Chapter 86

Liz’s mood fluctuated the day of the concert. She went from excited to anxious as the minutes ticked past.

I did my best to keep her mind occupied in other ways but I soon realized I was more of a hindrance than a help so I left it to Jill and Skye to keep Liz entertained.

I was more than content to spend my day with my mother and Liz’s parents.

Mickey and Bev had been wonderful (and, of course, my mother had been terrific, too).

I had gotten the impression that Mickey and Bev had taken a while, but they had finally matured. I remembered Mickey sporting a ponytail and loud Hawaiian shirts during Liz’s school days. He had looked like a typical middle-aged man when he stepped off the plane Monday evening. He had worn pressed khakis, a shirt and a tie. His ponytail had given way to close-cropped silver hair. The glasses he had worn were fitting for a man of his age and he had given a wide smile as soon as he spotted his daughter.

Bev had also dressed conservatively. I recalled a woman that always wore blue jeans and linen shirts (sans brassiere) with rings on every finger and a large turquoise pendant around her neck. Her reddish-blonde hair had always been adorned with flowers or colorful headbands.

She had chosen a tasteful skirt with low heels and a crimson blouse that highlighted her tanned skin for her trip to Dallas. The only jewelry I had seen was a silver chain around her neck. She had made no attempt to color her hair but she appeared to be growing old gracefully with just a few streaks of gray showing through the normal color. I hadn’t known her age until Liz mentioned it. Bev was 49 and Mickey would turn 50 the day after the concert.

Both had been amazingly sweet during the week, not only to Liz but to everybody around them. They had not revealed embarrassing stories about Liz’s adolescence; they had not pestered the hotel staff or Liz’s employees about anything at all; and, most importantly to Liz, they did not appear to have partaken in any illegal substances during their stay at the hotel. They had been content to enjoy the time with their daughter and her friends and often shifted into the background when Liz was talking about some aspect of her professional life.

I had found that I liked them very much but I had worried that my mother would ignore them or, worse, say something sharp to one of them.

I had been really happy that my mom had set aside her preconceived notions about Liz’s folks and accepted them as they were (instead of how she had always viewed them). My mother had arrived the night before the concert. Liz had insisted that we greet her just as we had her parents so we had waited (surrounded by most of the combined security team) outside the arrivals area at the airport.

My mother had seemed slightly taken aback when she walked through the door – and I know that almost every other passenger on the plane was. Mom had recovered quickly and had even permitted me to take her rolling suitcase from her (after a disapproving look at my arm in a sling) while Brian had helped her with her carryon luggage.

Despite our best intentions we had not managed to make the trip to Ohio to visit my mother. So this was the first time she had seen Liz in person in more than a decade and a half. I had noticed tears in Liz’s eyes when my mother hugged her tightly and rubbed her shoulder.

“Lizzie, ” she had said softly. “It’s so good to see you!”

“I’m so glad you’re here, ” Liz had replied. Mom had greeted Bev and Mickey like two old friends and they had spent most of the evening catching up on life on the Fun Coast (as the north-central shoreline of Ohio had dubbed itself).

I got to spend most of the morning with Mom and the Larimers (along with Brian and Dom, who had been sent to watch over us as we meandered through the Dallas shopping district). The older adults hadn’t treated the security guys as an accessory. They had brought them into every conversation and asked about details of their lives.

We got back to the hotel after lunch and I gave Liz a soft massage before she drifted off for a short nap. Then I cuddled up with her to help keep her warm.

She awoke with a sleepy smile and a soft kiss on my nose before heading off to the bathroom to brush her teeth. I got a bigger kiss when she returned and crawled back on the bed.

“That was just what I needed, ” she said.

“I’m willing to kiss you whenever you want one, ” I told her with a laugh.

“The nap!” Liz corrected. “Although I won’t pass up any kisses you might have to spare. I was getting a little goofy out there. I’m … I’m nervous, Travis. I haven’t been nervous about going on stage in a long time.”

“You’re going to do great, ” I told her. “I have all the faith in the world in you.”

“I know you do, ” Liz said, cuddling up on my shoulder. “I wanted to tell you that I’m really happy about the job you did down here this week. You and Jill kept everything under control and let me focus on what I needed to do. I appreciate that more than I can tell you.”

“It was Jill, ” I said.

Liz chuckled.

“That’s funny, ” she said. “When I told her the same thing, she said it was you.”

“She’s just being modest, ” I replied.

“Yeah, modest, ” Liz snorted. “That’s an adjective I normally associate with Jill Clay.”

“No, I’m serious, ” I said. “She came down with a game plan. She knew what you wanted. You’d been clear about your expectations and she understood them. That was the key. She knew the idea you had in mind and she set out making it a reality. She really did a great job of keeping everybody on task and focused on their jobs without sounding like a tyrant. I was really impressed with her demeanor. Of course, I think she learned it from you so that’s no surprise. She treated everybody like they were an integral part of the team. She was firm in describing the look and the atmosphere that needed to be created but she also treated everybody like a professional. You did a great job in picking her to lead your road team.”

“She said that having you with her helped her a lot, ” Liz informed me. “She said you gave her a person to talk things over with before she spoke to the crews. She told me that you really helped her formulate the way she wanted to present the information. I’m just … I’m really happy about how everything has come together. I’m not just talking about the show. That’s important but I’m also talking about how my mom and dad and your mom are getting along. I’m talking about how everybody here now feels like a part of a family. Even the other performers are setting aside old grudges and slights.”

“Grudges?” I asked. I had known nothing about any perceived unhappiness between the other singers.

“Chelsea and Melissa, ” Liz said.

“Really?” I asked. Melissa had found a way to force the news that was coming the following week out of her mind. She had been really friendly and funny the entire time. Chelsea had moved away from the star-struck kid I’d perceived her to be. She was still excited to be a part of the event but she no longer hung on everybody’s words like they were the last Gospel.

“Chelsea was on Brandon’s TV show, ” Liz told me. “That’s where she got her start and … there were rumors.”

“Rumors?” I asked.

“That she and Brandon had … a one-night fling, ” Liz said softly.

“Oh, shit, ” I said. “I didn’t read about that. I mean, I did the research on all of them when you told me who you were thinking about.”

“It was never a public rumor, ” Liz said. “It was just an impression Melissa got from watching how Chelsea acted around Brandon. Last week, I think she finally understood that Chelsea acts that way around everybody. She … she flat-out asked her about it at our party. Chelsea seemed absolutely stunned at the very idea. But … Melissa can be a bit testy and I’m not sure she really believed her. But they are good now. So are Lucas and Ben.”

“Wait!” I said. “Those two seemed like old friends.”

“They’re not, ” Liz said. “I mean, they’re becoming friends now, but it wasn’t always that way. Ben is more old-school, you know. He’s probably the last of the really traditional male country singers out there. Just like Conny is probably the last of the traditional female country singers out there. The genre has really changed in the last 10 years. It’s got a lot more pop and rap influences than it used to. Ben is more of the old-time Southern Rock. Lucas is the face of the change. He brought in a rapper for a duet a few years ago and radio loved it.

“Ben had put together a really solid disc, front to back, but he lost Album of the Year to Lucas, who really had one good song and one popular song that wasn’t very good. There was some friction. Of course, Ben also has a really biting sense of humor. He hosts the TV Country Music Awards with Conny and they did a skit that poked fun at Lucas and the guys like him. I mean, they didn’t single him out. They made fun of me and Brandon and Melissa and everybody else they could think of. But Lucas took it a little personally. He had only put out two albums and was still growing a base. Then Ben brought in a rapper for his next album and it was just to lampoon the growing wave of crossovers. It was purely a humorous song with a guy that had been one of the gangsta rappers in the 90s. It was called ‘You Stay Out of My Yard and I’ll Stay Out of Yours.’

“Nobody really took it seriously. They switched roles. The rapper sang twangy country lyrics and Ben did a horrible rap about inner-city life. But … you know how the Internet is. Lucas’s fans led a backlash against Ben, accusing him of being a racist and glorifying violence and intolerance.”

“I knew about that part, ” I said. “But I didn’t know the particulars.”

“I really didn’t either, ” Liz said, shifting her knee upward until it covered my middle. “I was in the middle of a tour and I didn’t really know either of them very well. My sound has always tended to isolate me from the others in the industry. It’s different and it doesn’t really fit either style. Factor in that RFN essentially painted me as being bigger than the industry and it meant I really didn’t have the chance to know a lot of the people who sing the same style of music I do. I didn’t interact with them at awards shows. I didn’t collaborate with them on songs. I didn’t help them with their projects. It wasn’t until I got to know Ben a little bit that I figured out what I was missing by avoiding all those things. By then it was too late. The label had already cast my image in stone and McHenry and his people wouldn’t let me backtrack on anything. There are lots of feuds in the music industry. Some of them cross genre lines but some of them are among people that are trying to reach the same audience.”

“Then you have to factor in what Lucas said on the radio, ” I added. “Almost everybody lets the label handle their PR and marketing. Petty little squabbles get extended because the label sees it as a low-cost way of keeping the artist’s name in the public eye. Things get said on a Twitter feed that the artist has no control over and the fans are used as proxies in the war of words.”

“Exactly, ” Liz said. “That’s what happened to Ben. He wound up having to apologize for something he’d never said but that somebody else had said for him. I’ll be honest: I really didn’t know that everybody had the same setup as I did. I was a lot like the rest of the world. I read what Ben’s label had put out there for him and I thought he was wrong. I didn’t understand until a few years ago what had really happened. I knew that RFN and Conny’s label had perpetuated a make-believe spat between us but I didn’t really understand that everybody was in the same boat. That’s what is so nice about the way things have played out down here. I knew that everything coming out had my approval.

“Looking back … and talking with the others … I can see where I fell prey to my own press releases. I honestly believed everything Stephanie was telling me. I thought I was too big for a media blitz. I thought I was above … pandering. I can see now that if we hadn’t done things your way, I’d be playing tonight in a half-empty stadium. I sure as hell wouldn’t have this being seen as the biggest concert event in years. So, I just wanted to tell you how happy I am that you’re with me … personally and professionally.”