Dissonance - Chapter 10

I had to hand it to Brent, our first show was much better organized and much larger than I’d originally expected. It was actually one of the clubs we’d looked at the other night, but hadn’t gone to because I was too young to actually get in. Strange that I was now going to be paid to be inside, but that’s one of the little oddities of life.

It held seven hundred people at max capacity and had two levels. The first floor was standing room only and held the bulk of the audience. A thin second-floor balcony wrapped around three sides of the venue and had a series of small tables on two sides and roped-off areas directly facing the stage with couches and tables that people could rent for parties or whatnot.

We showed up an hour before the gig and people were already inside dancing and drinking. A DJ was playing music and a curtain covered the stage, letting us set up our equipment. I’d wanted to do a sound check, but the way this club operated, they didn’t have live music until later in the evening, and didn’t want to interrupt the party atmosphere. They said they checked all the sound equipment and their audio guy was around to make sure we knew the preset levels, but that didn’t necessarily mean we wouldn’t have the guitar blowing out the vocals or the vocals disappearing into the mix.

“We couldn’t request to come in and do a sound check earlier and then come back for the show?” I asked Brent when he showed up, halfway through set up. “This no sound check thing could really screw us.”

“I … no. Not this time. But I’ll make sure to check on the next venues and make sure you get a sound check,” he said.

The hesitation at the start kind of made me think he hadn’t checked at all. I’d already gotten the impression that he was somewhat new to this, but it was dawning on me just how new he was. I couldn’t blame the label for saddling new talent with the new managers, since they had to get their experience somewhere, and it was doubtful that they’d want to do it with the real money makers; but it did bother me that instead of owning up to it, he just talked a big game and tried to act like he knew what was happening.

Still, there wasn’t much I could do about it now and calling him out on it would make our working relationship even more tense than it was after the meeting the day before. He’d clearly not been a fan of being pushed back on and had the idea that he was in charge, instead of working for us.

“Okay,” was all I said instead.

“There’s some good news, though. Turnout is really good. Much better than we were hoping. There’s already almost four hundred people out there, and the doors jumping. I just talked to the owner, and he said that they usually maxed out at about three hundred on nights they brought in unknown talent.”

“Maybe it’s ’cause we’ve played out here before. We had a pretty good-sized audience by the end of our set at the festival a few months back, and that was recent enough that the people who liked us haven’t forgotten about us.”

“Maybe. The radio show you did this morning also went well, so maybe it was that.”

Of course his first thought would be something he set up and not the show we’d done a few months ago, but he wasn’t wrong. It had been crazy early and Lyla had been too hungover to join us, but it had gone really well. It was my first time being on the radio, but once we got started I really wasn’t that nervous. The DJ was a middle-aged guy and seemed way too old for our demographic, but he was also really charismatic, which is probably how he ended up being a DJ in the first place. He was really good about setting us at ease and getting us talking.

When he heard that we had already played regularly in Ashville, he asked a lot of questions about it, which gave us something to talk about. I also played an acapella version of Country Roads using an acoustic guitar Brent had gotten from somewhere. I’d only really played on my guitar and besides plucking away while writing it or playing with Mr. French during the school year, I hadn’t tried to actually do it unplugged for real. The night before, Rowan emailed me a version of the guitar tabs he’d redone to work better on acoustic, and I’d given it a few run throughs, and thought it sounded all right. I was still skeptical anyone under the age of thirty listened to morning drive-time radio anymore, but maybe Brent was right and the crowd was because of our appearance that morning.

“Anyway,” Brent continued. “The door is looking very good and the management is happy, so we’re starting things off with a bang.”

He rubbed his hands together almost cartoonishly and then headed off stage, back towards the manager’s office. It was good news. I know he’d said we didn’t have to worry about selling out any shows on this tour, but I knew they’d pay attention to how we did and it would hopefully have an effect on album sales.

We hadn’t officially released yet, but Rowan had put together two singles, one for Country Roads and one for Hush and Kent had gotten a very small pressing done so we’d have some to sell at the show. Neither was for actual release, since it only had our logo and the song name on the cover, and wouldn’t be listed on any charts, but the label got the bulk of those sales and it would add to what we were pulling in overall. The big hope was that, when the album released in September, the audiences would remember them and go out and buy it, or at least start streaming it.

The show itself went great.

The room wasn’t full when the curtain pulled back, but it wasn’t empty. I’d say we filled just over half, including some of the smaller tables on the balcony, but none of the big roped-off sections, which I guessed were probably expensive and mostly used when a bigger name came through.

We opened with Country Roads, which was our most polished song and how we ended opening most shows when we hadn’t played a place before. From there, we went through the rest of the songs on the album, keeping them in the same order. I hadn’t been sure of that decision, since we’d been doing a different order when we’d played other shows.

True, that order had included about half covers, since we really only had about seven songs show ready before we’d come to town, but we really worked hard the last four months of shows at the Blue Ridge to have our song order keep the tempo up for the audience. A lot of that had to do with the covers we picked, almost all of which was up-tempo, because the stuff I was writing was all trending slower. That worked for our album, but I wasn’t sure it was what we wanted for in person.

The audience was into it, but the energy was very different than it was at the Blue Ridge, and I chalked a lot of that up to our song choices. The song that seemed to get the audience going the most was One Night Stand, which had Lyla grinning over at me as the crowd started getting into it.

It was late into our set and the bar was busy all night, so maybe part of it was just the people were a lot more lubed up by that point of the show than they had been in the first half. I know one guy who was for sure, as he climbed over the small metal divider that separated the dance floor. I guess because we were unknowns and they weren’t expecting a crowd, there wasn’t much in the way of security. There was a bouncer at the door and another who was standing by the bar area, but no one by the barrier to the stage. To the guy by the bar’s credit, he saw it right away and started moving, but half of the audience was packed towards the front half of the club, which meant he had to push his way through the crowd enough to get to the edge of the barrier, where he could hop over and move faster. There was no way he was getting there before this guy made it up on stage.

Surprisingly, just as the drunk made it halfway over the barrier, an arm shot out through the crowd, gripped his shoulder and pulled him back hard, sending him to the ground on the audience side of the metal fencing. He didn’t seem to care, or really even notice, that he’d been manhandled, however. In classic drunk fashion, he just hopped up and went back to bopping along with the song, barely even noticing he’d just been knocked over.

It wasn’t until then that I noticed the arm that grabbed him belonged to Victor, who moved up closer to the front thanks to the gap created when people moved out of the way as he pulled the drunk back.

“Did you guys have a good night?” I said into the mic as we finished our last song.

The crowd yelled back in unison. I liked to get audience participation with my crowd work, and by the end of a set I’d cajoled them into responding enough times that I usually could get something at the end of the night. This was one of the largest crowds we’d played for, and the largest inside a closed building for sure, so even getting half the crowd to respond made for an overwhelming rush of noise.

“If you liked what you heard, we have singles at the merch table in the back and our CD drops in September. We have a mailing list back there if you want to get notified when it comes out. You guys have been great and we look forward to seeing you again next time we come through. Before we go, let’s hear how things are backstage,” I said, and stepped back so we could close out the show.

I’d shifted Jesse James, which was the last song on our album, with Backstageon the fly because I wanted to at least leave them with something more up-tempo to end the night. Backstage wasn’t as upbeat as One Night Standor Let’s Go Out Tonight, but it had a really solid guitar solo in the middle that sounded more classic rock than anything else we had, and I thought it would leave us on a good note, since the last song is one of the thing audiences really remember. It seemed to pay off. The reaction to the guitar solo was good, with the dance floor, that had started to empty out, filling up again.

“That’s it for us. Good night,” I said as I finished off the last note, and got a bigger applause than before the encore.

The curtain came down and started packing up, although mostly that meant unplugging and putting the guitars and keyboard in their cases. We’d discussed it the night before, when figuring out how to get out to the merch table fast, and it was decided that, once we had stuff in cases, Seth and Marco would load the van while Lyla and I went out to the merch table. I felt kind of bad that they didn’t get included, since they were equal members of the band, but it had been Seth’s idea.

He said that we’d all agreed that we needed to be out there to sell merch and talk to anyone who wanted to, so they’d remember us, which meant someone was going to have to stay behind and deal with the equipment. He pointed out that I had to be out front, since I was fronting the band and was the name and face people would remember, so I had to be by the merch table. He also suggested Lyla go with me, since any time we performed she got the second most attention. True, a lot of that attention was from guys who never stood a chance, and Lyla wasn’t too subtle about turning them down, not that they ever minded. So Lyla and I left the equipment to Seth and Marco and headed out front.

A DJ had taken over and some people were still dancing, but the place had started to clear out now that the live music had stopped. It wasn’t a huge crowd to start with, and it started to thin out now that the live music had stopped. It was flattering to think that they stuck around to hear us finish out, but it was probably just that any live music was playing they could dance to. They probably would have stayed on the dance floor if the DJ hadn’t royally sucked and picked stuff that was popular, but impossible to dance to.

Surprisingly, some people were gathered around our merch table. Not the whole crowd or anything, but a dozen or more, which was more than I expected. Hanna was talking a mile a minute, showing off the shirts, hats and the few singles we could get before this show.

“Hey guys, how did y’all like the show?” I asked, sliding past the people on the end of the table and next to Hanna.

“Hey,” one of the girls near the front said. “You guys were great. I loved the mix of rock and country in your sound.”

“Thanks. Although I think a lot of that is from listening to southern rock in the sixties and seventies. I was really influenced by Little Rock by Country Turnpike from sixty-eight and their follow-up album in seventy-two.”

“Hurricane Lady? That’s my all-time favorite record.”

“Holly’s a nerd for classic rock. She thinks the rest of us are heathens ’cause we listen to stuff made after twenty-ten.”

“Hey, I love the new stuff too. I just grew up around classic rock, so those things kind of seep in more. Lyla though, she’s probably the most modern of all of us,” I said, pointing at Lyla, who was leaning in, talking to a girl. “She wrote One-Night Stand.”

“That’s what I’m talking about,” Holly’s friend said. “You could really dance to that one. It had a great bass line.”

“She is our bass player, so that tracks,” I said, laughing.

“Are you guys playing out here again?”

“Our next show is tomorrow in Durham. After that we’re heading up to Virginia where we play in Norfolk on the sixth, Petersburg on the eighth before opening for House of Grace in Richmond on the ninth. After that we’re either in the western part of the state, or in Tennessee. I’m sure we’ll be back out this way again. We played in the Spring Break Bash and it was great, so I’m kind of hoping we can manage that again.”

“You’re opening for House of Grace?” Holly said.

They were most definitely not classic rock, so apparently her friend’s assertion that she only liked stuff from before the two-thousands wasn’t completely accurate.

“Yep. We’ve actually played just before them at spring break, which is how we met. This’ll be our first time doing a really big show like theirs, though.”

“You’ll do great,” a different friend of Holly’s said.

“Yeah,” Holly added. “We’re actually free tomorrow, so we might come up and see y’all in Durham.”

“We are,” Her friend said, before getting an elbow. “Sure, sounds great.”

“I’ll look for you,” I said.

This was exactly what we were looking for. They wanted us to use this to build new fans, and maybe we just had. Although at this rate I would be retired before we’d be filling anything larger than a club, but I guess we had to start somewhere.

Holly bought a shirt and two of our singles and her friend brought a shirt, which made for a decent amount of money. I thanked them again and slid out to let Hanna make the actual sale, since I didn’t know how the whole processing money part of the setup worked, and moved on to schmooze some other people.

A few responded similarly, if not quite as thoroughly, as Holly and her friends and a few seemed almost skeptical of me, which was weird since they’d hung around at the merch table long enough for me to get to them, which I would have thought was a sign they’d liked what they heard.

A few of the people asked about the rest of our schedule and it occurred to me we needed to at least print up a tour flyer with all of our dates on it. That really was something our manager should have been doing instead of trying to maneuver us into giving over our email list, but at least I’d thought of it now. I didn’t know if we’d have time to get anything made before Durham, but after that we’d have a couple of days until the Norfolk show and then a couple of more until Petersburg, so we had time. As long as we got it before we got more than a few days into our tour, we shouldn’t miss all that much.

I finished up with a guy about ten years older than me who wanted to talk about a band he heard that he thought we sounded like, when I noticed Victor standing at the side of the merch table. Enough people had cleared out, some buying stuff and some not, that there was room for him to stand next to the table, although he was clearly making an effort to not be distracting or draw attention to himself. I know he was being polite, not wanting to get in the way of our business, but I saw it as an opportunity to get out of this conversation. I know it would probably have been smarter to stay and let the guy talk, since he was potentially a future fan, but he seemed to have something he wanted to talk about and I just happened to be a handy prop for him to explain his interest too. Part of me couldn’t help but wonder if I’d ever done that, and realized I probably had, droning on about music when someone had no interest in it.

“Yeah, they’re really good too,” I said as he listed off another band he liked and thought we had a similar sound to. “Hey, thanks for stopping by and saying hi. I really hope you enjoyed the show, and look out for us when we come back into town. I gotta run check on these people down here, but if you wanted to get anything, Hanna knows more about our merch than I do honestly.”

I didn’t give him a chance to respond, giving him a wide grin and then sliding down to where Victor was standing. I did notice him turn and start to talk to Hanna about other bands he liked whose merch he’d bought, and I felt a little bad for siccing him on her, although not bad enough to actually go back and rescue her.

“Hey man,” I said to Victor turning my back on Hanna and her new friend to ensure I didn’t get roped back in.

“Hey, I didn’t mean to interrupt you from selling stuff.”

“You didn’t. I don’t think he’s going to buy. I think he just wants to have someone to talk to.”

“I know the type. Great show. Better than the one you did at the festival, actually. You guys are really improving.”

“We’ve been practicing a lot, but I think the biggest thing was the studio time. We would have probably kept making the same mistakes forever if Rowan, our producer, hadn’t pointed them out to us. We really worked out a lot of our songs.”

“It shows. But the show part itself was also great. You had a good presence on stage when I saw you before, but you’ve really stepped it up even more.”

“Thanks. I’m not sure what I did differently. Maybe it’s the pressure of this being our first show.”

“Maybe, but you did great. The crowd was really into it.”

“Yeah, I could feel that. Although some of them were too into it. Thanks for dealing with that guy.”

“No problem. I’ve actually worked as a bouncer for a bit before I decided I didn’t like it, well, that and Chef found out and chewed me out for using what I’ve learned the wrong way.”

“Not a fan of you making money off it?” I said, a little perplexed.

He didn’t get paid to teach, so he didn’t make money off it, but he had contemporaries who did, and I got the impression both when he talked with them and the few times I’d been around him when he’d talked to them, that he didn’t have a problem with them doing it.

“No, it’s the way I was using it to make money. Sometimes bouncing is about being defensive, but a lot of time, it’s about getting rid of trouble before it starts, and that means putting hands on people and not just defending yourself, which for Chef is a big no-no.”

“Yeah, I found that out.”

“He didn’t tell me I had to stop, but he made it clear I was disappointing him, so I stopped.”

“Ahh,” was all I could say.

I could see it. When I’d hurt Aaron more than I’d needed to before Christmas, to make sure he couldn’t come at me again, Chef had been pissed, and made the same comments to me. Since then, I’d tried to avoid doing that, even if I felt the person deserved it or it would keep them from doing something like that in the future.

“But that didn’t count here. That guy was so drunk all I had to do was pull him back and point him in another direction, and he wandered off.”

“I’m not sure if we’re doing anything after this, but you’re welcome to stay and hang out with us after. The next show is in Durham, so we don’t have to get you early.”

“No, I have an early class to teach in the morning,” Victor said.

Besides his actual day job, Victor taught classes at the studio he trained at on weekends. I knew that, but I thought maybe he could have gotten out anyway. He’d hung out with Hanna, Kat and me, but we were all a lot younger than he was. Marco and Seth were closer to his age and I thought they might enjoy hanging out with someone besides kids.

“No problem, I just thought …”my sentence was cut off halfway by the sound of Hanna raising her voice.

“Lyla, I said no.”

I couldn’t hear what Lyla said, but she was clearly agitated, half leaning towards the girl she’d been talking to the entire time.

“Victor, I …”

“Go. Go. I have to take off anyway.”

I gave a half wave and headed over to where Lyla and Hanna were arguing.

“Is everything okay?” I asked.

“No. She’s trying to give some of the merch to this girl she’s trying to bang,” Hanna said, a little too loud.

The girl in question looked uncomfortable, which I didn’t blame her for. Being called out like that wasn’t cool, especially since I’d bet it had been Lyla’s idea to start with.

“Kat, could you watch the table for a minute,” I asked, pulling both the other girls back with me.

They were both mad and tried to pull out of my grip, but I’d gotten them far enough back that we could have at least sort of a private conversation,.

“Hanna, that was cruel. That girl didn’t deserve to be called out like that.”

“Sorry,” Hanna said, looking in the direction of the referenced girl, who still looked mortified.

“Lyla, were you giving away merch?”

“It’s just one shirt. Hell, it’s our money, really. I should be able to do what I want with it.”

“It’s not our money until we sell it, it’s the investors. None of us had enough money to buy all this stuff on our own, and if we don’t pay them back, we won’t be able to afford it next time. Worse, this might be our only shot. If we make good money now, the label will want to run it next time and we’ll have to settle for a much smaller percent.”

“But it’s just one shirt.”

“And then if Marco or Seth want to give out a shirt? And we do it at every stop. These kinds of things snowball fast.”

“I guess,” Lyla said softly while looking at the floor.

I could tell she felt bad. Lyla wasn’t stupid and she knew Hanna was right. She was just stubborn and proud and hated to ever admit she was wrong, especially when she had someone watching her. When that didn’t work, she started to shrink into herself, she suddenly lost her normal bluster and headstrong attitude. It was strange to see.

“Why do you need to give out free shirts to pick a girl up, anyways? The way you’ve always told it, your ability to pick up women is legendary. I guess Seth was right. You’re all talk, no game.”

“No game, huh?” Lyla said, the meek posture she’d taken disappearing as she reverted to her old self. “I’ll show you no game.”

With that, she made her way around the table and towards the girl, who’d been watching all of this with some trepidation. I felt kind of bad for unleashing a Lyla with something to prove to her, but at least it solved the problem between her and Hanna for the moment, which is all I really wanted.