Elegy - Chapter 36

Sunday morning, I was sleeping in, as was usual after playing the night before. I was still flying high, and not even from the shows we’d played this weekend. Friday, there had been an article in the newspaper detailing Aaron’s father’s downfall, with damning quotes from the county supervisors about his “malicious and criminal behavior,” as they put it. The article went on to detail a lot of the things he’d done, and it did it without mentioning me by name.

I didn’t know if he would lose his law license or what the outcome of the ethics investigation would be, but that kind of thing being public was going to make it hard for him to get elected to any kind of position of authority again. Which is all I’d wanted.

I also now had four hundred thousand dollars sitting in my bank account, which were more zeros than I’d ever seen. I didn’t even begrudge Mr. Eaves taking his cut since he’d earned every dime, and then some.

Because of my mood, which was pumped up even more after our weekend shows, I’d had a lot of trouble getting to sleep Saturday night and had been looking forward to sleeping until mid-afternoon on Sunday. Which made the doorbell going off at nine in the morning so rude. Mrs. Phillips was at some real estate thing in Richmond, and Kat was already at her swim practice, which took up pretty much all of her Saturdays and Sundays until late in the afternoon, which meant I had to drag myself out of bed to tell whatever salesman was standing outside our door that I wasn’t interested.

Except, it wasn’t a salesman. It was Warren.

“Hey,” I said, groggily, leaning on the doorframe.

“Hey. I know you played late, and I’m sorry to get here so early. I flew into Asheville on the redeye last night and had to wait until eight for the rental car place to open. I was just so excited to come and talk to you, and I didn’t know how long Arthur’s promise would last.”

Maybe it was just my sleep-deprived brain that made everything he said come across as complete nonsense because I didn’t follow a word of it, except that it had to do with Mr. Eaves.

“I … what?” I said, thoroughly confused.

He laughed and started again, “I called Arthur yesterday and made him promise I could bring you the news. The label has agreed to your deal. They’re letting you keep the rights to all of your songs and giving you the masters. I’ve never heard of a label doing anything like that.”

“Ohh, that’s great. But why are you down here to tell me? I thought you weren’t allowed to work with me anymore.”

“I’ll be honest; I’m not just here for you. I have an interview with a company in Asheville tomorrow, but I felt so bad with how everything went down, I came out early so I could come tell you personally. We haven’t spoken since everything happened, and I wanted to make sure you didn’t give up on your music career. You are one of the best talents I’ve ever heard, and you’re a genuinely good person on top of that, so I don’t want you to give up.”

“I’m not giving up. Yeah, it sucks to have to start over, but I was never going to let them take this away from me. So, you’re interviewing in Asheville? You’re looking for something new?”

“No, they let me go. Kent, too. This whole thing has turned into a fiasco. Apparently, no one ran the decision to pull your contract, or the letter they sent you, through legal.”

“I thought that came from one of the higher-up guys. Why are you and Kent getting cut?”

“That’s the way these things work. Guys that high up never pay the price for their failures. They make people like us pay.”

“Damn. I’m so sorry, man. They’re idiots because you’re amazing at your job.”

“Anyway, I just felt like, since I was your guy at MAC when everything went down, I should be the one to tell you.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I’m sorry you dragged yourself all the way out here, even if you did need to be in Asheville. You never have anything to apologize to me for. Honestly, you were the best part of working with MAC, even more than getting the record made. You booked us gigs I couldn’t imagine getting ourselves into.”

“Nah. You would have gotten there; it just would’ve taken longer. Your talent was what got you there. I just made the calls. Anyway, that’s it. I’ll let you get back to sleep,” he said, turning to walk back to his car.

I watched him for a second when an idea hit me like a bolt of lightning.

“Warren, wait,” I hollered after him.

“Yeah?”

“How would you feel about coming to work for me?”

“What?” he said, confused, like he thought he heard something that couldn’t be possible.

“What if you came to work for me as my manager?”

“Charlie, I appreciate the thought, but …”

“I’m dead serious, Warren. I don’t know exactly how much you made, but I have enough coming in from the city and MAC to cover it for a while, at least. Plus, I’m still bringing in money and my bills are more or less nonexistent. I may have lost my contract, but I’m not giving up on this. I’m rebranding myself as a solo artist, although I’m still going to use Seth and Lyla to back me up, both in performances and in writing songs.”

“Hey, I believe in you, I really do; but I don’t think you understand how much of an uphill battle this is going to be without a label behind you. Yes, we got a lot of really good shows, but most of that was because you were with a label. You wouldn’t have booked either the New Year’s Eve show or the one in Florida if you had been independent. Big events like that want someone with weight behind them to lead a show, even if they’re a smaller act. They know the label has resources to push the show and help sell it. They also want a wide range of names so that most people who see that show say ‘yeah, I know a few of those acts.’ Even if you’re touring regularly, they will be very slow to believe you have that kind of pull on your own.”

“I realize it isn’t going to be easy, but I still think I can do it, even if it has to be on my own. I just think I could get back on track faster with your help. You’ve got contacts I don’t, and you know the industry. Even if we’re stuck with the smaller venues, we’ll still make headway, and once I show what I can do, another label is going to want me. No one turns down money.”

“I don’t know. I made a pretty good living, and my part on the gigs I can get you, at least for a while, isn’t going to cover it. You’ve got to think of this thing as a marathon, not a sprint. It’s not going to happen overnight.”

“Yes, I know, and I’m serious when I say I have enough from my lawsuits to handle it. What did you make last year when all was said and done?”

He didn’t answer immediately. I wasn’t sure if he was calculating the number in his head or deciding if he was going to tell me.

I was about to ask again when he finally said, “Seventy-eight thousand, but I only had you for a little of that time, and I was managing smaller bands before I got moved over to your account. My ceiling this year was looking a lot higher. Even if I stayed at the seventy-eight, that’s more than your cut was last year.”

“I realize that, but the only thing I spent money on last year was a lawyer fighting the charges against me and then the lawsuit, and his cut of my winnings has made him a happy man. How about this? I guarantee that you’ll make a minimum of eighty working for me. Whatever the difference is between eighty and the actual percentage you’re owed, I’ll cover it. Yes, this locks you into a lower rate than you were expecting from MAC, but all that means is that you’ll have skin in the game. Besides, you don’t know if you’d make that much at your next job. Especially since you were released from your contract with MAC, right? It also gives you incentive to really make this work, ’cause I can only do this for a couple of years before I run out of cash. I know sharing this kind of information is a risk, because you could use it to bleed me dry and then take off when I’m out of money, but I also know you’re not like that. I trust you. This gives us a two-year clock to make this work. I think we can do it, but I guess the real question is, do you?”

His forehead scrunched as he considered. Seconds and then a minute ticked by, but I kept my mouth shut. It was a big ask and it really could go either way, but I stood by the advice Mr. Eaves gave me. ‘The first one who talks, loses.’

“What the hell. If you put it in writing, I’m in,” he said, sticking out his hand.

“Excellent,” I said, shaking it. “Let’s get started. We have a lot of work to do.”

To Be Continued …