Chapter 32
The Addison Rose was absolutely stacked with people I recognized— a bit. Enough to smile at, not enough to stop and chat. I nodded to a guy I was pretty sure worked sound at the Salt Shed, exchanged a smile with a woman in braids and a Nathan Graham T-shirt. Was that Lou from the Gunslingers?
Everywhere I looked it was wall-to-wall denim, ladies in tops that best showed off a shadow of cleavage, dudes in trucker hats. Up at the stage, the dance floor had the usual mix of clowning and serious two-step. The drummer, when he recognized me, dropped a nod.
At the bar, the owner, an older woman with teased Texas hair and a shirt that read MAMA TRIED called my name over the noise and waved her long, decorated nails to make room for me at the trough.
“As I live and breathe, Dahlia Devine,” she crooned. “I was wondering when we were gonna get you to the Rose. What can I get y’all?”
A handwritten sign advertised a moonshine cocktail special, but I ordered a can of Old Style, the cheapest thing on the menu except ice water.
I had a few unexpected bills in my pocket from Quin’s spending spree at the pub the night before, but I couldn’t drink it away.
As I laid out the cash, a guy sitting at the far corner of the bar took a long, appraising look at my tattoos.
I tugged up my sweater sleeves so he could get a better look, thinking he might be good for a round.
Hey, a girl on a budget has to do what she’s got to do.
But I wasn’t in the mood for any getting-to-know-you. I scoped out the room, looking for someone with a table I knew well enough to pull up a chair. And then I saw him—
Bern.
He’d already spotted me, and was waving me over, even though the tiny table was already crowded with drinks and elbows.
I didn’t personally know any of the people sitting with him, but when Bern gestured, one of them hopped up and found an extra chair, and they all nudged over to make room so I could sit next to him.
“What a delightful happenstance to run into you here,” Bern said. He had a lowball glass in front of him with something brown and bourbon-ish in it.
“Out shopping for some pickers and/or grinners?” I asked.
“Just seeing what’s on special around town, as always,” he said. “Some good chatter, place like this. Might hear about some up-and-comers. Plus, I’m supposed to be learning about country music, isn’t that what I promised you?”
“Not this,” I said, looking toward the trio onstage.
They were adept musicians, but they weren’t commanding the audience.
Even people down front were talking over them like it was the radio playing.
They’d been reduced to white noise. I turned back to Bern.
“I mean—I don’t want to slag off other acts, but… ”
“No, probably not this,” Bern said, smiling down at his glass. “How’s the set for your Christmas show coming along?”
My breath caught in my throat. “Oh, no,” I moaned.
“That well?” he said.
I’d completely forgotten about the emergency songwriting session today. Oh, this was going to cost me.
“I forgot … an appointment,” I said. He’d dinged me about my timekeeping the night we met. “It’s fine.”
“Hopefully all will be forgiven,” Bern said. He gestured to my beer can. “You good with your swill?”
“All good,” I said. I felt a little out of sorts, a little dull, staying on this side of the stage persona. He’d said he wanted to see me without affectation, right?
How about … without eye makeup or hope?
Up onstage, the trio was bringing “Turkey in the Straw” to a long and tortured end with a raucous banjo/mandolin fight to the death. It all seemed a little more performative than it needed to be—a little much.
I leaned closer to Bern. “I don’t suppose these hat-act guys know who you are?”
“I expect so,” he said, swirling his drink. “Occupational hazard, being fed the whole hog wherever I go.”
The band finally took a well-earned break to applause that felt obligatory. Overhead, piped-in music filled in, but at a much lower decibel.
“This is my round,” one of Bern’s tablemates offered, rising to take orders. When she turned to me, I shook my head. I couldn’t afford to stand the next one.
Bern threw out a credit card. “Start a tab. Dahlia, please upgrade. It pains me to see adults drinking cheap beer.”
I ordered a gin and tonic, and Bern introduced me around.
They were all local music people, it turned out: Americana, country, in bands, friends of band-folk, a couple of sound techs, a guy who made bespoke Western wear out of Indianapolis.
The woman in the Nathan Graham T-shirt I’d seen earlier leaned across the table at me.
“Doll, right? Charmaine. Did I meet you at Fitzgerald’s once? Or Carol’s?”
Probably it had been McPhee’s, but I didn’t want to say that name at the moment. “You sing, too, right?”
“Country,” Charmaine said. She lifted her chin as though waiting for me to argue with her. “I’m not supposed to like it, ’cause I’m Black, you know?”
“Is anyone in Chicago supposed to like it?”
She smiled. “We’re all just the same kind of wrong, then.”
Same kind of wrong. Hmm, not bad. “Not like the Grand Ole Opry would exist if not for Chicago getting there first.”
“Or any of it would exist without my enslaved ancestors stringing gourd instruments.”
I raised my beer can in her direction.
Our drinks arrived, then more drinks. People shuffled seats and added more chairs until we were pressed shoulder to shoulder.
When I looked around, I could see how it could work, bringing other artists to McPhee’s, especially bands having a harder time getting booked: Bee-Ann Rhymes and queer country singers, Charmaine and musicians of color and different cultures.
Older musicians, still figuring it all out, just wanting to make some noise.
What would that look like? Was anyone in Chicago already doing it?
Oh, man. I got really excited there for a second.
But then I spotted a guy in the same sort of short-brimmed hat Joey had worn to shows.
Bern leaned toward me. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. It’s been a … a demoralizing week.”
“Since Wednesday? Three days?”
“You have no idea,” I said.
He swirled his drink, waiting.
“My boyfriend died.”
“Did you kill him?” Bern said. “No? That’s a shame. Guaranteed gold with a well-timed confession.”
Someone had approached the table. I looked up, up, up to find the drummer from tonight’s band standing there. I assumed he’d come to chat up Bern, but he was angled at me. “Hey, Doll.”
“Um,” I said.
“Matt Kelley,” he said.
“Right, Matt, hi. Nice to see you again.”
“I haven’t run into Suzy much these days,” he said. “You guys still ruling over at McPhee’s?”
The way only a house band could. A hothouse flower, incapable of growing beyond prescribed limits.
“They sure are,” Bern jumped in. “Caught their show this week, and it was a hell of a ride.”
Matt’s mouth twisted into a shape that told me he was impressed. “You up for a song or two, Doll?”
“You mean now? With you guys?”
“We’d be able to back up any Patsy Cline you could think of,” he said. “Or that ‘Bang Bang’ song you do? That’s a jam. Was that … Who sang that?”
“Janis Martin.” I was both flattered and insulted, and I couldn’t quite figure out how that could be, when only flattery was called for.
Some of the other musicians at the table had started paying attention, and I knew every single one of them would jump at the chance to take the stage.
I turned my gin and tonic in circles on the table. “Yeah,” I said. “Let’s do it.”
But I couldn’t manage the upbeat Janis Martin, even though I was sure Matt was keen to take on the gunshot “bangity-bang” of that song’s drum line.
We renegotiated to a little Latin-beat Cline oddity called “Strange” that the mandolin player could pick out.
When I couldn’t think of anything else I felt like singing, Matt suggested an old-time folk ballad that had long ago become part of the public domain.
I thought I knew it well enough, from the Carter Family’s version.
He went off happily to tell the guys and work out the arrangements.
Bern checked his watch. “You didn’t have to agree to that,” he said.
“Why wouldn’t I?” Although there were more than a few reasons, including what the girls would say when they found out I’d missed our session to front another group.
“I thought you were prioritizing originals,” he said.
“This wasn’t my plan,” I said. “It’s just for fun. Can you look up the lyrics to that thing I just agreed to sing?”
“One of the things we’ll want to talk about,” he said, drawing out his cell phone, unlocking it, and handing it over, “is your brand. You’re all over the place. Rock and rockabilly, torch and ballad, Americana all the way down to shit stompers.”
“Down to bluegrass?” I looked up from scrolling for a lyrics site I could trust. “Is that what you really think of country?”
“I don’t mind mountain music, Doll,” Bern said. “But if you’re on a mountain, why not climb it?” He waved his hands in a flourish. “Toward transcendence.”
“Oh, Transcendence,” I said, going back to the lyrics search. “I loved their last album.”
“Funny,” he said.
“Look, here’s the thing,” I said. “I don’t want to transcend my genre. I love my genre.” I held up the phone: bingo.
“You haven’t chosen one,” Bern said, leaning forward.
We were swapping industry secrets here. “Yet. There’s space enough for every perspective, every style, sure.
The internet is a wide, wide world. But if you want to find an audience, to connect with hearts and minds and make them goddamn love you, you have to know who you are.
You of all people have to know. And it should be someone in particular.
Something in particular. Something like what’s selling, sure, but also something no one’s ever seen. ”
“No problem,” I said under my breath.
I’d found the lyrics. “Oh, bury me beneath the willow, under the weeping willow tree.”
Gah, good thing I was already hanging low, you know? Why had I agreed to that one?
“The universe of country music contains multitudes,” Bern continued. “But any label rep I bring to your show next week is going to want to see clearly what your story is. If we need to clean a little house to make that happen, you’d be willing to do that.”
I looked up from his phone. Label rep? Next week? Bern hadn’t phrased any of this as a question. He was making the assumption I wanted it enough to do anything he suggested.
“Clean house,” I said. “You just mean the playlist, right? Figuring out our sound?”
Behind me, the boys were taking the stage, Matt giving a few tentative kicks to his bass drum to give me a heads-up. I pulled Alex’s sweater over my head, my T-shirt underneath riding up a bit.
The guy at the bar, yeah, watching. Watching real close.
“We can talk about this another time, when you’re not in the middle of an ego trip,” Bern said. “Go get your adoration. Fill up the tank.”
“Ladies and gentlemen,” one of the plaids onstage announced importantly.
What did I love as much as the sound of a voice trumpeting my ascendance to the stage? Very little. I packed light in this life. I could name everything I valued on the fingers of one hand, including people, and that’s the way I liked it.
Ego trip? Watch this, y’all.
I handed Bern’s phone back.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” came the voice through the mic again. Over Bern’s shoulder, the guy at the bar had turned in his chair to watch me with naked interest. “Ladies and gentlemen, do we have a treat for you tonight.”