Chapter 9

Kent called as I was leaving my training session with Victor. I was sore and a little bruised from his habit of whacking me with the pad every time I missed a block or didn’t time a hit right, and part of me wanted to just ignore it and get back to Hanna’s aunt’s house so I could lay down and rest. That wasn’t an option, of course, but sometimes it was tough dealing with everything being thrown at me while other kids from school were just hanging out and playing video games.

“Hey, Kent. What’s up?” I said, answering.

“Just wanted to give you a heads up that Brent has finally made it into town, and he’s looking to meet up with you. We have a small satellite office here in town and we’ve set up a meeting for you two tomorrow morning at nine. I’m sorry I can’t be there to officially introduce the two of you, but I’ve been called out to LA for some meetings. The office staff knows you two are coming, though, so you shouldn’t run into any problems.”

“We should be okay. I’m glad he made it. We’re only two days away from our first show. I was a little worried we weren’t going to be able to meet him before our first gig. I’ll let the guys know about the meeting.”

“He said he wants to meet with just you tomorrow, to get things squared away between the two of you before you involve the band or Hanna.”

“I thought you talked to him about keeping Hanna involved, at least through this tour.”

“I did, and he said he was on board. He just wants to start building a relationship with you, since you’re the primary person being represented.”

Considering everything that had been happening with Marco, the last thing I needed to do was hold secret, one-on-one meetings with our new manager before he met with the rest of the band. I also wanted Hanna to be involved, not just because it was good experience for her before she headed off to college, but because she’d already shown how valuable she could be. She was better about keeping her eye on what we really needed to focus on and putting her foot down when we were headed the wrong way. It was easy to get swept up in all of this, so it was good to have someone whose job it was to say ‘no’ when needed. Although I liked to think I was level-headed, I watched my dad make all the wrong decisions in his career, and there were countless stories of people who thought they could handle it and letting this industry twist them up. Most of the time, a lot of those mistakes could have been stopped simply by having someone around to put everything in check.

“I really would prefer to have everyone there. We’re all going to have to work together starting this weekend, and I’m not sure if we have enough time for this meeting, another get-to-know-you meeting with everyone else, and still have time to get ready for our first gig. I think it’d be better if we got all the preliminary stuff out of the way tomorrow so we can get down to business. The next few weeks are going to be pretty busy.”

Kent didn’t say anything and I worried for a second I might have overstepped. Unlike the lawyers, who were the only other people from the label I’d met, Kent had been really informal with all of us, so sometimes it was easy to forget he was the one who made suggestions to the label about whether they should keep us on or not. If we were a big name that paid a lot of the label’s bills, we could demand how we wanted them to interact with us or specify conditions, but we weren’t. They might think we were commercially viable, but I was a minor and we were all but unknown, which meant they were taking a serious chance on us. Kent seemed like a good guy, but I needed to keep that in mind.

Thankfully, he didn’t seem to take offense.

“Makes sense. I’ll let him know to expect all of you.”

“Thanks, Kent,” I said, hanging up.

Everyone was pumped to hear about the meeting, since this was when the tour really started to feel real. The next day we all met outside the address we’d been given for the office and went upstairs together. The secretary must have been given my picture or something, or maybe just us being in a large group made it obvious, because she knew who I was the second we walked through the door, directing us to a conference room just off the reception area. Kent hadn’t been wrong when he’d said this was a small office. Other than the reception area and the conference room, there had to only be enough room for two or three other offices in the suite, based on them being on a corner of the building.

There was a guy already sitting at the table when we went inside. He was maybe in his thirties, had jet black hair that was slicked back, and was wearing a dark gray suit.

“Charlie?” he asked, sticking his hand out towards me as he stood halfway up from his seat at the table.

It wasn’t a hard guess. I was visibly the youngest of the group, with only Hanna within a few years of me, and there was no confusing her and me.

“Charlie, it’s so good to meet you. I’ve been hearing some really great things about you from Kent, and the early sample from the recording I heard was amazing. I swear, we’re going to have a really great time over the next few weeks. I’m expecting some big things for us.”

It was amazing how, for a guy who was smiling with his incredibly straight, white teeth, and using what I assumed was his most friendly tone of voice, I believed nothing he said. Everything about him read used car salesman. I honestly felt like he might whip out a vacuum cleaner or a set of steak knives to sell me before the meeting was over.

“Uhh, sure,” I said. “This is the rest of the band. Seth, Marco, and Lyla. And this is Hanna, who’s been helping us keep everything organized.”

Hanna and I had discussed our first meeting with Brent the night before. She felt that, since she wasn’t a professional and this was our first meeting with him, it might start us off on the wrong foot to introduce her as our manager, since he was officially our manager and she wasn’t. I would have been fine describing her as our manager, considering the volume of work she’d already done to keep us organized and focused, but I understood her hesitation and wasn’t going to make her feel uncomfortable.

“So, our first few stops are going to be pretty small. I understand you’ve been playing in some local clubs in the Ashville area, so these shouldn’t be that big of a departure for you. The largest seats seven hundred, although I don’t want you to feel like the label is expecting you to fill those. You’re just starting out and we’re nowhere near your existing fan base, so we’re basically only relying on people just happening to come into the club or hearing the couple of drive-time radio spots we’ve managed to arrange for you. The goal of these shows is to build word of mouth for the album’s release in a few months. The first week’s sales numbers are the best you’re going to get, so it’s important to make sure people know it’s coming and are familiar enough with you to buy into it. As you pick up steam, in later tours, we’ll start worrying about things like audience capacity.”

“Okay,” I said.

Kent hadn’t discussed this, but Hanna had worked most of that out on her own and explained it, based on the people she’d talked to and a handful of trade publications she’d read. She hadn’t been as direct about it, but she’d told us the label wouldn’t be counting how much we fill the stops on this first go.

“Now, a couple of notes on these shows. You’re young and I know crowds can be kind of difficult, and the last thing we want is to leave these first crowds with a bad reputation since, like I said, a lot of what we’re going to rely on is word of mouth. Once you’re done with your set, I want you guys to pack up and head on out. We’ll use the appearances I’m lining up on some drive-time radio shows to let your audience get to know you, since those appearances are easier to control. If you get into a bind there, I’ll be there to help back you out and the DJs know what they’re doing and can step in and cover you if you fumble.”

That was pretty much the exact opposite of the first advice Willie had ever given me about touring when I’d gone with him to a few stops of his last tour. He’d said, more than once, that it was important to meet people at shows, especially when you’re at places where the audience didn’t come specifically for you.

I’d had a similar conversation with Hanna, although she approached it from a completely different angle. She’d read a study that talked about memory association and art. It had said that, when someone is first exposed to a piece of art, be it a movie, a painting, or a song, people were more likely to remember it if they had an experience associated with it. A theory in how memory worked was that we don’t just store events in our memory, that we called up the associated feelings.

A person was more likely to remember looking at a painting if they were on a date to an art gallery or if something emotional had happened recently, because they would tie in the feeling from that experience with viewing the art, and their brain would associate that every time they saw the art or experienced something similar.