Chapter 14

We left the next morning for the Tennessee leg of our tour. Dad was sleeping in and I’d stayed out late practicing with the band and hanging out with Hanna and Kat, which meant I’d successfully avoided him since finding out he was back. I understood what both Hanna’s mom and Chef had said about not overreacting until he did something, but I didn’t want to deal with him if I didn’t have to. Since it was such a short stopover, it was easy to stay out for the day and a half before we hit the road again.

Every time I thought of him being here I got so angry that I didn’t trust myself to not say something that would push him to revert back to his old ways. Although he hadn’t been in prison all that long, just a year and a half, there were almost two years leading up to his trial, where we’d existed in a sort of limbo, living in the RV and waiting to find out if he was coming back or if we were going to be on our own. The last time I’d really lived with him was when I was twelve.

I wasn’t twelve anymore and I wasn’t going to put up with his bullshit if he decided to start drinking again or acted like he did with Mom during those last few years. I’d have to deal with him eventually, but if I could put it off until the tour was over, so much the better.

At least, when we were on the road, I could focus on our gigs and push all of that off to the future. I had to hand it to Brent, he may have had trouble understanding boundaries, but at least the tour was arranged well. The clubs were all too small to really look up, but at least the stops were set up so we didn’t spend a long time on the road on any one day.

This second half of our tour went through Tennessee and Kentucky in a half circle. Our first stop was Knoxville, then down to Chattanooga, and then north a bit to Nashville, which finished off our Tennessee part of this half of the tour. We would then head up into Kentucky, with a show in Louisville followed by Lexington. Every stop had only a few hours or so of travel time between each one, except for the Nashville to Louisville section and the last drive home, and even those were less than half a day driving.

For the first stop, the venue itself was more similar to the two we played in North Carolina than the big stage in Richmond. I loved that experience, but we weren’t ready for that yet, or at least I wasn’t. Being an opening act and knowing we didn’t have to carry the whole thing made it a fun experience, since we didn’t have the stress that would have gone along with our necks being on the line. For now, I was much more comfortable with the small clubs where I at least feel like I could control the audiences a bit better.

The one thing that was different from what I’d expected was the stage. Specifically, there were instruments already on it. At first, I thought it might just be the club setup, which sometimes left a set of drums on the stage for bands to use, at least until I noticed the guitar stands and guitars sitting in front of the drums.

We were off to the side by the door that led into the club’s storeroom, which apparently doubled as the green room for the band and the loading dock for our equipment. There wasn’t anyone else back there, so it wasn’t clear whose instruments those were.

“What’s going on?” I asked Hanna.

“I don’t know. Let me go find out,” she said, going back into the storeroom.

I hadn’t seen Brent yet, but at the other shows he’d always shown up separately, on his own, and usually sometime during our set, so that wasn’t unusual. In spite of that, he’d had all the shows set up well, so it hadn’t been an issue. The people who’d worked at the venues knew where we needed to be, the stage was prepped and we hadn’t run into any problems that we needed our tour manager to sort out.

As we stood there waiting for Hanna to figure out what the hell was going on, three guys who’d been at the bar walked across the floor and got up on stage, two picking up guitars and one getting behind the drum kit.

“What’s up fuckers? We’re Death Punch Tuesday and we’re going to play a few songs before the next band comes up.”

With that, he stepped back and the three began a weirdly paced intro before he started to scream into the mic. I didn’t love metal, but generally, I could appreciate it, especially the guitar riffs that the better bands put into the intros and the bridges. This wasn’t that. I could hear the through line of the instrumentals enough to tell the guy singing was off-tempo, which explained the weird pauses as he waited for the music to catch up to him.

I’d had issues a few times, especially when playing songs I wasn’t super familiar with and hadn’t practiced much, but usually, the band adjusted to catch up. These guys weren’t doing that. They just kept playing the song at the same tempo, forcing the singer to pause, which was ... weird.

I don’t know if it was because the band didn’t fit the vibe of the club or if it was the less-than-stellar nature of their playing, but either way, the audience wasn’t into it. No one was on the dance floor and hardly anyone was paying attention. Worse, people had started to filter out. After two songs there were noticeably fewer people in the club than when they’d started playing.

Hanna finally showed back up as they finished up a second song. Part of me wanted to yell at someone as I watched more of the crowd leave rather than listen to these guys, but taking my frustration at this disaster out on her wouldn’t do any good.

“What’s going on?”

“They’re opening for you. Brent called and set it up yesterday. He said they were going to do four songs and then you’d go on.”

“They suck,” Seth said.

“I know,” I said.

“Tell me you know what the hell is going on?” I asked as calmly as I could.

“Brent booked them to open for you. The guy who runs the place said it was weird, but he didn’t have much of a choice. He didn’t elaborate, but I got the feeling Brent twisted his arm a bit to set it up.”

“Does he know they’re driving off the crowd? At this rate, we’ll be playing to three drunk guys and the bartender.”

“We could hear them in his office pretty clearly, so I’m sure he knows they’re not good. He was pretty frustrated too, which is why I think Brent didn’t give him a choice. I didn’t know a manager would have that kind of pull over a club owner, but apparently, they can. He actually didn’t seem like a bad guy, so don’t take it out on him. You can’t afford to alienate club owners, especially not ones close enough for you guys to drive out and do a show on your own, separate from the tour.”

“Fine, I won’t. This just sucks. I can’t imagine what Brent was thinking.”

“I can, and you’re not going to like it.”

“What?”

“The manager knows this band. They used to play gigs in clubs around here years ago before they started making a name for themselves on the metal charts, or whatever it’s called. He said they never got big, but they were opening for other bands and got some radio play like ten years ago, but he’d thought they’d broken up, since then.”

“So they’re on their way down? That’s not really a shock, hearing them play.”

“That’s not the part that’s going to piss you off. He said Brent used to try and get them booked here, back in the day, but the owner refused since their music didn’t fit with the kind of music the club usually plays.”

She was right, that did piss me off, because it explained exactly what was going on. Brent repped these guys and was using our tour to get them stage time. I didn’t know tour managers could handle multiple bands simultaneously, but it wasn’t unreasonable, since a single band wasn’t on tour for the whole year. I did have a problem with him using our tour where we had to give up part of the proceeds to the label to get gigs for a band no one wanted, opening a gig that didn’t need an opener, and almost guaranteeing we wouldn’t sell any merch.

“Are we having to split our part of the cover with them?”

“Yes. They get fifteen percent of the cover split.”

“This is bullshit. I don’t care what everyone is saying about the performance of this tour not mattering, the label is definitely going to look at how we do to make predictions of future earnings. Chopping off fifteen percent of our take is going to make us look bad.”

“It’s one show. The Durham show was a lot bigger than we expected and we did good opening for House of Grace. As long as this doesn’t keep happening, you should be okay.”

“Maybe,” I said. “Is he here?”

“No. He sent me a text earlier that he had something come up but he’d meet us in Nashville. I tried to call him, but it went straight to voicemail. Maybe he’s on a plane.”