Chapter 141

Watching everybody in their nice duds had given me another layer to an idea that was already percolating in my head.

The ASAs were not the Grammy Awards. People didn’t flock from around the globe to get photos taken on the red carpet to prove they were popular (or so I had been told).

I checked with Ben and Lucas to explore the possibility of making Liz’s Saturday outing a “family” affair. The guys were assisting me on a variety of different projects already but took time to assure me that the event organizers were so thrilled to have Liz make an appearance that they would readily agree if she wanted to bring random strangers off the street.

I spoke personally with the chairman of the committee that organized the event and got his blessing before broaching the subject with Liz.

She was initially hesitant to include the rest of the group – until I pointed out that it was her first live television appearance in the United States in almost six years, as well as her first “official” public appearance since the attack. Having a large group around her would keep the focus on the award nominees by limiting her access to the media.

It didn’t hurt that our parents were supposed to arrive Thursday night for another visit. I will say that Mom, Bev and Mickey didn’t seem overly excited about appearing at an event they didn’t know existed until I told them about it, but I was able to talk them around.

By late Wednesday night, I had made arrangements for Dom, Skye, Brian, Jill, Ryan, Sondra and our parents to accompany Bobbi, Dayton, Liz and me to the ASA ceremony.

A day later, I had locked in a few more guests.

Liz’s friends from the professional side were already going. Lucas and Ben had agreed to host the ceremony; Melissa and Conny were performing “My Daddy Can Whip Your Daddy” and Chelsea Rome was set to make her national television debut of “I Love the Man.”

The stage seemed set for an entertaining evening for everybody – once we managed to get the work out of the way.

But there was a lot of work to handle before the fun could start.

Word leaked online that Liz was planning to appear at the ASAs and speculation became rampant that she was planning to perform or possibly to announce her retirement. That led to one of the “spotters” (people hired by the paparazzi to stake out varying locations associated with a particularly celebrity) catching George Carter meeting with a man described as “a known member of Liz Larimer’s legal team.”

That brought more rumors hitting the airwaves and data streams so I had to drop everything I was doing, go downtown to a public square and have a media session with reporters from Nashville to clear things up.

The ASA committee had asked me to keep Liz’s participation as vague as possible. The rumors had already given the ceremony a lot more publicity that it normally received. The committee wanted to keep the buzz going to increase viewership enough to warrant more ad buys and higher ad rates for next year (because, in the end, the business always came back to money).

Liz had agreed without consulting with me so I was forced to start my dancing routine with shoes of differing sizes.

“Liz would perform if it were at all possible,” I told the crowd of a hundred or so reporters, videographers and photographers. There were a couple of dozen bystanders unaffiliated with any accredited media organization. At least two were plants put in place by Rick’s team in San Diego. The rest of them were just people that had seen a spectacle and wanted to watch.

I was happy to see that at least six wore “Free Liz” T-shirts.

“Sadly, she is not permitted any public performances without prior consent from Radio Free Nashville,” I continued. “She will appear and she will speak but she won’t discuss her future plans. Her attendance is strictly to show her continuing support for the men and women that work tirelessly ... often without due credit or compensation ... to craft images with their words.”

“Did RFN deny her request?” a man yelled. I usually didn’t take questions without acknowledging the interlocutor. The guy was a total prick and I usually ignored him on general principle. But I suspected I knew the motive behind his query so, after my best imitation of my mother’s steely gaze, I acquiesced.

“Liz has broken all contact with Radio Free Nashville,” I said as I rapped against the hard plastic shell that protected my ravaged upper arm. “For obvious reasons, she is unwilling to ask their consent for anything ... ever again. Let’s make sure we remember why Liz is unwilling to speak to RFN’s representatives on this or any other matter. And let’s try to keep the questions out of the ‘dumbass’ realm as much as possible.”

Several members of the assembled gathering offered slight snickers but there was an uncomfortable feel to the proceeding. I hoped to capitalize on it.

“Uh, is George Carter going to manage Liz’s career?” another journalist asked. I had seen her with her hand raised and I had pointed to her before she spoke. It gave my ego a jolt to know I had the power to silence the masses. I couldn’t help but smile when the ludicrous thought landed on my brain.

I admitted that Liz was in negotiations with George Carter to join her team in an “unspecified capacity” but that no deal had been struck or was even imminent.

That pushed the questions to Liz’s career plans but I pointed out that for at least five more weeks, Liz couldn’t even negotiate with a music distributor so any plans would need to wait for the first step to be taken.

I admitted that she was “evaluating her options” internally but that she was adhering to the “letter and the spirit” of the exclusive negotiating period that RFN had insisted upon before they would permit her to assume additional control over her personnel.

It was the first information released from either side about the reason behind the contract rider. As expected, it brought a rash of follow-up questions about other details that had more or less become public knowledge over the previous week.

I played them off by pointing out that Liz wasn’t willing to risk having to stay in professional limbo even longer by breaching the contract’s confidentiality clause – and by noting that RFN seemed exactly like the type of company that would tie things up for decades just for spite.

That brought a series of “can you confirm or deny” questions from the guy I had shot down earlier – and I responded with “neither” to all of them. The public had drawn its conclusion – and that conclusion corresponded exactly with what we wanted them to believe (specifically that RFN was the villain in this little melodrama).

The young man was from one of the many Nashville trade magazines and I knew he had ties to many of the labels in town. He was clearly agitated when he asked if I could clarify what I’d meant by “exploring options.”

I gave my best imitation of a shrug.

“Dictionaries are wonderful things,” I said. “Take a minute to look up each word and then tie them together. She’s been locked into the same contract for 10 years. The industry, as you might have noticed, has changed greatly in that time. Right now, she is speaking to other artists that she respects to get a clearer picture of what services are available and at what cost.

“She’s not willing to continually soak her fans to keep your pals at Hurdle and Splice drinking champagne and eating caviar. So she is ... evaluating her options.”

The man blinked when I named two of the labels that often paid him a little extra on the side for inside information or to keep certain information quiet.

I gave him a smirk and a raised eyebrow.

“That’s something else we’re doing during Liz’s downtime,” I noted. “We’re looking into the people that continually look into Liz. We’re determining who can be trusted and who is to be ... minimized. Guess where you land?”

The man gulped slightly and looked away but I continued to pile it on.

“In a few weeks, we’re going to release the list of what we’ve found out about people such as Mr. McIntyre there to everybody we can think of,” I continued. “The world is going to know that some of you have been taking money from the labels to shield their actions. So while everybody is looking up the word ‘evaluate’ today, swing back a page or two and check out ‘ethics.’ Then you might want to hit the I’s for ‘impartial’ and the U’s for ‘unbiased.’ You don’t work for the artists. You don’t work for the labels ... although a bunch of you collect payments from them. You work for the people that require evenhanded coverage to make informed decisions about who they will support financially and who they will not.

“I do work for Liz but we are not adversaries. Ask around and see if you can find anyone in your profession that I have purposefully misled. Yeah, I’ve been wrong. If you ask my girlfriend, she’ll tell you that I’m wrong a lot. But I try not to lie – not to you, not to the buying public. That’s not always the case. People in my profession and yours are just as responsible for this mess as labels, the streaming services and the entertainers. And the buying public will get their pound of flesh from us just like they will from everybody else involved.

“You, better than most people, understand what’s going on right now. But you’re missing the scope of the story. You’re too busy pounding on the lurid bits to step back and see where this is going to wind up. Liz Larimer is never going to be under the thumb of another label – not in Nashville, not in Los Angeles, not in New York. She is never going to be beholden to the executives in fancy suits that sit in their top-floor offices and look down (literally and figuratively) at the empires they control.

“She is not alone! In the coming months, you’re going to see the streaming services offering equitable compensation to all singers, songwriters and musicians. You’re going to see the record labels being held accountable for what they’ve done in the past, what they’re doing right now and what they have planned for the future. You’re going to see artists standing up for themselves and for the people they respect – the fans that support their careers monetarily and in other ways.”

“Who is going to hold them accountable?” a young woman asked.

I could have kissed her square on the lips. I pointed over the heads of the journalists to the crowd of people on the sidewalks behind the working media members. The front-row group turned to look where I pointed.

“They are,” I said. “The buying public is fed up with the shell games going on in the entertainment industry. They’re tired of paying 25 dollars for something that costs five dollars to produce. They’re tired of being soaked by the labels and by the artists. They’re tired of being lied to by the media and the public relations departments. Hey, I’m the first to tell you that Liz Larimer made a bunch of money last year. I don’t know exactly how much but I can tell you it was a ton. And for every single dollar she made on her music, the label took 71 cents for their overhead. The ledgers from Train Records told the story that’s the same industry wide.

“Her music was downloaded almost 3 million times last year across the two best known streaming sites. She made seven-hundredths of a cent per download. You saw Train’s books. You know that they made more than a million dollars from those sites. Liz made $14,000. Do the math! Who is getting the bulk of the money? It’s not the artists. It’s not the songwriters. It’s not the session musicians. It’s not anybody with a discernible talent. It’s the guys sitting upstairs that happened to pop out of a wealthy uterus!”

I looked at the people nearest the back. They were exchanging angry glances.

“Change is coming,” I said in a softer voice. “We’ve reached the saturation point and the public is not going to stand for the chicanery that’s been hidden for so long. The lights are coming on. The streaming services found a way to quicker profitability by shorting their payments to the artists. The executives responded to the decrease in sales by increasing the price on those still buying music. Somebody very wise told me last week that, to the fan, the artist is synonymous with the label. Until I met Liz again, I had no real concept of the difference.

“It’s time to change that. It’s time to make the record execs accountable for their actions. The people with cameras and recorders and microphones have made it their business to hold the artists accountable. I challenge you to turn your gaze on the corporations that have controlled this business for decades.”

I cast my eyes around the journalists.

“Or, you’re going to find yourselves just as irrelevant as the bigwigs in the fancy offices pretty damned soon,” I concluded. “The public has long been an afterthought in the battle for dominance between the labels and the artists. We think it’s time the fans became the primary focus again. Thank you for your time.”