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Baby comes crashing into the world with band’s name
Certainly, as he grows up, baby “Crasher” is going to have one heck of an interesting story about how he got his name.
Born Crasher Brendon Michael Buttery to Kaili Smith and Brent Buttery of Greencastle at 6:07 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 18, he weighed in at 7 pounds, 7 ounces and 20 inches long.
But baby Crasher’s arrival is only half the story as he gets a rockin’ start on life.
We have to go back to Aug. 27 for the rest of it. That was the day of the Greencastle Music Fest, the annual courthouse square bash put on by Gail Smith of Almost Home and The Swizzle Stick.
The Louisville Crashers were back for their second straight headline appearance at the Music Fest when lead singer Mark Maxwell spotted a pregnant woman just off the North Indiana Street side of the stage.
Like he’s apparently done a couple times before, in a light moment during the concert, Maxwell offered the young woman $1,000 if she would name her baby “Crasher” in honor of the band. She said yes.
“Back in August, while playing our annual show for the good folks of Greencastle, we finally found an expecting couple who would agree to name their baby Crasher,” Maxwell wrote on the Louisville Crashers’ Facebook page. “With that name we fully expect him to be handsome, smart and a talented musician.”
Maxwell drove up to Danville Wednesday to visit with the Putnam County couple and got to hold little Crasher at the Hendricks Regional Health facility.
“This is the first baby ever born with the ‘Crasher’ name,” he smiled in a video posted online. “This is so exciting.
“He’s going to be a lead singer, I’ve decided,” Maxwell said.
Regardless, he’s already got his first gig penciled in.
“Baby Crasher will be on stage with us next Aug. 26 for sure,” Maxwell added in an email, alluding to the date of the 2017 Greencastle Music Fest.
The name-the-baby gambit wasn’t the only sidebar to the 2016 Music Fest.
Just before the Crashers took the stage, the acrobatic Maxwell ran through the crowd, microphone in hand, to be at the side of Andrew Sutherlin, who asked his girlfriend, Kayla Bradley, to marry him that night.
Surprised at the timing, she nonetheless said yes. And the couple will tie the knot a year from Saturday, on Oct. 22, 2017.
Sutherlin, 20, has lived in Greencastle all his life and graduated from Greencastle High School in 2014. Bradley, 25, is a California girl who moved here about five years ago.
The kicker is, they had met at the Music Fest just a year prior, making the proposal even more timely.
That kind of human element has become an interesting byproduct of the local musical highlight of the summer that even Almost Home/Swizzle Stick owner Gail Smith didn’t really see coming.
“As far as the impact of relationships,” Smith recalled, “four years ago I was at an Indianapolis Indians game, standing in line to get Andre Dawson’s autograph and of course the line was very long. Behind us was a couple with their Cubs jerseys on so we started a conversation about the Cubs.
“I invited them to come to Greencastle for the Music Fest because Lee Smith was going to be there also. So they came (in 2013) and got autographs, pictures and had a fabulous time. They brought some friends as well. They live in Indy and have been back every year since. Always decked out in their Cubs attire.”
This year the Putnam County Convention and Visitor Bureau asked Music Fest attendees where they were from, and “it was amazing how many people from far away came for this event,” Smith said.
Let’s call them party crashers.