My wife is so cool...

Last summer, you may recall that I diverted our vacation drive to Hilton Head through Athens, Georgia, hometown of my favorite band of the last 30 years, R.E.M. Erin was excited beyond all ability to contain herself at getting to see the various clubs they'd played in during the early 1980's, restaurants they own, etc. While trekking around Athens spewing various bits of R.E.M. trivia, I mentioned that Peter Buck, R.E.M.'s guitarist and the one on the right in the picture, had lived in Indiana for a while as a kid. She asked me if I knew where he'd lived, and I told her I didn't, and as far as I knew, he'd never really spoken about his time in our fine state in interviews.

We wandered around Athens for a few more hours, headed off to our beach vacation, and I never thought any more of that brief conversation. My lovely wife, on the other hand, decided that it would be a nice gesture (and a sign that she was actually paying attention to my inane music babble that day) if she wrote a letter to R.E.M.'s Athens office requesting info from Pete Buck regarding his stay in Indiana.

Now while R.E.M. isn't quite as huge as they used to be in the U.S., they're still wildly popular overseas, and the home office, I'm guessing, still deals with quite a bit of fan mail. Couple this with the fact that the three members of R.E.M. live in various other parts of the country now, and I figured there was little chance of her hearing anything back from that letter. In fact, she mailed the letter in September but didn't tell me about it until many months later, at which point she was thouroughly disgusted with the lack of a reply and had decided to shun R.E.M. forevermore. I tried to explain to her that these were busy guys with fame on an international level and that I didn't think it was realistic to expect a reply, but she was unconsolable.

Jump forward to last night. I brought in our mail, as I do every day on my way in from work, and amongst the five or six offers for a Capitol One card was a letter addressed to Erin in her own handwriting. We both immediately tossed it aside as a reminder from a dentist about an appointment, but eventually she tore it open. As she removed the letter inside, I immediately recognized the signature, in handwritten ink, of one Peter Buck.

I've had the chance over the past 10 years of meeting many of my musical favorites. I've had dinner with some of them, I've met them after shows, etc, but R.E.M. has always been just big enough to not be easily approachable, in my mind. I once sat at a bar next to Mike Mills (left in the picture above) but didn't say anything as he was being hounded by other people. And Peter Buck? Well Pete has always seemed like the cooler older brother in R.E.M. who would let you hang out with him, but only so he could make fun of or injure you later. He seems like a good guy, but not one to suffer fools or fans lightly. This has just been my impression. So when it occurred to me that Erin was holding in her hands a letter signed by Peter Buck, I about destroyed a piece of furniture getting to it.

As it turns out, her letter managed to make it through the Athens office to the hands of Peter Buck. Her letter was very clever, and I'm sure her wit was what got the letter into Buck's hands. She basically said that she was unfazed by his fame, but she had a psycho husband who dragged her around Athens and to R.E.M. concerts. I'll take being dragged through the mud if it got a response.

The letter we received in response was a fairly detailed document of his time as a kid in Indiana. Not a form letter. Not a "thank you for contacting R.E.M." type thing, but a "Hey Erin, Your letter was cool. Here's what I can remember..." I was floored, as was Erin. She immediately took my position that R.E.M. is the coolest band on the planet, and that Peter Buck is most assuredly the nicest man in show business. We're in the process of framing her letter next to Pete's response. It will take a prominent position in the hallway in our house, right next to Grant's picture and the ones from our wedding. There will be a fee to view it.

Thank you, Peter Buck, for taking the time to reply to her letter. And thank you, cool wifey. You're amazing. When R.E.M.'s next album comes out, I'm sure there will be an ode of some sort to Indiana, rooted in Erin's letter to Peter Buck.