Chapter 30

I was one of the last contestants to make it to the theater, even though I was on the same lot the sound stage was set up on. I’d been up late the night before making final adjustments, and late to the rehearsal, which had then run long as we tried to get everything ironed out.

Thankfully, I wasn’t so late as to get myself disqualified, and to give my two session musicians time to get here and start preparing. No one had gone on yet, but I knew I was in for it when one of the producers tracked me down, looking frazzled, almost as soon as I walked in the door.

“Charlie! There you are. We’ve got a bit of a situation,” she said breathlessly.

“I’m sorry I’m so late,” I said.

“What? Oh, no. You’re fine. We’re just checking the last of the backup musicians, and only two of yours have checked in so far. We had you down for seven originally, and they’re telling me we don’t need half the equipment we were going to set up for you. If this is wrong, we’re going to need to get this sorted out now. Your group is up first, and I’m not sure we’re going to have time to fix this.”

“No, that’s right. We changed it at practice today.”

“You’re sure? You only need the drummer and bass player?”

I nodded. “I’m positive. We’ve decided to take the song in a different direction.”

She looked back at the stage, then down at her clipboard, then back to me. I could see the battle inside her. This was a person who really liked their organization and wanted things to run exactly as they planned and really didn’t want to have anything change on them. I sympathized, but since I was the one with my future on the line, she’d just have to live with that.

“Okay. Well, if you’re sure,” she said, scribbling a note on her clipboard. “Get whatever you need ready. You’re on last in your group. We’ll have your musicians ready and get them set up during the switch over after Dillon plays.”

She was gone before I could respond.

A few minutes later, I was on the sideline watching; the lights went down, and a video montage with bits of the original score from the romance movie Cole was given was up on the screen. As it went off, the lights started coming back up as Cole started playing. He’d done a decent job translating the eighties pop ballad into a modern country sound, but it still felt stilted and over-produced. Worse, he was nervous, and you could hear it in his voice. He didn’t sound bad, exactly, but the song was weak.

I could see it on his face when he finished. He knew he hadn’t done what he needed to do.

Marissa was up next, and her song was a lot smoother than Cole’s, with a bluesy twang that suited her strong voice. But she’d stuck too close to the original arrangement and genre. They’d wanted to hear something of the artist in the song, and I didn’t really get that from her. Still, she sang with confidence and passion, which went a long way.

Finally, it was Dillon’s turn. Out of our group, he’d taken the biggest risk by radically changing the style and mood of the song. His haunting minor key arrangement overlaid with ethereal synths had potential, but the vocals really lacked heart. It was fine, but that was it—enough to keep him in the competition, but he was never going to win like that.

Finally, it was my turn. The lights went down, and the video transitioned into scenes of Shattered Dreams, with parts of the original in place. While it was playing, we were in the dark, moving into place. I could barely see what was happening, I guess to keep from ruining the mood of the crowd, but it did give me a new respect for the stagehands, which did a lot more than I did just walking onto the stage with my guitar, and they made it look easy.

In my ear, I heard them start to count me down to the end of the montage. I listened for the beeping cue as the screen changed to the beginning of the scene where Trey Mitchell’s character was kneeling over his wife’s lifeless body, agony etched on his face.

I hit the first note, a mournful chord that I held, letting it ring out for a moment all on its own. As Mitchell’s character begged his wife to wake up, I started in on the opening melody, slow and melancholy compared to the upbeat original; the stage lights came up just enough to illuminate me and the two musicians flanking me.

The bassist came in, his lower register adding depth, starting with just matching the melody. Then the drums—soft, muffled hits on the snare drum.

As we built up to the first verse, I started singing, pitching my voice low in my range. I held back slightly, not letting everything go yet. This was about conveying raw grief, and I needed to let it build, not come out all at once.

“We had it all planned out in our minds...” I sang, looking out into the pitch-black audience, washed out by the lights on us.

I made it through the stripped-down first verse and chorus without embellishment, letting the mournful chord changes and stark drums speak for themselves. As we approached the bridge, though, it was time to up the intensity.

As I hit “The broken glass...” I took my vocals up, putting more into it, my voice going gravelly in that register. The bridge ended abruptly, leaving just me and my guitar again, as we started building toward the finale, where we cranked up the intensity again as the video behind me showed the happy couple at their wedding, kissing at the altar, blissfully unaware of the tragedy to come.

As the video ended on Mitchell’s face, the bass and drums fell off, and I played the last few notes on my own, letting the final note quaver, then fade out, leaving just the sound of my guitar strings vibrating.

A moment of silence hung in the air.

Then thunderous applause exploded through the theater. I was breathing a little hard, trying to get my breath back after that last chorus, which I’d pushed incredibly hard. The judges were on their feet as the lights started to come up.

“Charlie, that was a remarkable interpretation of the song,” Hal said as the applause died down. “But I’m curious; why such a drastic change from the original? It’s almost unrecognizable.”

“Well, when I first got the song assignment, I tried to put my own spin on it while keeping to the original style, but the more we worked on it, the more it became obvious it wasn’t working. After another frustrating practice session, I realized that trying to remix the song into something unrecognizable wasn’t working. So I went back and really listened to the lyrics, trying to get a handle on what the song was, at its core. The thing that got me was how well-written the song was, and how much the music was drowning that out. At its heart, it’s such a sad song, but everyone thinks it’s upbeat because of the music.”

I paused, trying to gather my thoughts.

“Once I tapped into that sadness, I knew I had to make the music match it. I kept only the main guitar melody and some of the chord changes but slowed everything down into a minor key. That was too far back, so I brought in the bass line to pick up some of what the other instrumentation had been doing, but just hints of it. I think it all came from what Trey said when we talked about it, how it was such a powerful and sad scene, which is what made it his favorite scene in the movie. I tried to make sure it was still the same song, just amplified in a different direction.”

“And it was,” Dexter said. “And your voice! I got goosebumps!”

“I think you took an enormous risk reworking an iconic song so extremely,” Lexi said. “But it paid off. That was perhaps your best vocal performance yet, just stellar!”

“Good job, all around,” Hal said, cueing me they were done with their comments.

The lights dimmed again as we made our way off stage. It was weird, going so early, because I had all this adrenaline going, yet we still had at least another hour of music before we found out who won.

Backstage, I found Cole sitting on a folding chair, looking despondent. I sat down next to him.

“Hey man, you did good out there,” I said, even though we both knew it wasn’t entirely true.

He gave me a weak smile. “Nah, I screwed it up. Couldn’t get the nerves under control. You though ... you killed it. Blew us all away.”

“Thanks,” I said.

I felt good about my performance, but I didn’t want to make Cole feel any worse. I think he was pretty sure he was going home today, and honestly, I couldn’t disagree with him. But I also did not know how to comfort someone who just blew their big shot at making it.