitter update in March that Sheli was going to see a Tom Petty Appreciation Band in Scranton, I was like, “What? Where?” I didn’t get to see them that day, but have seen most of their shows since.
When I heard that Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers was coming out with a massive collection of live music called the Live Anthology, I thought it’d be perfect timing to cover the local and national angle. I pitched the idea to my editor at The Weekender, and we found out the next Tom Petty Appreciation Band show was going to be at the River Street Jazz Cafe in Plains (basically Wilkes-Barre) on November 6, so he scheduled both my stories for the Wednesday before.
Pat Finnerty, lead singer of the band, was very fun to talk to. I think the story turned out well. It seemd to help draw a huge crowd to the Jazz Cafe also.
Check out the article here: NEPA’s Southern Accents… (But of course, I love how the page looks in print.
Also, there’s the article on the Tom Petty collection.