Friends turned out Sunday to give Susan Tanner a musical sendoff in Babeville, where she worked for years with Righteous Babe Records.
It was a packed house to remember a woman who spent decades in the music business. Tanner, who died April 24, promoted music and held concerts at the Eden home where she and her archeologist and music-promoter husband Marty Boratin lived.
An Eden native, Tanner started out on a path towards medical school before shifting into the music and record business. She worked for Righteous Babe Records in sales and marketing and she also did promotion on shows that came through the area.
Boratin said the musical memorial service was in keeping with her long career in promoting and working with musicians.
"Musicians on the road, it's hard to get a gig on a Sunday," said Boratin. "You can have this idyllic setting in Eden where you're playing on a porch surrounded with flowers to a crowd of anywhere from 20 to 200, just sprawled in a lawn."
Musicians said she knew music, knew the business and could offer insight into a business that changed radically during the decades she was involved. When Tanner and Boratin were on the road, Levi Van Cleve of the group Pine Fever would feed their cats.
"Adaptability, there's a sense of adaptability that needs to happen in order to do it," Van Cleve said. "I think in this modern age you have to be out there in the cities and moving the product, if you are asking how to make money with it. We just put our hats down and open the case."
Friends said she fought breast cancer for years before dying of complications from the disease.
"I never saw anybody that was so totally defiant in the face of what she was facing," said Lauren Omeara. "And nobody knew. So it's comforting to know that she didn't suffer. She went into the hospital and she wasn't expecting to die. She was expecting to come back and keep fighting."
