Performance anxiety is among the most common types of anxiety, next to the fear of public speaking. However, like anything else on Earth, there are outliers.
Among these outliers is Tucker Tanata, an 11th-grade aspiring musician. So far in the 2025-2026 school year, Tanata has spent every morning before school and every one of his lunch breaks playing acoustic guitar and singing songs in Lochsa Hall, near the band room. Nine times out of 10, students will encounter tunes from The Beatles and Green Day in the air.
Tanata explained that The Beatles inspire him the most because of their, “…messages of love and peace really resonate with me.”
Occasionally people will offer to give him tips.
“I tell people not to donate or give tips, but if they refuse to oblige, I’ll take them,” he said.
He further explained that he was gifted his guitar two years ago on Christmas and has since fallen in love with playing it. Besides being a guitarist, he also plays the trumpet in band class and occasionally practices on his bass guitar and drumset.
“If you added up the influence of every book, movie, or other art [in my life], none would come close to that of music,” Tanata said.
Outside of school, he’s the lead guitarist in a band called The Weird Kids, who play pop punk and metal. Although they have yet to publish any music, they claim their first album will be released “whenever they want it to be.”
Tanata was also a part of another band named The Surgeons of Sound, where he was also lead guitarist.
“The Surgeons of Sound didn’t officially end, but rather dissolved slowly,” he explained.
All in all, thanks to Tanata, mornings and lunch times are never dull around Lochsa Hall, and there’s always something to listen to besides the cloudy noises of the Commons.
