Six
SIX
A REAL KICK IN THE PANTS
FirstSound Nashville is a sprawling rehearsal complex east of downtown. When I pull into the parking lot, the squat, colorless building looks more like an abandoned strip mall than the rehearsal space for some of music’s biggest acts. Rows of loading bays line the outside stacked with semi-trucks either dropping off or picking up gear headed to tours in places like Birmingham, Cincinnati, Chicago, Philadelphia.
Jasmine, Sparrow’s tour manager, called three days ago to tell me the band loved my audition video, to show up here tonight, that the band wanted me to perform an original for a fan-voted livestream. I have spent the last two days choosing my song, my outfit, perfecting my performance. I feel very ready and also extremely not ready. Either way, I’m here.
Before I left, Cass pulled the front half of my hair up into a messy knot so the lavender color pops against my dark brown roots. I added heavy eyeliner, five coats of mascara and a rich, plum lipstick.
“There’s an electricity in the air about this audition,” I told Cass while she did my hair. “Can you feel it?”
Cass, never one to exaggerate, said, “I feel it.”
I’m in my black floral dress with tiny buttons all the way down the front and a plunging neckline that shows enough cleavage to matter. I unbuttoned the skirt up to my mid-thigh after I pulled on my lucky black Doc Martens. The final touch was a cropped leather jacket I found at Music City Thrift for eight dollars.
“You’re gonna win this thing,” Cass said once I had the whole look together.
“We don’t even know who the competition is,” I said.
“Doesn’t matter. With your voice, that song, and this look? It’s inevitable.”
As far as I can tell, I don’t look like a Lovejoy. It helps I’ve always looked like me and no one else, not my mother or my father or Polly. I came out of the womb fighting against being a Lovejoy.
I pull my guitar case out of the backseat of my beat-up Civic. Inside is my father’s six-string PRS acoustic, the guitar he wrote his biggest hit on, his favorite one to play. I have my favorite photo of him taped to the back. He’s with my mother. She’s smiling so wide her eyes are pinched closed and his face is buried in her neck. He’s holding a mint green Les Paul and wearing a cowboy shirt covered in tiny orange flowers. I don’t know why it’s my favorite photo—you can’t even see his face—but something about it has always drawn me in.
I head across the lot to a set of concrete stairs with a rust covered railing and pull open the frosted glass door. Inside, the narrow hallway is crowded with black road cases and hand trucks stacked high with plastic tubs and sagging brown boxes. The walls are covered in framed tour posters—Zach Bryan, The Avett Brothers, Jelly Roll, Brandi Carlile, Noah Kahan, KISS. Down the hall there’s a poster from Sparrow’s last tour and I take a moment to study it. Deacon and Don Sparrow are front and center holding their guitars in the air like they just took a bow. In another time and place, I imagine my father standing next to them. My heart flutters at the thought, at me being here instead of him, carrying his guitar to audition for the band he started.
Jasmine said the auditions are being held in Room F. I pass two men in navy Dickies and faded black t-shirts and find a grey metal door marked Room K. Doubling back down the hall, I find Room H. Room G. No F.
“You look lost,” a voice says, walking up behind me. When I turn around, the first word that comes to mind is stunning. The woman in front of me is perfection—a blunt black bob angled sharply at her chin, dark eyeliner winged out to a fine point, her mouth a severe slash of red lipstick, black structured blazer layered just so over an impossibly tight pencil skirt, shiny black spiked heels with a pointed toe. I walked in feeling confident in my boho indie rocker look but standing next to her worry I’m coming off like an un-showered flower child.
“What gave it away?” I ask, holding my guitar case up. “Do you happen to know where Room F is?”
“You’re Mari Gold, aren’t you? I’m Emily Wu, Publicist.”
She’s immediately intimidating and I do my best to match her confident energy. I heard once that making it in the music industry is twenty-five percent talent, twenty-five percent confidence and fifty percent dumb luck. The talent’s in my blood. If I can manifest the confidence, I’m hoping the dumb luck will follow.
“Right this way,” Emily says, crooking a black pointy fingernail over her shoulder as she swishes past me.
She leads us down a hallway over-crowded with more gear and framed tour posters. When we get to Room F, she pulls open the heavy, grey metal door. It’s cool and dark inside, a suspended strip of can lights aimed at a wide stage set up on the right half of the room complete with a drum kit, monitors, mics, the whole works. There’s a couple dozen people filling up the other half of the room, their identities obscured by the dark.
“Cheddar,” Emily calls and someone turns and walks over to us. He’s wearing a black hoodie which, in the dark room, highlights his pale white skin. His cropped brown hair is the same color as his friendly eyes.
“Hi,” he says, extending his hand. “Chet Hurr, but everyone calls me Cheddar.”
“Cheddar runs digital marketing for Sparrow,” Emily says. “This is one of our contestants, Mari Gold.”
“Mari Gold.” He sing-songs my name and bends forward at the waist like he’s going to sniff me. “Such a great Lizzy McAlpine cover for your submission video. We all loved it. And might I say, impressive set-up doing that YouTube video to get folks to vote for you.”
After we found out I was chosen to audition, Cass filmed a new video with special guest Mari Gold. Her YouTube channel, Sapphic Sammies, where she makes different sandwiches based on famous lesbians, started as an inside joke with her now ex, but it’s blown up in the last year or so. When I worried about putting myself out there so publicly, Cass rolled her eyes.
“You do realize if you go on this tour you will be playing in front of thousands of people every night.”
“What if no one buys my stage name? What if they all know I’m really Penny Lovejoy?”
“You’ll already be on the tour. Who cares after that?”
After posting the video we had to delete about ten comments asking if I was Polly Lovejoy’s sister, which initially made me panic, but it all seemed to blow over after an hour or two.
“You saw that, huh?” I say, nervous he knows my real identity.
“Everyone saw it. Total stroke of genius. Who runs your socials?”
“I do? I mean, the video was my best…my manager’s idea. She runs the Sapphic Sammies channel and thought it would be a great way to promote the contest.”
Okay, so, I just panic-named Cass as my manager to the head of Sparrow’s digital marketing. No way that will come back to bite me .
“Is she here? I’d love to pick her brain.”
“No, she’s…with another client tonight.” Hair client, that is.
“If this contest doesn’t work out maybe you two can come work on my team.”
I can’t tell if he’s joking or not.
Cheddar’s phone buzzes and he excuses himself, pulling Emily away with him. I scan the space for Sparrow, hoping Don is here and I can say hello, when a short woman wearing all black with a round Afro comes over to me.
“Mari Gold?” I nod. “I’m Jasmine Milner.” She has a small diamond stud in her nose that sparkles in the stage lights.
“Jasmine!” I want to hug her but opt for professionalism. “So good to meet you. Thanks for all the great info you sent.”
“Info is my specialty. The other contestants are gathering over here.” She motions for me to follow her. “I’ll be announcing the line-up in just a few minutes. Oh, and there are snacks and drinks at the table in the back, if you need. You can hang out, mingle, get some water, whatever makes you comfortable. For the livestream, only the artist performing will be on camera so you won’t have to actively watch if you don’t want to.”
Ha. As if I won’t be studiously scrutinizing every move they make. While Cass is doing her client Zoe’s hair tonight, they’re watching the livestream on her laptop and will be texting me with updates.
“Thanks, Jasmine,” I say, my outer-confidence shining, my inner-terror trembling like a high strung chihuahua. “I’m really excited to be here. Is Sparrow coming for the audition?”
Jasmine smiles and pats my arm. “Big fan, huh?”
If she only knew.
“The whole band won’t be here, but Deacon and Don will be. They’re usually the ones to handle these types of front-facing things. Should arrive any minute, at least if they know what’s good for them. I don’t think those dudes have been on time once in the last twenty-five years. ”
“Oh?” I ask, trying to mask my immediate interest. “Have you worked for them that long?”
She laughs and winks conspiratorially. “I’m not as young as I look, honey.”
Jasmine hurries off to talk to someone manning one of the three cameras set up at different angles around the stage. My heart races as I casually walk back to the snack table to grab some water. Jasmine probably knew my father, maybe knows my mother. But if she knows I’m a Lovejoy, she didn’t let on in the slightest.
I’m texting Cass to let her know I may or may not have named her as my manager when Jasmine claps her hands and calls the room to attention.
“Hi, everyone, so glad to see all of you here. While we kept this audition word-of-mouth, we still received quite a few submissions. Y’all are the ones who really stood out for us. Deacon and Don Sparrow should be here any minute so I’m just gonna call everyone’s name to make sure we’re all here and then we’ll go over some of the details for the audition.” She looks down at her phone and then back up at us. “The Hopkins Family Band?”
A face-matching group all holding various stringed instruments raise their hands. The youngest one, who looks to be around twelve, raises his fiddle.
“royalties?” Jasmine calls.
A girl with bright pink hair along with three emo-looking guys all nod and wave to everyone.
“Shades of Grey?”
Four guys all wearing solid grey raise their hands. One of them is holding a grey bass and another, a grey acoustic. I’ve never even seen a grey acoustic, which means it’s probably hand-painted. While I admire their commitment to a theme, their grey overload is making my chances at winning look better and better. I can definitely beat a twelve-year-old, a Paramore wanna-be and a band leaning too heavily on a color scheme .
“Mari Gold?”
I say here too loudly and immediately feel dumb. The pink-haired girl smiles at me.
“Kick Raines?”
I look around and don’t see anyone else other than a handful of people milling around the snack table.
“Kick Raines,” she says again.
“Over here,” comes a gravelly voice from the dark corridor by the door. We all turn to look as a tall, dark-haired guy saunters in, guitar case in hand. Two guys follow behind him, one carrying a bass guitar case.
My breath catches in my throat when his face comes into view in the dim lighting.
Because Kick Raines is him.
The him.
From Jackson’s party.
From the alcove.
The one with the big hands and the soft lips and the eyelashes that defy logic.
He’s here.
He’s a contestant .