Backstage with the Hammers

By Jonathan Riley

DIGBY COURIER

NovaNewsNow.com

Tanner Albright has four new friends.

The six- year old from Westport met the Road Hammers at the Wharf Rat Rally concert last weekend.

“He was kind of quiet when he met them and answered all their questions but the next day…” says his mother Heidi Titus. “That’s all he talked about, ‘Mom, I’ve met the Road Hammers.’ ‘Jason is my best friend.’”

The Hammers agreed to meet Tanner after they heard how their music was used to help him come out of a coma.

In late October 2005, Tanner pulled a TV down on himself when he went to stand up. The weight of the TV fractured his skull and put him in a coma for eight days.

“He was a country music freak since he was seven or eight months,” says Titus. “And when the Road Hammers came out with their Road Hammer song, he just loved it.”

So the family and nurses played that song over and over to him in his Halifax hospital room until he woke up.

He didn’t get home from the hospital until just before Christmas and even then was only able to sit up and crawl.

Still whenever someone played the Road Hammers, he would bounce and sway and smile.

Tanner had to start all over learning everything – how to walk, how to talk, how to eat.

Tanner is now six. He started school with his age group last year and is keeping up.

“None of his doctors can believe he’s where he is right now,” says Titus.

Tanner for his part couldn’t believe where he was on Saturday of the long weekend – back stage with the Road Hammers.