Dissonance - Chapter 29

The next Saturday morning, the sun wasn’t even up when my phone rang. I was exhausted, and almost buried my head under the pillow to ignore it, except I knew it was an important call. All week I’d been waking up at the crack of dawn to call into this or that radio station, listen to the DJs make the same handful of jokes, and talk about our album release. At least on those days, it was only a little early, since I usually got up with the sun to go to school.

Today was release day though, and the call was even earlier. The clock read three forty-five and I knew the first call was scheduled for just after four, followed by fifteen more calls, with the last one ending just about nine-thirty, which was too late to go back to bed. On top of that I still had practice with Chef, a date with Sydney, another set of calls starting at four and going to basically just before we went on stage tonight, and of course our gig tonight that wouldn’t end until midnight. We’d also played the night before and I hadn’t gotten home until twelve-thirty, which meant I’d been in bed maybe three hours, and it had taken me almost an hour to fall asleep, since I was still flying high from the show and excited about today’s release.

I might try and catch a nap at some point, but today was going to be grueling.

“Happy release day,” Warren said when I picked up.

“Uhhh,” I mumbled grumpily.

“Tired?”

“We played until midnight last night,” I said, although he knew our schedule and would have known that.

“If this was easy, anyone could be famous.”

“I’d settle for not being obscure.”

“I’m doing what I can. We’ve got a lot of calls today and you’ve got to keep up the energy. Remember what we talked about. People need to hear you talk about music and be excited enough to go out and buy a copy, or at least stream it. You’ve done well all week and we’ve gotten good feedback from the stations you’ve been on, but today’s going a long one and the first time you’ve done more than one station a day. You’re going to get tired of it after the first few, but you need to push through that and keep the same energy throughout. We can’t sound good in the eastern markets and then drag ass for the west coast.”

“I’ll do my best. So, when do we start finding out numbers? I’m dying to know how sales are going.”

“The big charts update on Tuesday for the previous week, but we’re not going to be looking at those. Unless you go viral or are an established name, it would be very unusual to see you on those.”

“Even the new artist charts?”

“Yeah. In the old days, those charts were all about radio play, but these days it’s basically a chart of viral hits. The internet has really changed the game on all of that. Hell, unless you’re a big name, all of the charts are pushed more by the internet than anything else. Even the big names get pushed if something really goes big on Byte, or maybe a few of the smaller social media platforms, it can push the big names off number one on the main charts. Only for a week usually, but it’s made the whole market kind of unpredictable.”

Byte was a short video app that people did dancing, lip-synced songs, and just talked about whatever, on. I knew most of the kids at school used it, although I hadn’t ever used it myself.

“I thought Kent said part of their streaming and internet market was putting it on Byte?”

“Ohh, it is, but hundreds of clips from songs are put on there every day, and that doesn’t count all the voice clips made into lip-syncs, which is several times that number. It’s tough to break through with that kind of volume, and the sub-forties demographic has gotten very hard to market to. Anything that sounds like a commercial gets ignored completely, and if they hear it too much, they’ll even go out of their way to not listen to the song or buy it.”

“Ohh, I kept hearing people talk about streaming, and I thought it was like the radio. I’ve never used any of the social media apps, so I don’t really know how they work.”

“That’s something you’re probably going to have to fix, honestly. The industry thought they had it figured out with millennials, who seemed to respond to influence suggestions. As long the influencer wasn’t too blatant about it being a paid promotion, it worked about how traditional advertising worked, but anyone under twenty seems immune to that too. Anything that even smells like advertising, even advertising adjacent, and they run for the hills. Now we can only put a sound up and pray.”

“So that’s it? When he said marketing on social media, I thought it might be more.”

“We do more, but I’m trying to give you an honest expectation. We’re still trying the whole influencer thing, and we do promotional posts, but those get shit numbers. if you were starting this ten years ago, the old rules still applied, but you’re coming into this in a whole new world. The truth is, no matter what anyone tells you, when it comes to advertising these days, no one knows anything. Ohh, every week we get some whiz kid or guru who swears they’ve got the secret sauce, but I haven’t seen any of that work, yet. Best thing you can do is build your own social media following, and interact with them, and hopefully they share your posts with their friends, and so and so on. Generally, the more genuine things are, the more likely they are to go viral.”

“That sounds like something I should have been doing while touring.”

“It really is, and I’m surprised your last manager didn’t push it, cause it’s one of the first things I talk to my guys about. Merch is great as a barometer for enthusiasm, but people aren’t stopping a fan in a store asking if the band on their shirt is any good. Social media though, you get some pick up at every show, especially during it. The kids will still have their phones up and post videos of a show they’re at, but if they don’t know your handle, or if you aren’t on social media, you won’t get tagged on it, and no one will know it’s you. Of course, you have to be careful.”

“About what I do on stage?”

“That too, but I meant what you say on social media. It’s important to be real out there, but it’s super easy to get canceled, and the minefield is completely unknowable. It’s not just about avoiding the usual minefields of politics, race and religion anymore. Every group on every side of the aisle, including the middle, has their sacred cows that, if you cross, they’ll come for your throat. Hell, sometimes you don’t have to say anything at all, and they’ll still come for you, and send their horde of fans after you. A lot of these guys make a lot of money by being in the news making people mad about something, which means they need content, and it’s impossible to know where they’ll swing. If it wasn’t so important to getting your name out there, I’d actually tell anyone I manage to stay as far from social media as possible, but it’s a two edge sword, because you also can’t really make it these days without it.”

“I thought all press was good press.”

“I mean, it is, don’t get me wrong. There are a lot of people who stake out one particular demographic and piss off all the others, and get popular. And it doesn’t even seem to matter what demographic that is. Pro-LGBT, Anti-LGBT, pro-religion, atheist, Pro-gun, anti-gun, you pick a topic, there’s someone making money being a popular figure on every side of it. But you’ll notice the really big names work very hard to not silo themselves in one place, because it locks you into a set audience size. And of course, it’s possible to get all of those people from both sides of an issue mad at you for the exact same statement. Anyway, I’ll get off my soapbox. Just, get on social media, post often, be genuine, but avoid the obvious danger zones and ignore the trolls, because their entire goal is to get you to join them in the mud. They tend to disappear if you ignore them.”

“I’ll try,” I said.

I needed to talk to my friends and see what they thought. I hadn’t even had a steady internet connection or a cell phone until we moved to Wellsville, and since moving here I’d been so damn busy I hadn’t even considered getting on social media, but I knew he was right about its importance. I swear half the conversations at school were about something everyone saw online. I’d even seen it with Hanna when that picture of hers went around the school. His warning made me a little nervous though, so I needed someone smarter than me to help me figure out how to deal with this. Sadly, it wasn’t going to be Hanna, who was almost as much of a Luddite as I was.

“Okay, speech over, I have some good news. It’s short notice, but I got you a spot at the Nashville Music and Wine Festival. I already accepted for you guys, so I’m hoping you can make it, because it’s a great opportunity. You’re filling in for one of the morning groups who had to pull out because their lead singer OD’d.”

“Jesus, I hope he’s okay.”

“I understand he’s going to be okay, but he got admitted and the doctors waved him off of performing. The people running the show were desperate, and I know a guy who’s on the committee that selected the groups. I’ll be honest, the pay isn’t going to be great, but there are some huge groups closing it up, including Ronnie Ralston, who’s headlining it.”

That was interesting. Ronnie Ralston was a giant name in music. She’d come up on some kid's show and became a music sensation when she hit puberty. She sang a super happy version of pop that was amazingly different from my style of music. We both covered pop, but at opposite ends of the spectrum. Of course, she also sold out stadiums with huge dance teams, pyrotechnics and giant glitter cannons. If even a fraction of her audience turned up, he wasn’t kidding about the kind of exposure it would be for us. If they didn’t hate us!

Bad booking wasn’t unheard of. Audiences weren’t some generic conglomerate. If you threw a country act up in front of a crowd that came out for metal, you’d end up with a small riot, and I guarantee the audience wouldn’t forget that act, and not in a good way.

“What’s the rest of the line-up?” I asked.

Either he’d had the same concern or I just wasn’t good at hiding the concern in my voice, because he knew exactly what I was asking without me having to say anything.

“Don’t worry, it’s not that kind of festival. They have a pretty wide range of acts, mostly angling toward more mainstream pop. There are a few acts that I’d call rock, but they’re definitely on the softer side. I’ve been to this festival before, and it veers older than a lot of these kinds of things, especially considering you have to be over twenty-one to get in the gates. If anything you’re more on brand with the audience that will be there than she will, but she’s a big enough name that the people will stick around to see her, if only to say they got the tickets.”

“So it’ll be a big crowd?”

“Overall I think it’s something like ten or fifteen thousand, but that’s across the entire fairgrounds, which is a little spread out. There’s a seating area of tables near the cleared area in front of the stage for people to take the stuff they’re sampling, so you’ll have an audience no matter what. A lot of people will be wandering around, talking to vendors, and so on, so it’s not like a concert, where the focus would be on you.”

“We did a spring break festival last year,” I said, since that had been a little like what he was describing.

“Yeah, I saw that mentioned in the file we have on you. It won’t be quite like that, since that was a music festival that also had booths for food and drink. This has chefs and restaurants coming from around the region and there’s a stage on the opposite side from the music stage for cooking demos and the like. So, the focus is more like fifty-fifty, or maybe even forty-sixty, with people being there for the food. Still, you’ll be the background music and people will be listening, so it’s good exposure.”

“It sounds great, Warren. You’ve really hit the ground running.”

“We’re just getting started. Once we’re past the press for your release, I’ll be able to work on more shows for you guys. All right, time’s up, and we have to call in. You ready?”

“Sure,” I said.

I had been nervous about the release, but hearing we’d already been booked into a major festival really took a lot of the weight off. coming a week after the album dropped also meant any bump we got from it would be able to move our first month numbers, which was the first critical window for how the label would judge our future with them. It really showed what good management could do for us, and just how bad Brent had been at his job.

By Monday, I felt like I’d gone ten rounds in the ring. Although my date with Sydney had gone really well, including an extended ten-minute tame make-out session parked on the far side of the Blue Ridge where no one could see us, the rest of the weekend had been non-stop.

Warren had said he’d booked me as full as possible, which was surprising since weekends didn’t have the same drive-time shows as weekdays. Still, between satellite radio and standard radio stations across the country, he’d found enough mid-day music programs, countdowns, and even a few genuine interview shows to get me a lot of air time. Considering this was my first record, I had to imagine those shows were pretty hard up for guests, but at least it got me some kind of exposure.

He had me up incredibly early Monday morning for drive-time shows, packed right up until it was time to go to school. Considering we’d played the night before, on top of all of the interviews I’d already given, I was completely sleep deprived by the time I got to school. I’m sure if I was with mom, and she still cared about anything more than keeping Dad happy, she would have gotten onto me about my schedule and putting school second. And she wouldn’t have been wrong. Right now I was treating this as a special circumstance and probably wouldn’t be keeping this up after this week, or at least not at this pace.

Sydney saw how tired I was on Saturday and I think she could see it on my face when she met me in front of the school, because she just took my hand and walked with me instead of stopping to talk like we had most other days recently. It was a testament to how tired I was that I didn’t notice all of the banners and signs up in the halls and hanging down across the cafeteria until we were halfway to her class.

“It’s homecoming already?” I asked.

I’d basically been keeping my head down since school started up again, trying to keep my grades up while focusing on the album release and getting to know Sydney, and hadn’t even thought about the major high school moments like ‘Homecoming.’ I’m sure they’d talked about it at conditioning, since homecoming was a big game for the football team, but David and I kept our distance, since I was generally disliked by the entire football team and avoiding Harry and his friends seemed like a good call.

“Yeah,” Sydney said, with no comment.

Suddenly dots started connecting with stuff she’d said on Saturday. We’d been talking about dating and stuff, and she’d brought up how much she loved preparing for the big dates, which is why she knew she’d love prom when she was a senior. Apparently buying dresses and taking pictures and the whole routine appealed to her, although at the time I couldn’t fathom why. It had seemed a strange subject for conversation, but at the time, I’d just rolled with it, happy to be talking to her about anything.

Now, seeing the banners, I suddenly realized she’d been dropping massive hints my dumb brain had just glazed right over.

“I’m so sorry,” I said, moving us to the side of the hallway so I could face her while we talked without getting trampled. “That’s what you were trying to say on Saturday.”

“I wasn’t … I was just pointing out the dance was coming up.”

“See, here’s the thing. I’m dumb. Hints will sail right over my head, like, ninety percent of the time. If you knocked me down, sat on my chest, grabbed me by the throat, and said, ‘Hey dummy, I want to go to Homecoming and if you want to go with me, you have to ask early enough so I can get fancy clothes,’ maybe, just maybe, I’d get the hint.”

“Right here?” she asked, that sly smile of hers coming back as she looked at the other kids passing in the halls.

I honestly thought if I said ‘yes,’ she just might do it then and there, which is one of the things I was finding I really liked about her. She was so reserved and proper half the time, and an absolute hellion the rest. She seemed to have absolutely no fear to do stuff that would have given Rhonda hives out of fear she would have ended up ostracized.

“No, I got the message this time. Sydney, do you want to go to homecoming with me.”

“I don't know,” She said slowly, looking up like she was thinking hard. “It’s such late notice, and I’m not really into dancing.”

“You are a massive pain in the ass, you know that, right?”

“I do, in fact,” she said, grinning at her own sense of humor. “Fine, I’ll have mercy this time, but next time if you wait too long, I’m gonna go find one of the guys in wood shop and ask them out instead.”

“I’ve been warned. So … was that a ‘yes?’”

“Yes, that was a ‘yes.’ I’d love to go to homecoming,” she said, pushing herself up on her toes as she leaned into me.

I leaned down towards her, our faces getting an inch apart before a throat cleared behind me, causing the two of us to break apart. Her English teacher, which was the class she was about to go into, was behind us, arms folded, a disapproving look on her face. It was all I could do to keep from rolling my eyes. The school had this weird no PDA policy that they enforced incredibly unevenly and arbitrarily. Some teachers didn’t seem to care at all and others patrolled the halls like they thought if two kids kissed, it would lead to them sprawled in the hallway humping.

“I’ll see you at lunch,” Sydney said, giving her teacher an apologetic look and disappearing into her classroom.

Today she was actually coming to eat lunch with me. She’d been the one to bring it up at first, which had surprised me. We couldn’t really talk except at school or on dates, since calling her house was a definite no-no and her father was against the idea of her having a cell phone. I guess it made sense for her overprotective sheriff father, but it made talking to her more difficult. She had called me a couple of times when her dad was out; but other than that, almost every conversation we’d had, had been face-to-face.

I was glad she suggested she eat lunch with me, because I’d started going to her table about half the time, and while I liked her friends a million times more than I’d liked Rhonda’s friends, I didn’t want to abandon my friends, either. The only tricky part was Kat. She’d promised to try and be less openly hostile to Sydney, but that wasn't the same as being nice, and I didn’t know how she’d react to Sydney’s sudden appearance at our lunch table. In the end, I simply said I thought it was a great idea, and we’d worked out what days we’d eat where. Kat had issues, and I was sensitive to that, but at some point I couldn’t let my worry about Kat rule my life.

She’d have to accept that sometimes it wasn’t about her, and learn to live with stuff she didn’t like. I wouldn’t push her on the big stuff, but this wasn’t an unreasonable thing to ask of her.