Dissonance - Chapter 14

We left the next morning for the Tennessee leg of our tour. Dad was sleeping in and I’d stayed out late practicing with the band and hanging out with Hanna and Kat, which meant I successfully avoided him since I found out he was back. I understood what both Hanna’s mom and Chef had said about not overreacting until he did something, but I didn’t want to deal with him if I didn’t have to. Since it was such a short stopover, it was easy to just stay out for the day and a half before we hit the road again.

Every time I thought of him being here I got so angry that I didn’t trust myself to not say something that would push him into reverting back to his old ways. Although he hadn’t been in prison all that long, just a year and a half, there had been almost two years leading up to his trial, where we’d existed in sort of a limbo, living in the RV and waiting to find out if he was coming back of if we were going to be on our own. The last time I’d really lived with him I was twelve.

I wasn’t twelve anymore and I wasn’t going to put up with his bullshit if he decided to start drinking again, or act like he did with Mom in those last few years. I’d have to deal with him eventually, but if I could put it off until the tour was over, so much the better.

At least on the road, I could focus on our gigs and push all of that off for the future. I had to hand it to Brent, he may have had trouble understanding boundaries, but at least the tour was arranged well. The clubs were all too small to really look up, but at least the stops were set up so we didn’t spend a long time on the road any day.

This second half of our tour went through Tennessee and Kentucky in a half circle. Our first stop was Knoxville, then down to Chattanooga, north a bit to Nashville, which finished off our Tennessee part of this half of the tour. We then headed up into Kentucky, with a show in Louisville followed by Lexington. Every stop was only a few hours or so between each one, except the Nashville to Louisville section and the last drive home, and even those were less than half a day driving.

For the first stop, the venue itself was a lot closer to the two we played in North Carolina than the big stage in Richmond. I loved that experience, but we weren’t ready for that yet, or at least I wasn’t. Being an opening act and knowing we didn’t have to carry the whole thing made it a fun experience, since we didn’t have the stress that would have gone along with our necks being on the line. For now, I was much more comfortable with the small clubs, where I at least feel like I could control the audiences a bit better.

The one thing that was different than I’d expected was the stage. Specifically, there were instruments already on it. At first I thought it might just be the club setup, which sometimes left a set of drums on the stage for bands to use, at least until I noticed the guitar stands and guitars sitting in front of the drums.

We were off to the side by the door that lead into the clubs' storeroom, which apparently doubled as the green room for the band and the loading dock for our equipment. There wasn’t anyone else back here, so it wasn’t clear whose instruments those were.

“What’s going on?” I asked Hanna.

“I don’t know. Let me go find out,” she said, going back into the storeroom.

I hadn’t seen Brent yet, but at the other shows he’d always shown up separately, on his own, and usually sometime during our set, so that wasn’t unusual. In spite of that, he’d had all the shows set up well, so it hadn’t been an issue. The people who’d worked at the venues knew where we needed to be, the stage was prepped and we hadn’t run into any problems that we needed our tour manager to sort out.

As we stood there waiting for Hanna to figure out what the hell was going on, three guys who’d been at the bar walked across the floor and got up on stage, two picking up guitars and one getting behind the drum kit.

“What’s up fuckers? We’re Death Punch Tuesday and we’re going to play a few songs before the next band comes up.”

With that, he stepped back and the three began a weirdly paced into before he started to scream into the mic. I didn’t love metal, but generally I could appreciate it, especially the guitar riffs that the better bands put into the intros and the bridges. This wasn’t that. I could hear the through line of the instrumentals enough to tell the guy singing was off-tempo, which explained the weird pauses as he waited for the music to catch up to him.

I’d had issues a few times, especially when covering songs I wasn’t super familiar with and hadn’t practiced much, but usually the band adjusted to catch up. These guys weren’t doing that. They just kept playing the song at the same tempo, forcing the singer to pause, which was … weird.

I don’t know if it was because the band didn’t fit the vibe of the club or if it was the less-than-stellar nature of their playing, but either way the audience wasn’t into it. No one was on the dance floor and hardly anyone was paying attention. Worse, people had started to filter out. After two songs there were noticeably less people in the club than when they’d started.

“What’s going on?”

“They’re opening for you. Brent called and set it up yesterday. He said they were going to do four songs and then you’d go on.”

“They suck,” Seth said.

“I know,” I said.

Hanna finally showed back up as they finished up a second song. Part of me wanted to yell at someone as I watched more of the crowd leave rather than listen to these guys, but taking my frustration at this disaster out on her wouldn’t do any good.

“Tell me you know what the hell is going on?” I asked as calmly as I could.

“Brent booked them to open for you. The guy who runs the place said it was weird, but he didn’t have much of a choice. He didn’t elaborate, but I got the feeling Brent twisted his arm a bit to set it up.”

“Does he know they’re driving off the crowd? At this rate, we’ll be playing to three drunk guys and the bartender.”

“We could hear them in his office pretty clearly, so I’m sure he knows they’re not good. He was pretty frustrated too, which is why I think Brent didn’t give him a choice. I didn’t know a manager would have that kind of pull over a club owner, but apparently they can. He actually didn’t seem like a bad guy, so don’t take it out on him. You can’t afford to alienate club owners, especially not ones close enough for you guys to drive out and do a show on your own, separate from the tour.”

“Fine, I won’t. This just sucks. I can’t imagine what Brent was thinking.”

“I can, and you’re not going to like it.”

“What?”

“The manager knows this band. They used to play gigs in clubs around here years ago before they started making a name for themselves on the metal charts, or whatever it’s called. He said they never got big, but they were opening for other bands and got some radio play like ten years ago, but he’d thought they’d broken up, since then.”

“So they’re on their way down? That’s not really a shock, hearing them play.”

“That’s not the part that’s going to piss you off. He said Brent used to try and get them booked here, back in the day, but the owner pushed it off, since their music didn’t fit with the kind of music the club usually played.”

She was right, that did piss me off, because it explained exactly what was going on. Brent repped these guys and was using our tour to get them stage time. I didn’t know tour managers could handle multiple bands simultaneously, and it wasn’t unreasonable, since a single band wasn’t on tour for the whole year. I did have a problem with him using our tour that we had to give up part of the proceeds from to the label so he could get gigs for a band no one wanted, opening a gig that didn’t need an opener, and almost guaranteeing we wouldn’t sell any merch.

“Are we having to split our part of the cover with them?”

“Yes. They get fifteen percent of the cover split.”

“This is bullshit. I don’t care what everyone is saying about the performance of this tour not mattering, the label is definitely going to look at how we do when making future predictions. Chopping off fifteen percent of our take is going to make us look bad.”

“It’s one show. The Durham show was a lot bigger than we expected and we did good opening for House of Grace. As long as this doesn’t keep happening, you should be okay.”

“Maybe,” I said. “Is he here?”

“No. He sent me a text earlier that he had something come up but he’d meet us in Nashville. I tried to call him, but it went straight to voicemail. Maybe he’s on a plane.”

“Did the text say what came up?”

“No.”

“Did you get the feeling he’s just avoiding us because he knows this is going to be a disaster or is he actually doing something?”

“I don’t know. Just … don’t fly off the deep end, okay. We’ll deal with this. Kent still seems to be happy with you, and you’ve got people like Rowan and Linda in your corner. Let’s wait until the album drops before we start worrying.”

“I won’t go off the deep end, but I’m going to make it clear to Brent when I see him this shit won’t fly. I’ll give him the chance to fix it, but if something like this happens again, I’m going to the label. I can’t imagine they’d be okay with this nonsense.”

“That’s a good plan. Just don’t burn any bridges.”

“Do I ever?”

“No, you usually give people too many chances to screw you over, but with everything that’s happening, I’m worried your patience might not hold out.”

I knew she meant my dad being back, which wasn’t something I wanted to think about, but she might be right. I needed to try and remember what Chef said and try to have patience.

The show itself was one of the worst we’d played. Not from our end point. We actually sounded good and people finally started coming away from the bar to listen to music after we got a few songs in. I changed up the set on the fly, swapping out some of our slower songs we’d had in the set list for the more rock-centric, faster ones. I’d found when an audience wasn’t having a good time, what they needed from us was something to get the energy level back up. And it seemed to work.

Unfortunately, too many people left during the opener’s set, leaving us with less people than we got on an average night at the Blue Ridge, let alone any of the shows we’d played on the tour so far. The drop in numbers really showed at the merch table, where we sold a total of three shirts.

After the first two gigs, Hanna said she was confident we were going to sell through all of our shirts and most of the other stuff, allowing us to pay off the investors and walk away with some money to use to do the next batch of merch without investors at all, which is where real money could start being made for the band. She’d been conservative in her numbers, but she hadn’t accounted for a show where we sold almost nothing, and I could see how frustrated she was.

This tour was her one chance to really show what she could do before she went to college, and she’d been planning on using some of this in later college projects she’d talked to Professor Cross about.

We cut the show off early, since there was hardly anyone in the club to play to. Thankfully, the owner wasn’t directly pissed at us, although he wasn’t happy.

We headed back to the hotel tired and demoralized.

Our next gig wasn’t until almost ten the next night and we were only about three hours from Nashville, so we’d planned on spending the morning exploring the city, but I for one wasn’t really feeling up to it. Playing for a packed house where everyone was vibing with the music was one of the best experiences I’d ever had and made me feel like I was invincible. It turned out the opposite was true when there was no audience at all to play for.

Thankfully, Hanna wasn’t willing to let us wallow.

“No,” she said when I’d told her I just wanted to get to Nashville. “Last night was shitty, but if you four go into tonight’s show with this kind of attitude, you’re just going to make it worse. The audience can tell when you’re not into it, and we don’t need any more disasters if we can help in. You’re going to come out, get breakfast, explore this city, and you’re going to like it, or I’m going to drop-kick your ass off the tallest building I can find.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said, shaking my head at her.

To her credit, it worked. We grabbed an early breakfast and ended up at the World’s Fair Park, which I’d never heard of before, but was having a music festival, which was right up our alley. It was Thursday, which I guess in the summer was close enough to the weekend to start a festival, and this was the first day. I recognized two of the bands' names from when we’d performed at the Spring Break festival earlier in the year, and for a moment wondered why Brent hadn’t gotten us a gig playing here. The bands seemed to be mostly pop and rock, with a little pop-country thrown in the mix, which seemed right up our alley, and would have had much bigger audiences than the club we’d played at last night, even if the opener hadn’t scared everyone away.

It was just something else to put on the list to talk to Brent about. The stage was set up in this wide field with a strange gold disco ball thing overlooking it. A short walk through an outline of trees that surrounded the performance lawn was the Tennessee river with a smaller amphitheater where most of the country acts were playing and a building where we could rent bikes and stuff.

Hanna, Kat and I were off to one side of the stage, watching people set up equipment for the first band, when I felt someone tap me on my shoulder.

“Are you Charlie Nelson?” a guy in his mid-twenties asked.

He had two other guys standing behind him, all looking at me. I went through a quick review of anything I might have done to piss three random guys in Knoxville off, and drew a blank.

“Uhh … yeah,” I said, while still trying to figure out if this was something to be worried about.

“See, I told you it was him,” the guy said over his shoulder to one of his friends. “We saw you play at Triangle Fest. You were really good.”

“Ohh. Thanks,” I said, happy both to be recognized and not be hassled.

“Are you playing today?” One of the friends said.

“No, just checking out the music. We had a show last night and another one in Nashville tomorrow night. We’re just killing some time before we have to get on the road, and this looked like fun.”

“Ohh, good,” the first guy said. “Sorry, not good that you aren’t playing, but I wouldn’t want to have to play after you. This is our first time playing in front of people, and once they heard you guys, they’d know we were frauds.”

“You’re not frauds,” I said. “We all start somewhere. You should have seen me the first time I was up on stage. I was so nervous, I thought I was going to pass out. This is a really good gig for your first show, so you must have done something right.”

“His uncle is one of the event organizers,” one of the friends said.

“Lucky. My first paying gig was in a restaurant I worked at. You’ve gotta take advantage of what you’ve got, right?”

“Exactly.”

“When are you playing?”

“We’re the second band. Uncle Tim would only put us early on the first day, just in case we sucked.”

“That’s probably a good thing. Less pressure that way, right?”

“Right.”

“We have a few hours till we have to leave, so we’ll stick around and hear you guys play.”

“Cool. I’m Jimmy Stone. That’s Levi Grant, he plays base and Aaron plays drums.”

“Nice to meet you. These are my friends Hanna and Kat. What’s the group called?”

“Danger Mouse.”

“Interesting,” I said, not sure what else to say about such a strange name. “Good luck.”

“Thanks,” Jimmy said, giving a half wave and heading towards the backstage area.

It was nice being recognized. It had only happened a couple of times, although one of those had been Linda Chapman, and had ended up in getting my record contract. It was still a strange feeling, having people know who I was when I had no idea who they were. Of course, if everything went right, that would happen more often.

Their music was more mainstream rock without the pop influences we had and they weren’t actually pretty good. Their songs sounded more like some of the stuff I first started working on last year, before Rowan and Mr. French gave me a crash court on the right and wrong ways to add complexity into my music. I still had a long way to go, but it was interesting being in the middle of my learning processes, and seeing a group that was closer to where I had been.

We hung around long enough to say goodbye to them, and then it was time to find the rest of the gang and get on the road. Tonight was another show and, hopefully, a chance to confront Brent about some of the shit he was up to, but it had been nice to take a few hours to ourselves.