Chapter 81

My night with Ben, Lucas, Dom, Brian, Evan and the kids was pretty entertaining. We got a series of texts from our wives and/or girlfriends throughout the evening.

I took the kids over to see Liz’s horses and we made s’mores over a smaller fire Ben had built. Mostly, we just goofed around and got to know each other.

Lucas and I were the only two that knew about Brandon and Melissa’s impending split but we only exchanged sad smiles. Lucas and Brandon were friends and they hosted one of country music’s signature awards ceremonies together. Coincidentally, the show’s biggest rival was hosted by Ben and Conny. Dom and Brian were welcomed, as I suspected they would be.

I was surprised to learn that Conny rarely had any security with her.

“It’s not as crazy as it is with Liz,” Evan told me. “Conny has her share of fans, just like Melissa does. But she can still go out places without having a thousand cameras pointed at her. I don’t know how Liz does it.”

“It’s gotten better as her fans have gotten older,” Dom said. “Back ... say 10 years ago ... her fans were all in their late teens and early 20s. The label had made her accessible at almost all times for the first ... three or four years, I guess. The fans had gotten used to just walking up to her and getting a photo or a picture or an autograph.”

“That’s why it was such a shock to everyone when Liz stopped doing the awards circuit,” Ben noted as he bounced Conny’s young daughter on his knee.

Ben’s sons and Lucas’s little boy had pulled Brian away for a game of tag. Lucas’s daughter, the oldest of the group at age eight, had become my constant shadow since I took her over to see the horses on Liz’s property. I had promised Abigail that she could come out and ride once summer started and I was pretty certain that she intended to stay in my sight to make sure I didn’t forget.

“Is she going to start appearing again?” Lucas asked.

“I’m not sure,” I admitted. “We’re going to sit down in a few weeks and get things straight with her label. I can tell you this: She’s not going to sign anything as one-sided as the one she’s been under for the past few years.”

That caused the two music performers to look at each other and then at me.

“She’s in a bad contract?” Ben asked.

I held up my hands.

“I can’t really talk about it,” I said. “But I can say that a lot of the decisions that seemed out of place for her didn’t originate with her or her staff.”

“Man, that’s some ... stuff,” Lucas said, glancing at Conny’s little girl. “We all thought ... I mean ... she’s the biggest name out there. At our best, Ben and I together might be half as popular as she is. Conny and Melissa together might be pretty close but I’m not sure. Sorry, Evan, I’m not trying to be a jerk.”

“No,” he said. “I understand it and so does Conny. Liz has been up there for ... I guess a dozen years or so. That’s what gets Conny. Her popularity ebbs and flows. She’s gone two years now without an album and it’s caused her fan base to diminish. Liz routinely goes 18 months to two years between releases and it never hurts her any.”

“It’s part of the diverse profile the label put together for her,” I said. “I’ve done some research on Conny and Melissa and ... you guys, too. Your setups are different. You’re like everybody else. You rely solely on your artistry to keep your fans engaged. Liz has a line of clothing and accessories. She does spokesmodel work for a line of shoes. She’s visible all the time so her fans always get a reminder that she’s around. Conny sings and does concerts. You guys sing and do concerts. There are a couple of guys with high visibility. Brandon Lillibridge has his TV show and a famous wife; Kenneth Stratton has the same things. But they don’t go as far as Liz has gone. Kenneth might show up at a movie premiere but they live in Canada most of the time. Brandon isn’t going to start doing work for GQ anytime soon. It’s a tradeoff.”

“How?” Ben asked.

“Because you and Kim can take your kids out to Chuck-E-Cheese and not have to worry about dodging idiots on motorcycles half the night,” I said. “Evan and Conny don’t have to worry about someone standing guard outside of Little Lena’s nursery at night. Gwen can come and go as she wants without a photographer critiquing the cut of her jeans or her handbag. Liz doesn’t get that freedom – and, by extension, neither do I. I was like you guys. I thought I understood her life. I didn’t. I had no idea how pervasive the intrusions are. I had no idea how constant the attention was. I can honestly say that I’m not sure how much of that was her idea and how much came from RFN’s marketing department. I think, if she’s truthful, she’d admit it was a little of both. But I also know that she’s grown tired of it and she wishes she had the sort of life that would let her leave the house in sweats and a hat once in awhile.

“I know this is hard to believe because she’s been around so long but she’s only 30. She’s younger than all of you and she’s starting to think about ... getting out and slowing down. She’s starting to worry if she can raise normal children under the glare of the spotlight. She’s starting to worry if she can hold together a normal relationship with me and her friends. She’s been out there for 14 or 15 years and she’s tired – but there really isn’t a way for her to ease her way back. Too many people have an investment in her – the label, the people that work for her, her fans – for her to walk away. So she’s stuck on a treadmill – never able to stop but never really moving forward either. She’s painted as a perpetual ‘tweener.’ She’s not a child but she’s not viewed as an adult either.”

“Damn,” Dom said, looking at me closely. “That’s ... that’s exactly how it is.”

“I had no idea,” Ben said, frowning. The man smiled almost all the time and the expression was even more pronounced because it was so rare. “You ... you see her and she’s just ... Liz. I always thought ... this is how she wanted things.”

“Me, too,” Lucas added.

“To a certain extent, she does,” I agreed. “The problem is that she walked into this without a vision of the future. You guys were both in your mid 20s when you hit Nashville. You both had experienced life. You both had gone to college and lived a portion of life away from here. Conny is the same way. She was in her mid 20s. Melissa started playing the bars when she was 18 or 19 but she didn’t get much of a following until much later. Liz was 15 years old when she landed in this life. She wasn’t prepared for how all-encompassing her world has become. Look, this is confidential so don’t say anything about it but ... she’s still under the same contract she signed when she was 20 years old. Think about how life was for you at 20! You had no thoughts above where you were going to drink that night or what girl you planned to chase next. I know I sure as hell couldn’t envision life 10 years down the road.

“That’s where she is. The things she thought were important at 20 aren’t as important at 30. But she’s been locked in for so long that she doesn’t know where one part of her life ends and where the rest of it begins.”

“She signed a 10-year deal?” Lucas asked, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees.

“Ten years or six discs,” I said with a nod.

“That’s ... very unusual,” Ben pointed out. “Most contracts are shorter. Even now, my deal is three years or three albums. We have a mutual option so I’m actually five years into a three-year contract. I’m happy; they’re happy. We just keep going.”

“That’s how it is with me,” Lucas said. “I ... I just got my second deal. I got a little more control over the product.”

His voice trailed off.

“I get it,” he said now, nodding slightly. “She’s been locked into a deal for 10 years with little or no control over what she does. That sucks.”

“It’s worse than that,” I said. “Look, guys, if this gets out ... I’m going to wind up waxing the cars at RFN for the rest of my life. This is stuff that is completely secret.”

“I’ve worked for her for almost four years and this is the first I’m hearing most of it,” Dom said.

“No problem,” Ben said. “I’m not interested in making life hard on anybody – particularly not you or Liz.”

“Nah, man,” Lucas added. “That ain’t me. But I can see why RFN would want to keep it close. That’s a terrible deal.”

“Like I said, it’s worse than just that,” I said. “RFN had control over her concert schedule and the venues. They had control over personal appearances and promotions. They had control over almost every facet of her life ... and they abused it.”

“Wait!” Lucas said. “They set her concerts? That’s ... messed up.”

He again looked at Evan’s daughter and censored himself.

“The Dallas thing?” I said. “That wasn’t her idea in the least. Yeah, she was OK with playing it. But she sure as heck wasn’t OK with how it was promoted ... and that extends to after I took over her marketing. She was plenty angry at me for making her act like a neophyte. It caused a lot of problems.”

“I wondered about that,” Ben said. “We’ve lived next to her for five years now, I guess. I know her pretty well. Liz always had ... don’t be upset me with, Travis ... but she always had a pretty inflated opinion of her place in the world.”

I couldn’t help but laugh.

“I mean, we’re singers,” Ben said. “In the grand scheme of things ... we’re pretty worthless except as a diversion from things. But Liz always took herself way too seriously. I mean, I use TV and radio all the time to get people to buy my discs or tickets to my show. I do the countdowns if I have an album coming out. Liz always seemed to think she was above all that.”

“Yeah,” I said with a nod. “It was a pretty big shock when she found out she isn’t.”

“It comes back to the label,” Dom said firmly. “They’ve fed her so much garbage over the years that she couldn’t help but believe some of it. Travis ... man ... he worked his tail off down there.”

He glanced at me for my permission to continue so I nodded.

“He figured out that the label wanted to drive down Liz’s price,” Dom said. “They ... well, you know about her label contact and what he tried to do. Travis figured out that McHenry got a cut of the pie that might be left over when Liz re-signed with RFN.”

“Oh!” Evan said. He had been content to listen. “You mean if she came in below market he got to pocket the difference?”

“Yep,” I said.

“That’s insane!” Ben said, looking at Lucas.

“Is it true?” Lucas wondered.

“The CEO confirmed it last week,” I said sadly. “So McHenry set up the phony story; he set up Dallas and planned to make certain she tanked. Then she’d have to come crawling back to RFN and take whatever deal they offered.”

“That’s bullshit,” Lucas declared. “Sorry, Evan.”

“She’s heard it before,” the big man said. Evan Grace was an outside linebacker for the Titans. He was only slightly smaller than Ryan Davis, who had played offensive tackle for the team years before Evan joined them. He towered over his diminutive wife, who stood about 5-feet-3 and weighed perhaps 110 pounds with rolls of pennies in her pockets.

“That is just incredible,” Ben said, shaking his head.

“If you have stock in RFN, you probably want to get rid of it,” I said.

“No kidding,” Lucas replied. “So, she’s splitting from them? That’s going to get interesting.”

“It’s a little more complicated than that,” I said. “In order to secure a little autonomy, she offered a 90-day exclusive negotiating period to the label. Her 10 years is up the first of June. She can’t negotiate anywhere else until August 30th.”

“During that period, she’s pretty well excluded from doing anything music related,” Dom said bitterly.

“The downtime will do her good,” I said. “But RFN is going to be in bad shape when she leaves them. Most of their profits can be traced directly or indirectly back to Liz. And the split is not going to be amicable. Perhaps if they would drop the 90-day requirement, she might go quietly but they can’t do that. They either have to bring her back under contract or reinvent their business model. They believed too many of McHenry’s lies to have a viable alternative in place.”

“She could completely hold them hostage,” Evan said.

“She could,” I said. “But she won’t. She’s already decided to go a different route.”

“Retirement?” Ben asked.

“Not yet,” I said. “Probably in another five or six years but for now she just wants to be the one making all the decisions. On its face, it’s not a bad plan. The problem is that there are a lot of things she just doesn’t understand right now. I got a firsthand look at how little she knows about marketing and public relations. She has always had someone to handle her concert promotions and now she won’t. She’s always had someone to line up her session musicians and now she won’t. She’s had someone to handle the copyrights and the licensing. She’s going to be learning a lot of things on the fly because she insists upon overseeing too many things.”