Chapter 16

As we started the drive to the next city, I made the call to Kent. Although I knew I was right and Brent was just trying to scare me out of getting rid of him, I was still nervous that maybe he wasn’t completely full of hot air. It was one of those irrational fears, where you know something isn’t likely, but you worry about it anyway.

Rowan had sent me a text while I was talking to the band, I guess knowing I might need more reassurance that I wasn’t about to make a massive mistake. He also reminded me to be professional, which was a good tip. I couldn’t make the call whining about Brent or acting like some school kid telling on a peer.

I made the call and sat on hold for a while after telling his secretary who I was. That was to be expected. I was a new artist and not one of the guys bringing in the big bucks for the label, so I was probably down the priority list by a bunch.

“Charlie!” Kent said enthusiastically when he finally picked up the line. “I hear the tour is going well. We got a call from Linda Chapman’s tour manager saying good things about you guys.”

Linda had to be behind that call. I’d met the man briefly and he’d seemed nice enough, but I hadn’t gotten the feeling he was overly excited about us in any way.

“Good. That show was amazing. The whole first half of the tour was really great, actually.”

“Good. Good. The receipts have been solid and in line with what we were expecting, so you guys are doing great. What can I do for you today?”

“While the first half of the tour has been great, we’ve been having some problems with Brent during this second leg.”

“What kind of problems?”

“Two specifically. The first one has to do with breaking the agreements in the contract I signed, specifically about scheduling tour stops during the school year while I’m still a minor.”

“He’s scheduling more tour stops?” Kent said, sounding surprised, which confirmed Brent hadn’t run any of this by anyone else.

“I don’t know if he’s actually scheduled any, but he talked to me about extending our tour and said he’d already spoken to venues in the Midwest. Specifically, he said I needed to drop out of school or take my GED, so I could focus on touring throughout the year.”

“I see. Don’t worry about that. I’ll have a talk with him, but we aren’t requiring or even asking you to do something like that, and we’ll hold to our contractual agreements.”

“Thank you, although I’m not worried about it. I already told him I wouldn’t agree to that and reminded him of what was in the contract. I brought it up because that one is the easiest of the problems to manage.”

“Okay, you said two things, so let’s hear it.”

“At the first show on this leg of the tour, he put in an opener before us. This was a gig that was originally set to last three hours in a smaller club, so it really didn’t need an opener at all. Worse, the opener was terrible. They basically cleared the place out before we ever got on stage, and we found out we had to split the take with them. I’m not sure how that will look in your books, but I think it’s going to make us look less profitable than we are for no good reason.”

“He arranged for an opening act?”

“Yes. They really didn’t match the place we were playing at and would have driven some of the audience away, even if they hadn’t been terrible. The place mostly played classic rock and they were straight metal.”

“What was their name?” he asked.

From the exasperated way he said it, it almost seemed as if he already knew what the name was.

“Death Punch Tuesday.”

“I see,” he said, his tone all but confirming my suspicions. “We’ll take care of it and make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

“I appreciate that, but I think it would be better, at least for us, to get a new tour manager.”

“You just started; don’t you think that’s a bit hasty.”

“I don’t. I’m guessing from the way you asked about the opener that he arranged for us, this isn’t a new thing for him, which probably also means he’s been warned about doing stuff like this in the past. A warning he clearly didn’t take seriously. That tells me a lot about whose interests he’s looking out for. I know he works for the label, and I’m not saying he should be working for our best interests, because even if he was making decisions based on what was best for the label, that would work out for us. The label wants this tour to work out as well as we do, since the whole goal here is to build an audience for the record release. The problem is, he isn’t making decisions for either our interest or yours. What I can’t accept is him using us as some kind of stepping stone for another group, especially one clearly on the downswing of their career.”

“I agree, that’s bad, and yes, we have had issues with him before, so I understand what you’re saying. However, we’re stretched thin on tour managers at the moment, and you guys really need someone with some experience this early on.”

“I get that, although I think our situation may be different enough from your normal artists in that the experience will have limited effect on us. This tour is already set up all the way and what touring we can do during the year is going to be ... strange, at best. I’m not sure any of your managers have experience scheduling appearances in between school schedules.”

“That’s a good point.”

“The bigger problem I have is I can’t trust him. Above grifting off our tour for another band, he’s not doing what we need for our tour schedule. He’d already asked about touring in the fall once, and when I told him no, he went ahead and started talking to venues anyway. I know my schedule is tough, but that’s why we have a tour manager. The album drops in a month and a half or so, and I do have weekends available. I can travel pretty far for Saturday night shows and be back in time for school on Monday. Leading up to the release, he could be trying to book shows as far south as Georgia and up into Pennsylvania and southern Ohio, not to mention all the states we’ve already been in. The more we play before the album comes out, the better the release will be, and that doesn’t even count calling into radio stations or stuff like that. I’m all for touring in the fall, and we have the full week of Thanksgiving when I’d be willing to be on the road, but he has to be getting the gigs for us, and he’s not.”

“You’re not going to back down on this, are you?”

“No. I’m sorry, but we need a professional, and Brent isn’t that,” I said, and heard him sigh. “Kent, I’m really sorry to drop this in your lap. I know you’ve got a lot going on, and you assigned us a tour manager so you could focus on other things. I promise I tried to work this out between us before calling you, but my last conversation with him made it clear to me that he wasn’t interested in hearing what I had to say.”

“Don’t worry about it. You did the right thing. I don’t know how long it will take to get someone new assigned to you, but you’ve only got two more stops left on the tour and I believe everything’s already set up for those.”

“Would it be okay for Hanna to be our front person for these last two shows?”

“Should be fine. Make sure she has my number if you guys run into any problems. As soon as we find someone new, we’ll see about getting some weekend shows set up for you leading up to the album release.”

“Is there anything we need to do about Brent?”

“No. I’ll take care of it.”

“Okay. Thanks, Kent.”

“No problem. Now go out there and make us some money.”

“So, how’d it go?” Lyla asked when we pulled up to the hotel in Louisville.

We still had an hour before we needed to be at the venue and decided to check into the hotel and relax for a bit before we got to work. It wasn’t surprising that would be the first thing one of the other three asked when we finally got out of our cars. I’d known most of the trip that Kent was on board with removing Brent, but for them, they’d had to linger in silence, so I could imagine they might be a little eager to hear the news.

“Good. After hearing what’s been happening and what Brent’s been up to, he agreed that we should have a new tour manager. He’s going to look now, but that leaves us on our own for the rest of this tour. We only have two gigs left and both are already set up, so there isn’t a lot we need to do besides just showing up and playing. Hanna has kept up on the details, so she’ll act as our manager for the time being, but he doesn’t expect any problems.”

“Did he say how long it would take to find a manager?” Seth asked.

“No, but he said he was eager to get weekend gigs set up for us around the region, leading up to the album release. So I’m guessing not that long.”

“I guess this means a fall tour is out of the question now?” Marco asked.

“It wasn’t ever in question,” I said, trying to keep from snapping at him, since he’d kept his calm instead of whining. “But it doesn’t mean we aren’t going to play while I’m in school. Base line, we still have the Blue Ridge, but we’re going to try to keep every weekend we can booked with a gig, and hopefully Thanksgiving and winter break, too. We’ll still make money and we’ll still get exposure, so it’s not a complete loss.”