Fanfare (Country Roads #2) - Chapter 19

I remained on guard around Kat for several days, wondering if there’d be any fallout from my rejection. I’d tried to soften the blow as best I could, but that was one of the major things that triggered her condition, and the last thing I wanted was to make her worse. That was the main reason I’d said no in the first place.

Oddly, by the next day, she was back to acting like herself, almost like the entire experience never happened. I knew she was good at compartmentalizing things she didn’t want to face, but seeing it up close like this was a little disturbing. My only fear was that she was hiding her real feelings and we wouldn’t find out until she had some kind of massive meltdown.

What she really needed was serious therapy, which was the one thing we couldn’t get her until she was no longer a minor or out of her dad’s custody. Although, even when she was no longer a minor, we’d have to find a way to pay for therapy, since if she did just up and walk out on him, which was her plan, she’d also lose any insurance that would pay for treatment.

There wasn’t much I could do at this point besides leaving it alone and hoping we could keep patching over the problem until she was able to get free and we figured out the problems of actually getting her help. I talked to Hanna about it later that night, after Kat had gone home, and we’d agreed to continue keeping an eye on her, but to just let it drop after that. Of course, neither of us had expected the full denial routine when we’d decided that.

By Saturday, we were all just pretending it never happened and had gotten on with our lives. Thankfully, I had stuff to keep me distracted. After Willie okayed hearing Seth, Marco and I play, to see if we fit and to give the pair a once over, I’d called them and they’d been okay with it. They had to be back at one of the theatres they played backup at later that night, so they’d have to take off shortly after, which meant that my schedule was: audition with them, train with chef, rehearse with Willie, and then play the gig that night. Overall, one of the busiest Saturdays I’d had in a while.

I’d at least convinced Kat that I needed to skip studying that morning, since there was no way I would be able to keep focused enough to remember anything she taught me. At least Chef understood why my focus was all over the place and cut me some slack for once. It actually surprised me a little when he didn’t give me extra conditioning to remind me to keep my head in my training; not that I was complaining.

By the time I showered and was back downstairs Seth and Marco were already there, standing out on the front porch with Willie and Hanna.

“You guys made it,” I said, shaking their hands.

“We said we’d be here, and here we are,” Seth said. “Hanna was just introducing us around, although I’ve actually met Willie before. I wasn’t around this year, but I played drums for him at the Wild Cat the time he came through before.”

“Ohh, I didn’t know that,” I said, although it shouldn’t have surprised me.

Willie usually traveled by himself, without the rest of his band, so he used whatever house band a venue had, which would have meant that Seth would have had a chance to play with him.

“Yep, I remember him. Kept a real fine beat.”

“So, how do we want to do this?” I asked Willie.

“I already had the boys set up the equipment on the stage. This isn’t going to be all formal or nothin’, I just wanted to hear how you three sound together. You played your music at the Wild Cat last weekend, right?”

“Yes, including the newest one which we’ve done in practice a couple of times but I haven’t actually played here yet.”

“Okay, then let’s do it this way. You three set up and do a few warm-ups and when you’re good I want to hear you play through Charlie’s three songs. Charlie said the bassist y’all had didn’t work out. Did y’all want to just do it with the three of y’all, or did you want Howard to step up and cover?”

Howard was the bass player for Willie’s band at the Blue Ridge. He was quiet and at first glance, didn’t seem like he’d have the strength to stand up on stage playing for hours, but once he got going on his bass he was an unstoppable force. I swear when he finally went, it would be with his instrument in his hand.

I looked at Seth and Marco trying to gauge what they were thinking before saying, “Yeah, let’s have Howard sit in if that’s okay. Country Roads, especially, really needs the baseline or it won’t sound right.”

“Sure. I told him you might need him to cover, although you know it’s not hard to get him to start playin’. Y’all work through the songs and let me know when your good, although remember we still got to practice before we go up tonight, so you don’t have forever.”

I didn’t know if that was Willie trying to put a little pressure on or just reminding me, since normally I just went with the flow and followed what they’d always done. I led Seth and Marco to the stage where I was surprised to see Marco’s keyboard. It made sense that he’d have carried it with him, since they played at different clubs on different nights, but I’d imagined he’d have done this audition just using the upright piano that Dwight, Willie’s piano player, always used. Of course, that didn’t really make sense. The sounds were different and they’d want to show what they could do, since both seemed excited about the prospects of this working out.

We went through each of the songs a few times, to get Howard up to speed. It wasn’t all that hard, since Howard had been playing professionally longer than three of us had been alive.

I’d also made some changes since we played the weekend before, mostly revolving around working a keyboard into the mix. I don’t know why I hadn’t considered it before, maybe because Dad never had one in his band, but it seemed obvious in hindsight. My music had much more of a combination of pop and country than Dad’s classic rock, where guitar was king. The slower Country Roads, in particular, was practically made to have a keyboard in it, although the off-the-cuff way we’d done it at the Wild Cat had used Marco to his fullest. At the Wild Cat, Marco’d mostly just been mirroring what I’d been playing, although sometimes shifting chords here or there. That really wasn’t what a keyboard was best at in a rock band.

With some help from Mr. French, I’d given the keyboard its own part, to the point of even taking over the melody from the guitar on the verses, although the guitar kicked back in during the chorus. I also extended the intro to Hush quite a bit with the keyboard doing a softer, sadder version of the rhythm everyone thinks of from the nursery rhyme the song was playing off of.

After we played everything through a few times, we called Willie in and played each song for him. I was pleased with the way it was working out and the songs were starting to sound a lot more polished, like real music. The other big change I’d made, knowing they were joining me was in the vocals. While it might be bragging to say I was still the strongest vocalist out of the three, Seth was not far behind me. Marco was much too low to carry anything, but adding him in allowed us to do some great harmonies. In the end, I still took lead vocals on all three songs, although if this worked out and we kept writing new music, I could see Seth getting his own songs. His voice was a lot raspier than mine, which would work on something more abrasive like rock, and would give us more options.

I didn’t try to go too far yet, mostly some simple two-part harmonies or just the three of us sharing the chorus using the same pitch, which didn’t change the sound but did amplify it, adding something extra to sections that needed punch to it. The other thing that occurred to me was we had the chance of some good three-part harmonies if we worked at it, giving us more range.

Not everything was my changes. Even during these practices, both Seth and Marco made suggestions for slight tweaks to my new changes, which is what I really looked forward to. Music can be an amazing collaborative process, especially the longer a team works together and learns each other’s strengths and weaknesses and how to best play off that.

Watching Dad over the years, I’d always thought of it as a mostly solo kind of thing, since he always went alone or had to back up a headliner who he’d only play with the one time, so all he could do was follow their lead. I’d seen a little of that with Willie, but he and his band had been playing together for so long doing mostly the same thing every weekend, that there hadn’t been much need for brainstorming. They just played what they always played or did more free-flowing jamming, instead of crafting their own music. It wasn’t until last weekend, getting input from Seth and Marco on my music, that I started to see how important having a band that could work together would be.

We finished up and we all came to the front of the stage, sitting on the edge to talk to Willie.

“So, what’d you think?” I asked, maybe a little too eager.

“You’ve been making some changes since I heard them last,” Willie said.

“Yeah. Some of it was to work in Marco, since I hadn’t even considered a piano or keyboard line in the song, and partly to mix in the vocals. They had some great input on that though, so it wasn’t all me.”

“Don’t let him fool you,” Seth said. “He had most of that ready to go when we started. We only made a couple of suggestions. The rest of it is all Charlie.”

“Still, this is the best I’ve heard Charlie sound, and I think you two deserve a share of the credit. You three seem to work really well together, so consider this my seal of approval. You’re gonna need a bass player though. You can’t have Howard and I think if you try to pull that part out, it’ll weaken the sound you’re putting together.”

“Yeah, I know. About the needing a bassist part … not about Howard,” I said. “Seth said he knew a guy, although I’m open to ideas.”

“My first thought was this guy, Paul Malone. I’ve only played with him a few times when we were both filling in, but he could really wail. I called him after we talked the other day and he said he was open to it, but he had a gig in Raleigh last night filling in last minute for someone and couldn’t make it back in time for today. If it’s okay, I thought if things went well here and we were going to make a go of this, I could have him come by practice or whatever, once we figure out how this is going to work. He could play with us and you could figure out if he fits or whatever.”

I looked at Willie, who just gave me a shrug and said, “It’s your band, kid. I’m happy to give you advice and such, but if you want to do this, you can’t be lookin’ to others for answers with this kinda stuff.”

“Yeah,” I said to no one in particular. “First, let’s work out how this is going to work, and then we’ll get to that.”

“Sure,” Seth said.

“Willie seems to approve and I have to say, I’ve really enjoyed playing with you guys, both at the Wild Cat and now, and I think we can make this work. How do you guys feel?”

“It feels good to me,” Marco said. “You’ve really got something with these songs and you’ve got better contacts than I have, and I’ve been doing this for five years already. I’ll be honest, I haven’t gotten a lot of shots yet and this has the most potential of anything I’ve got going on, so I’d want in, even if it wasn’t working. That being said, had we all been in high school together and just playing parties, I woulda still wanted to do this, ’cause it feels right.”

“Same here,” Seth said.

“Good, ’cause I feel the same, about the ‘it feeling right’ part, I mean. I want to lay out some of the challenges, so you know what you’re getting into. While I do have an audition with a talent scout, I want to make sure you know it’s a friend-of-a-friend kind of thing. He isn’t seeking me out because he’s heard I’m some kind of up and comer. I just don’t want you to think you’ve hooked up with a sure thing.”

“Man, nothing in this industry is a sure thing and from what I’ve seen, a friend of a friend is how most of this business gets done,” Seth said.

“Ain’t that the truth,” Willie agreed.

“Okay, I just wanted to make sure you guys understood that. The other thing may be a deal-breaker, so I’ll be honest. I’m gonna be tough to work with,” I said, counting off points on my fingers as I listed them. “One, I’m in high school, which really limits what I’m going to be able to do, which means it’ll limit what the band can do. Two, I don’t have regular transportation. I do have friends who’ll help me with rides and I’ll be turning sixteen soon, although I’m not going to be able to afford a car, so that doesn’t help much. And three, my schedule is crazy packed. Besides going to school during the day and homework, I have regular tutoring sessions, Baseball practice after school and games every week until summer, training here in the afternoons, and on weekends when I don’t have gigs elsewhere I play here on Friday, Saturdays and Sundays, which doesn’t leave a lot of time for practice.”

“I have something that might be able to help a little. I’ve spoken to Chef, and if you do this, then instead of you doing the first half of each night leading my band, we’ll split it entirely. You and your band will play a set and we’ll play the second set.”

I grimaced. I’d been thinking about this since I'd started thinking about having my own band, and this was one area where I’d never been able to figure out a way to handle it that wasn’t unfair to anyone.

“Willie, I don’t know if that’s a great idea. Maybe you, me, and Chef should sit down and talk about this first.”

“If you’re gonna have a band, you can’t be holdin’ meetings about business away from them. It’s a bad principle to set.”

“Okay, that’s fair. While I really appreciate the offer and I’d love to have my own set with my own band, you and the rest of the guys have been playing here for years, and this was your whole thing. Okay, when I started, y’all said you were making more so it worked out better even if they had to play my music; but this is different. Even if we split the take evenly for each person, you’re talking about adding two or three more people taking a cut and your guys get half the playtime. They’ve been part of getting me here as much as you and Chef. I couldn’t do that to them.”

“Damn,” Howard, who’d sat down near the unused stand-up piano, just listening, said. “I owe you ten bucks, Willie.”

“Told you,” Willie responded, laughing. “Between you and Dwight, I just made myself twenty bucks.”

“What?”

“I didn’t just come up with this on my own. I talked about it with everyone before I even brought it up to Chef, and he sat down and talked it over with the guys too. We all agreed this was what we wanted to do, although when I told them you’d turn it down, a couple of the guys said I was crazy.”

“What’s crazy is someone getting handed this so early in their life and saying ‘no.’ No one acts like that.”

“You don’t listen to Charlie then, ’cause this is how he does things.”

Howard shrugged and said, “Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt your meeting. Go ahead.”

“Anyway,” I said, a little embarrassed by the byplay. “I just wanted to make sure I wasn’t taking anything from the rest of the guys is all. What do you say? Want to form a band and play here on the weekends? I know you guys live in Asheville, so that’s kind of a drive three days a week.”

“For a regular paying gig? I’ll tell you, I’ve driven farther than that for gigs, and they were just a one-off,” Seth said.

“No kidding. We’re in. Now we just need a name.”

“Should be something like ‘Charlie and the whatever.’”

“No,” I protested. “I want you guys to be equals in this. Hell, you both have a ton more experience in the business than I do. It’s crazy to put me as top billing.”

“Charlie, you’re going to have to get over this,” Seth said. “You had your own gig five years before either of us ever got paid to be on stage, and we’ve heard you play. The sooner you accept that you’re going places, the sooner you can start heading there. It’s great that you want to be fair and equal and everything, but you can take that too far and it’ll end up holding you back. The music business will use a person up if they let it. You have to stake your place in it if you’re going to make it.”

“He’s not wrong,” Willie said. “One of the things we all like about you is how much you care about everyone bein’ treated right, but I’ve seen guys with that same attitude get taken advantage of a bunch of times. I know I’ve said it, and I know other people have said it, but it’s time for you to realize you’re special, and start acting like it.”

I closed my eyes and leaned back, tilting my face towards the ceiling. I knew the kind of attitude they were talking about, because I’d seen it enough over the years watching my dad and the other musicians he played with. Dad always acted like he was God’s gift to music, and when he came across someone else who acted the same way and made it clear where Dad stood, it’d send him into a depressive spiral for days. It wasn’t hard to imagine that was how it was with a lot of musicians, and I didn’t want to be the same kind of person. I wanted to find my own path, where I could maintain what I thought was right while still making it in the business.

I could see what they were saying, though. I’d also seen a lot of guys, including my dad, take whatever they could if they thought they could get away with it. Willie was probably right that if I kept trying to make everything fair, I’d find a lot of people willing to take advantage of me. It was just hard to get past that instinct to do the opposite of whatever Dad would have done in a situation.

“Okay, okay. I’ll try and be less naïve.”

“Don’t pout,” Hanna, who’d been sitting next to Willie but had stayed quiet through most of the afternoon, said. “A lot of this is just because you’re young. You’ll grow into it.”

“That’s helpful advice,” I said sarcastically. “I’m glad I have wise elders advising me. Thanks, Grandma.”

Seth and Marco laughed while Willie just shook his head at the byplay.

“How about Charlie Nelson and the ‘I just got throat punched’ trio?” Hanna asked, glaring at the three of us.

“Has a ring to it,” Seth said with a grin.

“We met at the Wild Cat. How about Charlie Nelson and the Wild Cats?”

“That’s a bit … I don’t know, seventies, isn’t it?” I asked.

“I kind of like it,” Seth said. “You still get to be Charlie Nelson, but we’re going to be called whatever the second part is. I’d much prefer being called a Wild Cat over – say - a Throat Punched.”

“I don’t think that was ever an option,” I said. “Okay, the Wild Cats. So, will coming up early on Saturdays and Sundays work for you two? We can practice and then play the gig after. I have school on Fridays, so that won’t work, but I could do weekends.”

“Works for me,” Seth said. “We probably need a few weeks of practice before we’re ready to start actually playing, though. We have to break in the bassist and make sure we have a full set of music ready.”

“Most of it will be covers, although I’m open to any songs you guys want to bring to the table.”

“I don’t write,” Marco said. “But Seth has something he’s been working on.”

“It’s not ready,” Seth said.

“Man, you’ve been working on that thing for years now. If it’s not ready now, it’ll never be ready. Besides, Charlie’s stuff has been pretty good, I bet together you two could get it working.”

“Yeah. Maybe.”

“Bring it to the first practice and let’s at least hear it out. For a while, we’re going to have to do at least half covers until we can write some more of our own stuff.”

“That’ll be fine for here,” Willie said. “You mostly do covers as it is now anyway, so the crowd’ll be used to it. By the time you start getting outside gigs, you’ll probably have enough of your own stuff to be able to fill a full set.”

“See, everything’s falling into place,” Seth said, all smiles.

“I just want to make sure you both know there will be some weekends where I won’t be able to play or I’ll have to miss practice, at least while baseball season is going on.”

“We’ll figure it out as we go. I’ve been in other bands before, and they all have their own scheduling problems. This won’t be any different.”

“Okay, then it sounds like we’re going to do this,” Marco said.

I couldn’t believe this had all happened so fast. I just asked on a whim when we’d played the weekend before, because Mr. French had said that I needed to have my own band together when I played for the talent scout. Now here I was, with my own band, which everyone had made painfully clear was indeed my band. I was suffering a little shell shock.

“I guess we are,” I said, matching Marco’s grin.

The guys came up again Sunday for the first official practice, although the new bassist was still unavailable. Seth brought his song with him that he’d called Wayward Child about his older brother who his family had more or less separated themselves from because of a serious substance abuse problem.

In a way, I could relate, although, from the way the song told it, his brother went much further than Dad, at least in his own way. True, he didn’t kill someone, but according to one of the verses, it was much more personal against the family. The second verse ended with:

The last straw was the TV

You sold it for pennies

He clearly didn’t want to talk about it beyond working on specific lyrics, but I got the impression they’d cut off all ties with his brother.

I felt a little ghoulish working on something so personal to him, although I guess they’d worked on my songs and they all felt personal to me, and he’d brought it to us. It did make me realize I needed to have other people writing with me, since they brought in perspectives really different than mine.

Seth's family hadn’t been as poor as us but they’d had their challenges. His dad was a mailman in Asheville and his mom had been a teacher before issues with his brother forced her to quit to try and deal with him. Marco, on the other hand, had grown up in Raleigh and his parents were fairly well off. I got the impression they weren’t thrilled that he’d decided to chase music instead of going to college, but it didn’t seem like they’d cut him off or anything.

***

I was still thinking about what we’d worked on Sunday afternoon the next morning walking to class, when out of nowhere Rhonda appeared in front of me, shaking a finger in my face.

“I hope you’re proud of yourself!” she said, not yelling, but loudly.

“Rhonda? What …?” I said, confused and thrown by the sudden switch.

“You’re going around telling lies about beating up Harry on Friday. I know all the ‘training’ you’re doing up at that restaurant makes you feel all special, but we both know you aren’t doing shit. You weren’t the only one there, and everyone else says you’re full of shit.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about. I haven’t said anything about Harry, good or bad.”

“No, you just have Hanna doing it. Don’t forget I know you. You don’t have the balls to actually talk shit yourself, so you always have someone else do it for you.”

I looked around, wondering what the hell was happening.

“Rhonda, I don’t know what’s going on, here; but you and I both know that’s bullshit. When have you heard me ever tell Hanna - or anyone - to do something for me, let alone talk shit about someone? Besides, there were other people there.”

“What’s going on here is I know what’s happening. You heard I was dating Harry and you’re pissed, so you decided to make a point of it.”

“Have you hit your head? Does that sound like me at all?

“I know you have this idea that you’re some kind of good guy, but we both know that isn’t true. What you really care about is people doing what you think they should do. You keep going at me about who I hang out with or how I choose to live my life. And before you say, ‘I’m just looking out for you,’ I also know how you have Kat wrapped around your finger, doing everything you tell her to do. You can tell yourself you’re ‘just doing what’s right,’ but we both know it’s about you getting what you want.”

I was floored. While I had tried to convince her to make better decisions and while Kat and my situation was unusual, you had to stretch pretty hard to make those two things out to me being some kind of control freak. I knew Hanna and I’d been the target of her manipulations before, when she was trying to get something she wanted. What I couldn’t figure out was what she was actually trying to get out of this very public tirade she was throwing.

“Step on the brakes! I didn’t go looking for Harry, he came out looking for me - and there are a bunch of witnesses, and a video, backing me up on that - and even though he kept throwing punches, I tried to walk away. I asked him to stop a bunch of times before I ever laid a hand on him, and then I only did just enough to make him stop taking swings at me. That’s on the video, too. So whatever your beef is, it’s with him and not with me.”

“Whatever. You need to stay out of my life, or I will make yours a living hell. Stay away from me. Stay away from Harry.”

“Fine by me,” I said, pissed. “Even though you cheated on me, I’ve tried to be the bigger person, here. I tried to keep you from making the same mistake as before Christmas, because I really did care about you; but now, you’re on your own. If things go to shit this time, don’t come looking for sympathy from me. We’re done!”

I walked around her and headed down the hall towards my class. I was a little sad that things had gotten this far, but I was equally pissed and was one-hundred percent serious about writing her out of my life. Everyone told me I was an idiot for continuing to try and reach out to her, and I guess they’d been right.

“Good!” she yelled after me. “I don’t want anything from you, anyway.”

I just ignored her and went on to my classroom.