Chapter 12

We got back to Hanna’s aunt’s house in the middle of the night, so she and Sam were already asleep. We’d been there for weeks, and it had been nice getting up each morning, having cereal with Sam, and just enjoying being together. It felt strange that this was going to be our last night and after this, we’d be staying in hotels for the remainder of our tour, although we’d be back home for an Ashville gig after Richmond.

I thought we might just slip out in the morning for the drive to Virginia without a big goodbye, but Hanna’s aunt had a different idea. We woke up around ten to the smell of bacon and pancakes, which I think might be my preferred form of alarm clock. Sometime after we’d gotten in, she’d arranged for a sendoff breakfast, or I guess brunch considering we all slept in a bit. Sam had drawn a big banner that said: “Good Luck on Your Tour!” and they’d hung it up in the kitchen.

Seth, Lyla, and Marco showed up in time to get some food, which was lucky, because Hanna and I could really pack it away and had already put a dent in the stacks of pancakes, bacon, and eggs Hanna’s aunt had made. By the time we got on the road to Richmond, everyone was in a good mood, even Marco, who seemed to have lost whatever chip he’d been carrying around on his shoulder since we were in the studio. It was nice to not find him sulking while everyone else was having a good time for a change, and I hoped we’d see more of this Marco.

I’d actually been giving some thought about how to get him into the mix, having some of his songs in our repertoire and maybe even on a later album, if we got that lucky. The biggest problem was, Marco just wasn’t that good at writing music. I wasn’t an expert by a long shot, but I’d already noticed a pattern of a lot of Marco’s suggestions being turned down. For good reason, since they were usually pretty bad, but I could imagine that having none of your suggestions or songs taken by your band would be pretty demoralizing.

I hadn’t talked to Hanna or the others about it yet, but I thought we might, instead of saying ‘no’ to his suggestions, try to find a way to alter them just enough that they would work while still being close enough to his original suggestion that he could claim credit. It would be a fine line to walk, and only a handful of his ideas would be able to fit, even so. We’d need to keep an eye out for opportunities and try to make them work, since one disgruntled band member could tank everything if it got out of hand.

I’d also taken one of his least bad songs and started thinking about how I’d change it to be something usable. I knew I couldn’t just change his song and say I fixed it, since that would piss him off just as much, but if I sold it right, like by saying I had a song that wasn’t working and his was pretty close, so I meshed them together, he might accept it. Especially if I then took some of his suggestions into the final steps of tweaking it, so it would be a collaboration between the two of us. It still wasn’t the same as having him come up with his own song that we then played, but maybe he’d accept it and get out of the funk he was in.

Along that same line of thinking, I also changed up the seating for the trip to Richmond, talking Lyla into riding with Hanna and Kat while I rode with Seth and Marco. Kat gave me puppy dog eyes, which considering the conversation I’d had to have with her the night before, she might have taken my not riding with her as a rebuke, but I’d deal with that later.

Lyla was all for it, since it gave her a chance to mess with Hanna for the three-ish hours it took to drive to Richmond, which was also why Hanna gave me the stink eye. Everyone knew Lyla wasn’t serious about her hitting on Hanna, including Hanna, and was doing it more for the joke than anything else, but Hanna still acted like it bugged her. I think she and Lyla were actually becoming friends, which made sense. Both were take-no-shit kind of women and really seemed to get along, in spite of the incessant teasing.

We got to the location well ahead of the seven PM start time, which was earlier than we normally played, but House of Grace was a real band with an actual draw, whereas we were playing clubs that needed live music, so it worked out.

The venue didn’t have an in-house kit, but House of Grace’s manager had reached out and let us know we could use their drum kit, and the venue was providing everything else other than instruments, so all we needed was Seth’s keyboard and Lyla and my guitars, which would make setup easy. I didn’t know if they’d made the offer because they wanted to keep the downtime between us finishing our set and their coming on to a bare minimum, or if it was something they offered us because they knew us, but I’d take it.

Although they were doing their sound check first, I still wanted to get there before they started, because I wanted more chances to see other bands’ actual processes. I’d watched a bunch of bands when we’d gone to the festival, but that was a different environment and I wasn’t sure how much it compared to normal shows, and everything else I’d seen had been something Willie made the arrangements for.

I was realizing the craft of music was a lot more than just being able to play or even write a good song. I was trying to pay more attention to how I played a crowd, the kind of show I put on, and the kind of experience people got, but it wasn’t something I was just going to figure out on my own, and my limited exposure to mostly just Willie had kind of locked me into the blues way of thinking.

The problem was, I wasn’t playing blues. Blues musicians tended to let the music talk for them, which is why you saw their audiences sitting back, taking the music in. We were going for pop and rock audiences, which expected something that would get them on their feet. They wanted more than just a song they could sing along with or just listen to. They wanted a show.

Opening for House of Grace was a good chance to see how they did things, and I wasn’t planning on missing any of it. We swung by the hotel Brent had arranged for us and picked up the keys, so we could come right back and crash after we finished everything for the night, and then headed to the venue.

I had looked at the Lobart Arena’s website that morning, to get an idea of what it was like, but the pictures hadn’t really done it justice. The stage itself was a half-circle with a roof that extended up about two and a half stories and out into a rectangular one-story building. Behind it was where the venue’s offices, green room, and loading ramps were located.

In front was a wide-open floor area and then stacked rows of seating that were helpfully built into a hillside so the top was still at ground level and led towards the parking lot. The total capacity was seventeen thousand, which was the largest stage we’d played by a huge margin, and I’d read that the show was sold out for tonight. Part of me wished that instead of our own tour we could have just gone on tour with them, since the exposure would have been great, but they’d already arranged the tour and signed opening acts before we ever got our contract. It had just been our good luck that the band that had been opening for them most of their tour had a conflict with this one date and we had an opening in our tour schedule for the same day.

The only downside was we couldn’t set up a merch table. Unlike the small venues we’d been playing, the Lobart had all kinds of agreements, including with merchants. House of Grace would still be selling merch, but they’d be doing it through the arena’s merch stands instead of flimsy tables set up by the entrance, and those merchants would take a cut. I didn’t know if their normal opener was also allowed to sell through the stadium or not, but as a one-off replacement, we didn’t have any contract to do so, so we couldn’t.

That meant even though this was the largest audience we’d play on this tour, or in the foreseeable future, we wouldn’t be able to sell any of our stuff, which sucked, but this was part of the struggle of just starting out. Even without the merch stuff it was a great opportunity and would give us the most exposure we’d ever gotten.

Though we were hours early, House of Grace was already on the stage doing their sound check. There were still hours till we would go on, but maybe the venue needed something to get the place ready or maybe they wanted a chance to relax before the show went on. They still sounded great though, even with the sound being dialed in and playing part of their music.

They finished up and Linda looked around, pointing out some things to one of her roadies, when she noticed me and came jogging over.

“Hey,” she said, pulling me into a hug. “How’s your tour been going?”

“We’ve only done two shows so far, but they’ve been really good. They were a lot smaller than this, but the audiences were great and we’ve been getting some good sales on our merch. I just wish we had our record available to sell, because it would have given us a good bump with the studio.”