A Loving Light
Copyright© 2026 by Marc Nobbs
Chapter 24: Partners, Not Competitors
I didn’t know that the USA and the UK don’t change their clocks for Daylight Savings at the same time. In the UK, we do it properly, on the last Sunday in March and October. Nice, sensible, and easy to remember.
In the USA, they do it on the second Sunday in March and the first Sunday in November, which makes no sense at all.
But it does mean their summer is longer than ours.
So, while Nashville is normally six hours behind the UK, for a couple of weeks in March and a week across October and November, it’s only five hours behind.
The upshot of that was that Marie told me Sam could join me on a call at four in the Nashville afternoon, which would be nine in the evening for me.
I got Marie to delay my call with Harry and Ellie by an hour and a half. That would give me half an hour to explain my idea to them before getting Sam on the call.
One look at Harry’s face when he popped up on my screen at eight-thirty told me he wasn’t happy about it.
At least, I thought he was unhappy about the delay, but he soon put me right on that front.
“Hello, Judas,” he said. “How was your little trip to America? Fruitful? Made some big decisions, did you? Did some big deals?”
“Harry, why are you being like that?” Ellie said.
“Don’t tell me you haven’t heard, Els. It’s the talk of the industry. Sam Bradwell and Chloë Goodman are launching a new record label with some unknown third partner. I wonder who that is? They’re feeling out execs in Nashville and California. Streamlined? Digital only? I wonder where that idea came from, huh? I tell you, Els, I’ve been stabbed in the back plenty of times over the years, but never this quickly.”
“Harry, it’s not like that, let me—”
“Explain? Let you explain? Explain how you’ve taken my, frankly brilliant, idea for a digital first record label and partnered with the single most powerful person in the entire entertainment industry to fucking steal it?”
“I haven’t ... I mean—”
“I suppose you delayed this call so that you had more time to work out how to tell us you were backing out of Riverbank Records, huh? Taking your investment and—”
“Harry, will you please give me a fucking chance to get a word in and explain!” I yelled.
All three of the other faces stared at me. None of them had ever seen me lose my cool. I know for a fact that Marie hadn’t. And I hadn’t been around Harry and Ellie enough for them to see it either. I knew it wasn’t a pleasant sight. That’s why I worked so hard on keeping my anger under control.
Although, in fairness, the anger that had always simmered just under the surface after first my parents’ death and then Clarissa’s, had been burying itself far deeper and turning down the heat over the past twelve months. This was the first time I’d been even close to losing my temper for ages. I think the day I’d found out Steve had been blackmailing Vanessa was the last time I’d really lost my cool.
Marie looked shocked. I hoped that the sudden outburst didn’t result in her changing her opinion of me.
Harry grunted. “Fucking explain it then. And it better be fucking good.”
I took a deep breath. This hadn’t been how I’d seen this going. I’d had a plan. That hour’s delay gave me time to work out what to say. Now all that was out of the window. Guess it was time to find out if I really could think on my feet when under pressure.
“I have to be honest, when I pitched the idea to Sam and Chloë, I wasn’t thinking about Riverbank at all,” I said. “I even thought at the time that ‘digital only’ was my own brilliant idea. It’s only when I got back here that I realised...”
I shrugged.
“Oh, fucking great,” Harry said. “We’re an afterthought.”
“No,” I said. “Well, I suppose, yes, that’s true but ... Look, I didn’t deliberately steal your idea, and I didn’t deliberately set out to screw you over.”
“So you accidentally screwed us over?” Harry said. “Oh, well, that’s fine then. Just fine.”
I shook my head. “No, it’s not like that ... It’s ... Look, this is how it happened, okay. How we agreed to start True Voice Records.”
“True Voice? That’s what you’re calling it? Jesus Christ...” Harry shook his head. “Okay, come on then. Tell the tale of woe.”
I took a breath. Harry’s attitude was understandable, but he was making it really hard for me to keep from shouting at him and telling him to grow the fuck up.
“We’d just done the auditions for Carly’s support act for the tour—there’s something I need to ask you about the tour, actually, but we’ll get to that. So, we’d done the auditions and seen these two amazing singers who were both the absolute embodiment of the message we’re going for with this tour.”
“What message?” Ellie asked.
I smiled. “It’s kinda convoluted how we got to it, but it started with the idea that the general themes of Alabama Sweetheart are trust, vulnerability and love.”
“Oh, they very much are,” Ellie said.
“And from that, Carly had the idea that it’s about the experience of being a modern woman, so the tour should be about celebrating women. About giving women a voice, and about saying to women, ‘we hear you.’ You know, kind of like we’re saying that we know how difficult being a woman in the modern world is. We get it.”
“I love that,” Ellie said.
“Me too,” Harry said quietly. “It really does fit with the album we made.” He paused. “And it’s very Carly.”
“Yeah, well, from there we realised it’s not just about hearing women, about giving a voice not just to women, but it’s about telling everyone who feels unheard and unseen that we do hear you and we do see you, and we want to give you a voice. And at the audition, there are these two amazing singers that we know that no one else is going to give a voice to. One is a Native American blues singer, and the other is a gay cowboy.”
“Okay, that’s bold,” Harry said. “Very bold.”
I nodded. “Yeah, but while we were patting ourselves on the back for being brave enough to take them both on tour with us, we realised ... Then what? After the tour is over, then what? No one is going to be rushing to give these two people a record deal. So...” I shrugged again. “We decided we should.”
“Okay. Go on,” Harry said. His tone was getting less hostile each time he spoke.
“We figured ... Look, we thought that there must be tons and tons of singers all over the United States that are talented and have something to say, but will never get the chance because the big record labels would never take a chance on them for whatever reason—their ethnicity doesn’t fit for their chosen musical style or their sexuality is a problem or they have a disability or ... whatever, right? So that’s what our label will do. Take a chance and give people a voice. A True Voice. And maybe, just maybe, we’ll create something worthwhile—something beautiful.” I paused. “Like you did with Carly.”
Harry opened his mouth, but closed it again without saying anything.
“Look,” I said, “the name came from something Sam said to Cody when he told us he was gay. He said, and I remember this clearly, he said, the only things that matter in music are the story, the guitar and the truth. Both the label and the festival—”
“Festival?” Harry said.
“Later,” I said. “Both the label and the festival are about giving singers the chance to share their truth and the public the chance to hear their True Voice.”
Harry took a deep breath but didn’t say anything.
“I love that,” Ellie said. “I love that idea, Paul. But you’ve still created a competitor for our new label before we’ve even gotten it off the ground.”
“But I haven’t,” I said. I smiled. “I’ve created a partner.”
The surprise showed on Harry and Ellie’s faces immediately.
“Look,” I said, “Riverbank Records is a small, independent, insignificant new start-up that’s going to struggle for recognition and credibility from the word go.” I paused. “But True Voice UK is the European arm of Sam Fucking Bradwell’s pet project. You said it yourself, Harry, he’s the single most powerful man in the whole entertainment industry, and he’s entering the music business with a unique purpose. With a mission. And people are going to take notice. They are going to listen. And True Voice is going to be a real disruptor in music. Not just country music, all of music.
“And so is True Voice UK. There must be as many unheard voices in the UK as there are anywhere else. We can give those voices a chance to be heard, and because we’re partners with Sam Fucking Bradwell, and part of his mission, we have recognition and credibility from Day One!”
Still, neither of them said anything.
“And not just that,” I said, “but you two made absolute magic with Carly. Who’s to say we can’t do it again? With other unique voices from across the UK, the US, and maybe even the whole of Europe in time? Neither of you really wants to run a record label, do you? You wanted a way to release the music you make with people, really be in control of it, and profit from it, but you don’t want to get involved with contracts and promotion and finding artists and all that stuff. You just want to make music. So let the execs that Sam recruits run the label, and the two of you can concentrate on what you do best. Making magic.”
“Paul, I...” Ellie said. “I just...”
“Kid,” said Harry. “I keep underestimating you, and you keep surprising me.” He smiled. “Please, don’t ever stop surprising me.”
Samuel Jeremiah Bradwell might well have been the most famous man on the planet and, arguably, one of the most powerful men on the planet, but he was far from universally loved. There was a significant subsection of the population of both his own country and countries around the world that resented the fact that a black man from a poor family in rural Georgia could have risen to the status he’d achieved through hard work and sheer force of will.
He was supposed to be ‘just another’ black sports star—make his money in a way that was acceptable for Black Americans to make money, then fade away once his time in the spotlight on the sports field was done. Maybe he could have become a media personality commenting on the same sport—it was American Football in Sam’s case—but no more than that.
What he wasn’t supposed to do was pivot to acting when injury ended his sports career in college, and prove to be quite brilliant at that, too. It would have been fine if he’d stuck to making action movies, but he wasn’t supposed to prove his worth as a dramatic actor, and then as a writer, director and producer. And he certainly wasn’t supposed to channel his on-screen success into a vast business empire.
So the passion and drive with which he’d approached True Voice Records and the True Voices Festival should not have been a surprise to anyone.
Marie told me that James had mentioned the project had been his sole focus since I’d left Atlanta on Saturday evening. I also knew he’d been briefed about both my proposal and who he’d be on the call with. This wasn’t like when I’d called Chloë on a whim, and Sam ended up on the call too. No, I’d be meeting with a fully briefed and prepared industry titan.
And that was evident the second he appeared on my screen.
“Good evening, everyone,” he said. “Well, evening for you. I’m looking forward to dinner with the mayor in a few hours. Harry, Ellie, I wanted to take the opportunity to offer my congratulations, both on your Oscar win and on Alabama Sweetheart—it’s an absolute triumph, it really is.”
“Thank you, Mr Brad—”
“Sam. It’s just Sam.”
“Well, thank you, Sam,” Harry said. “Kayla was a pleasure to work with, both on ‘A Woman’s Work’ and on Alabama Sweetheart.”
“That’s right,” Ellie said. “The album has the most appropriate title because Carly really is a sweetheart.”
Sam smiled. “Isn’t she just? Have you heard about her new deal with Gibson Brands?”
I shook my head. “No, I’ve not spoken to her since I got back here. Not had the chance.”
“Well, make sure you call her after we’ve finished. Glenn met with Henry on Monday and did a sterling job. I’ll let her tell you about it. Now, Paul, before we get down to business, have you spoken to Harry and Ellie about your and Kayla’s idea for the end of the shows?”
“I have,” I said.
“It’s a bold idea,” Harry said. “It’ll be interesting to see how it turns out. Especially given some of the other ideas Paul has told us that Kayla’s had. Her proposed opening to the show is ... Well, it’s either going to go down in legend, or it’ll be a disaster—and knowing that girl, I’m betting on the former.”
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