Chapter 21
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The first concert had five thousand attendees. For a band like Survival, it was considered an intimate venue. For Sy and Trey, it would be the largest crowd they’d ever played.
The size of the crowd didn’t change how Roy and his people approached it.
Expect the enemy everywhere, and prepare accordingly.
They had coverage on all entry and exit points, and ran drills on contingency plans on top of contingency plans to anticipate the unexpected.
But if you could anticipate it, it wouldn’t be unexpected, would it?
Roy had always embraced challenges to his skills, but this time he would have preferred to stay on the road with DJ forever, a wishful notion he dismissed for the danger it was.
His stalker wanted DJ all to himself, to keep him from his fans and the life he was meant to live. Roy wasn’t going to let the bastard turn Roy into a mini-me.
With grim determination, DJ had pivoted back to his frontman role. He was everywhere, giving pep talks, bolstering the roadies and techs, letting them know it would all work out. Not all frontmen were nurturers, but he was.
That trait was most evident in rehearsals with Sy, Trey and Hal.
The three men were keenly aware they had to figure out a chemistry with a band leader still reeling from loss, who’d had years to develop intuition and synchronicity with his bandmates.
But DJ adopted the attitude they’d had at The Rocking Duck.
They were just a bunch of musicians having a good time.
Their talent and his approach worked, because within a remarkable timespan, they were doing decent versions of the twenty-five song line-up for the concert.
It didn’t hurt that Survival’s music had been a favorite for all three men, so they’d played it in other venues before.
But never with the expectation of filling the shoes of the men who’d played it first.
So on the eve of the first show since most of Survival had been lost, everyone was on edge, wondering how it was going to go.
At this point in the schedule, Roy had no time to give DJ emotional support, but they’d had a few minutes this morning in the hotel.
After Roy was in his uniform—suit, tie, gun—he found DJ in the suite kitchenette, standing at the counter, turning a hair band over his fingers. A pewter skull was strung on the loop.
“Lonnie’s,” DJ said. He was wearing a T-shirt and his pajama bottoms, bare soles on the kitchenette tile. The dip of his head increased the angular look of his shoulders. Kid still needed to eat more.
“Found it that day in the hotel, before we went to the studio. I’d put it in my toiletry bag to give back to her when I saw her in Denver.”
“She had her own unique fashion sense.”
“She did. Steve called it half Catholic school girl, half Abby from NCIS.” DJ slipped the band on his wrist, next to Gilda’s emerald and silver charm bracelet and his parachute cord ones. He turned toward Roy as he took a sip of his tea.
“She bought it in New Orleans last year. We were prowling the streets at two in the morning in Mardi Gras masks. Pete was drinking a huge Hurricane in a neon orange plastic cup. Tal was high, but at the less obnoxious, life of the party stage. Steve had his arm around her. This guy was selling the hairbands, and beating out a decent rhythm on bucket drums. Tal sat down with him, and they turned the rhythm into this wonderfully syncopated conversation.”
He tilted his head Roy’s way. “Before you ask, Henry’s guys were with us, blending into the party crowd, but watching out in case we were recognized or got into trouble.”
“It’s in the past, and I wouldn’t interrupt the memory. Sounds like a good one.”
“Yeah.”
Roy slid his arms around him. The hug surprised the kid, but then DJ’s arms were around him, taking the strength and comfort Roy was offering.
“You’ll be fine. This part is like breathing to you.” Roy eased back. “You just have to get on stage to remember it.”
“Say what you really want to say.” DJ offered a wan smile but then made his voice gruff and sharp. “It’s a fucking rock concert, kid, not something really important. Like a gun show.”
Roy bit back a smile. “Get your ass ready to go. I don’t have all day to wait on some prima donna rockstar.”
“Afraid you’ll miss your lunchtime manicure?”
“I like to feel pretty. Don’t judge me.”
“Never.”
Almost showtime. Guillaume, the stage manager, had gone over the hundred last minute details.
Gathered in the space where they’d do the “band prayer” ritual, DJ stood with forty people, including Sy, Trey, Hal, Moss and Guillaume.
Plus the techs and roadies who would handle lighting, sound and guitar changes.
“Tonight the hearts of the crowd will be with us, no matter how we play,” DJ said. “But I don’t want to coast. I want them to hear the drumbeat, the bass, the riffs and solos, our voices. Feel the music speaking to their souls, vibrating through their bones.”
He swallowed. “I want Pete, Steve and Tal to see us doing our thing, and know we’re honoring them and carrying the music we created forward, the way it was meant to be played. Never half-assed. Never without joy and passion and purpose in our hearts.”
He nodded to Hal, but shifted his attention specifically to Sy and Trey. Hal had subbed for big names before, so he wouldn’t need as much of what DJ was offering to them.
“It doesn’t matter where the heart beats, it’s always the same heart. Big crowd, small crowd, playing in a studio or someone’s dirty garage. Understand?”
“Fucking A.” Sy nodded, and the three men did a fist bump, Hal giving DJ a grin.
“Good. Also remember, if something goes wrong, we have the best roadies and techs in the business.” He dipped his head toward Shaun, Dub, and the others. “They’ll take care of us.”
DJ put a hand into the middle of the loose circle they were creating. They tightened it up, many managing to overlap his hand, the ones on the outside putting their hands on the shoulders of the men and women in between. A connected circle.
He swept his gaze over all of them. “When people pay you to do what you’d do for free, you’re the luckiest person alive. We can’t ask for more than that.”
A few fervent amens and yeahs swept the group, followed by an enthusiastic break-the-huddle clap. DJ stepped back, finishing the ritual with an encouraging look for them all.
As the techs and roadies departed to take their assigned positions, Roy moved into the hallway that DJ and the band would follow to the stage.
It looked the same as a hundred hallways he’d seen before, concrete floors and cinderblock walls lined with equipment and flight cases.
Jim, a hundred feet up the corridor, nodded.
They were clear. Roy did a radio check with the team members stationed out of view along the same path.
On the way, the hall would briefly widen out into a courtyard. It would be populated by cheering fans who’d won the privilege of an up-close glimpse of the band. G and her team were covering that area and she reported no one looked out of place.
It was time for Guillaume to head for the stage. Moss went with him. As he passed him, Roy noted Moss had lost some weight himself.
“Remember to take time to listen to the music,” Roy said. “Otherwise, why the hell are you doing this?”
Moss paused, his expression easing into a half-smile. “Damn right. Rock on.”
When only the band and Maurice, the assistant stage manager, were left, DJ said something in a low voice to Sy, Trey and Hal that made them grin and clasp one another’s shoulders, a united front. Then Maurice got the signal from Guillaume that it was time to go.
As DJ turned and headed toward him, Roy felt a brief spurt of alarm. The kid was noticeably pale. Roy expected he’d thrown up in the dressing room, but DJ gave him a nod and a thumbs up, acknowledging that he knew he didn’t look a hundred percent, but he was okay.
Roy led the way, two team members falling in behind. When they ran the screaming fan gauntlet, DJ and the others waved, smiled and called out to them. Roy watched carefully, but G was right. There were no flags.
At the stage wings, they came to a halt. In the past, the other members of Survival came out first, started a power jam, and DJ would leap onto the stage from a platform above, or emerge on a lift through an opening in the stage floor. Not this time.
DJ’s shoulders squared as he drew a deep breath. He ran a hand over his short hair, which was growing out, but wasn’t yet long enough to curl. Maybe he was having second thoughts about having removed it, or reminding himself of why he’d done it. Roy would ask him later.
The kid closed his eyes. Roy could almost feel him pulling in the energy of the crowd, the potential of the instruments waiting to be played, the audience waiting to hear, the power his to give them.
Atta boy. You’re going to be fine.
DJ’s fingers twitched at his side, he cracked his neck, this side, that side, and walked out onto stage.
Deafening cheers shook the building, just as Roy had expected. He felt an unexpected tightness in his chest, gratitude toward them for loving DJ enough to be here with him tonight and give him their support.
They’d set him up a standing microphone, center stage. When he reached it, he wrapped his fingers around the microphone. His grip was so tight it was white-knuckled.
Moss stood a few feet away from Roy. He looked like he had all he could do to keep what was churning inside him contained.
It took time for the crowd to quiet. Every time they started to do so, “We love you, DJ” would be yelled out and the cheers would start again. Then someone started a chant, “Steve, Tal, Pete, Steve, Tal, Pete…”