Chapter 32

We had to beg off our Sunday show at the Blue Ridge. Even though I told him ahead of time this was a possibility, I apologized profusely to Chef. He was fine with it and Willie was good to play, but I felt bad whenever I had to miss an obligation.

We were all just too wiped out by all of the excitement on Saturday and the driving before and after. Even Lyla, who seemed never to be low on energy, looked like she was ready to crash when we got home.

We were supposed to get our first report on record sales and streaming numbers on Tuesday, so I’d be talking to Warren in just a few days, but I still called him to give him an update on how it went. He was very excited to hear about playing with Nightshade and the fact that we, and more importantly our record, got a shout-out from them on stage. Any bump from this weekend wasn’t going to show up until next week’s numbers, but the label would be taking the entire first month into account, so it would still help us.

Sydney and Cameron must have talked to people, because when I got to school on Monday, I had several kids stop me in the parking lot to ask about meeting Ronnie and playing with Nightshade. On top of that, several of Sydney’s friends were with her out front where she normally waited for me. I can imagine in a small town like this, something like meeting one of the biggest stars in the world and playing with a major band made me something of a celebrity, but I’d be happy when this passed over. It wasn’t like my being a musician was new and they all knew I toured this summer, but I guess it wasn’t until I had contact with famous people that it became real for them.

I hadn’t gotten to talk a lot to Kat or Cameron, since I rode back with Sydney and her mom, but we’d talked a little and he’d been in a great mood Saturday. I guess the fact that I had seen him, and he’d been there to see all the excitement for himself, is why I was surprised when he pulled me aside at lunch before I could make it to the lunch table.

“Hey, I just wanted to thank you for letting me tag along this weekend.”

“No problem. You’re always welcome to come with us if I’m allowed to bring other people into the venue.”

“You know I might take you up on that. But, I wanted to tell you I submitted my article. I was up late last night completely rewriting it so I could work in the stuff from Saturday, because that was so amazing.”

“Be careful. I know it’s just for a small paper, but a lot of those interactions, especially with people whose profile is really big and who have reputations to think about, were meant to be private. If they knew someone there would be publishing what they said, they might never have talked to us. If you want to be backstage with us, you have to be cool about it.”

“Ohh ... I didn’t think about that.”

I ran over the events of the weekend, thinking through where the danger spots were. The interaction with Ronnie was harmless and I couldn’t see anything there that could be a problem. If anything, she came off as friendly towards me and my friends and caring because of her support for Eli. There was one dangerous spot I could see, however.

“Did you include any of the stuff about Eli and that argument that was happening when we walked up?”

“What? No. I only mentioned how you’d been on stage with them, and quoted Ronnie about how she thought you sounded great. The whole article focuses on you, so I only added stuff that worked with that.”

“You mean the band, right?”

“Yeah, the band, although I had to put in the stuff about you playing with Nightshade. It was too good to leave out.”

“Fine, just don’t get me in trouble with the rest of them by having them thinking I’m a prima donna.”

“I don’t think I did.”

“Okay.”

“Anyway, I wanted to also thank you for taking me with you. I met some amazing people while you were playing. I swear, once I’m out of school I could ride your coattails to Broadway with some of the people I met. Did you know the stage manager was the stage manager for several off-Broadway shows?”

“No, but I didn’t get a chance to talk to her much.”

“I got her email address. It might come to nothing, but contacts like that are what can get me in the door.”

“Well, you’re always welcome to come with us, but most of our gigs are in bars with tiny storage rooms as our green room. Don’t expect them all to be like that.”

“I don’t know, man. Seeing you out there this weekend, it won’t be long until you’re playing only large crowds. You’re good at the Blue Ridge, but you took it to the next level with the crowd this weekend.”

“A lot of that was because of the crowd. There’s kind of a feedback that happens between them and us. The more they give us, the harder we play. The Blue Ridge is great and we get a lot of support, but it’s nothing like seeing seven hundred or a thousand people out in front of you. You should have seen the crowd at the House of Grace concert. It was huge. I swear I was flying.”

“It’s the same in the theater, although I’ve never experienced anything more than a mostly full school auditorium. One day though, I’ll get out there.”

“I have no doubt,” I said, clapping him on the arm. “Let’s go get some lunch.”

Tuesday at lunch I went outside to make a call instead of going to the cafeteria. I’d planned to wolf down my lunch when I was done, but today was the day the numbers came out, and I was dying to find out how we did.

“So what’s the word?” I asked Kent when he answered.

“Ha, someone’s excited. Before I give you some of these numbers, I want to temper your expectations. You’re not at the top of any charts, and that’s okay. You didn’t have the marketing push or reach to get those kinds of numbers. I’ll let you know up front, we’re happy with what we’re seeing. They’re in line with what we expected of you, but on the high side, which is good news. If you can keep the momentum you’re building, you’ve got a long career with us. I just didn’t want you to hear the numbers without context and get bummed, okay?”

“Okay, considered me warned.”

“Okay. The second caveat is for your RIAA and Billboard sales numbers, which your streaming is bundled up with. They calculate one-hundred and fifty streams as one track sale, and fifteen hundred streams as an album sale, although that fifteen hundred number is an average. On some platforms that have free and premium streams, the numbers are different. We have a breakdown of this, but I just wanted to give you a sense of how many streams are counted as an album sale. This is then combined with your traditional sales numbers to determine your actual album sales. Normally they also track the sale of singles and streams for those songs separately, but you don’t have a single, so we don’t have to worry about that now. Also, just so you know, five-hundred thousand units is gold and one million is platinum, and that does include streaming numbers. You’re nowhere near that, so don’t get excited, but I wanted you to have a barometer for these numbers. Like I said, we set reasonable expectations for you and weren’t expecting you to reach gold or platinum, or even really getting close to that, on this first album.”

“Okay, so how’d we do?”

“You pulled very respectable numbers, most of that from streaming, but that’s to be expected. Less than five percent of our sales are CDs or other media, and digital sales are down to about thirty-five percent. With the exception of some artists whose majority listener base are over sixty years old, nearly every artist we represent hovers around sixty-percent streaming. I just wanted you not to worry about that number when you see it, since I sent over a report breaking down your sales to you and your parents an hour ago.”

I didn’t love that he said parents. When I’d signed, it had just been me and Mom, and until now he’d just said mother. The fact that he said parents showed that he was aware that my father was in the picture and had at least somewhat accepted that he was co-managing my career with my mother, which was a bad sign. I knew Dad. If he got a hint of approval, he’d take that as a go-ahead for him to run with anything he thought was right.

I, however, still didn’t feel I could tell Kent that. ‘Respectable’ first week numbers were not enough to make all the reasons I needed to keep presenting myself as an adult and not a kid with family problems from being valid.

“Okay. So what were our numbers?”

“Top of the line, you sold twenty-three thousand, four hundred and ninety-three. Again, that ‘sold’ includes both actual sales and streaming numbers combined. For a regional first-time artist, you had some really respectable streaming numbers. We’re currently projecting you to hit around forty to forty-five thousand sales this month, since there’s always a big week-over-week drop from the release, at least for the first month or two, until things stabilize. However, Warren told me about the festival this weekend. I don’t know how you did it, but opening with someone as big as Nightshade and arranging your band to follow right after them with that size of an audience, I think we’re going to be wrong and your numbers might even go up for week two, or at least hold the same, which will blow all of our projections out of the water. You’re going to make me and Warren look very good at the office here.”

“I was just at the right place at the right time.”

“Don’t sell yourself short, Charlie. A lot of people are at the right time and place, but don’t know how to turn that into an advantage for them. You saw something and you made it work. That’s a skill even more important than how well you sing or play the guitar. I’ve watched a lot of mediocre talents make it big because they seized their moment. You keep making decisions like that, and the label will decide you’re worth pushing nationally, not regionally, which will move you out of the minors and into the big leagues.”