“Past the truth?”
“Past the oldChase.” He leans forward. “Don’t step backward. Your song … it felt … too raw. Smoky bar vibes. Your starting days. All country, folk songs, and poetry. It felt …small.” His grip on my shoulder turns into a gentle rub. “We don’t wantsmall. We wantbig. Sold-out-stadium Chase. Genre-shattering rock star Chase. Chase in a mansion on the coast. Chase Holt breaking every heart he sings to. Chase Holt … chasin’ it all the way to the top.”
It’s our mantra. Or his. The match he strikes to keep my booty climbing up and up and up … all the way to the top.
But to the top of what?
I’m still wondering that long after our crew finishes loading everything onto the truck. Ian’s words now dancing around inside my head with the other ones from the guy in the hall. Every time someone walks past me and says the show was great,I smile back, let it drown out the words:alleged not-so-country-anymore sellout. I get a thumbs up from a guitar tech and accept it graciously as I hear them again:another fucking guy singing about his feelings. Dee saunters by with her trusty clipboard and gives me a funny winky face, adoring me as usual, and I try not to hear:let that guy whine about his achy little heart to a crowd of devoted fans.
I catch Rob and ask if we had any lingering fans by the door this show. He tells me we had a few, then excuses himself to help with something on the bus. I’m left wondering if he’s understating or overstating the actual amount. For all we know, we had a crowd of fifty screamers and jiggling breasts wanting my autograph all over them. Or we had one sad soul with a pen and a soggy napkin. Truth doesn’t really mean much around here. It’s all perception. You’re only winning if you believe you are.
Let those fans adore his clichéd love songs…
I would’ve signed the soggy napkin, by the way. Haven’t had the joy of signing any soggy napkins or jiggling boobs or albums or guitars waiting in the wings for three years, thanks to a stalker situation after our first hit. That was followed by a death threat.
The world keeps feeling farther away.
Less guys mentally breaking down in back halls to encounter.
I stand by the bus staring at a dimly-lit parking lot, pavement slick and shiny from the come-and-go rain we apparently got. Just can’t help but scan the distance, wondering if said guy might still be lingering somewhere.
What the fuck about mine?
My mind’s still stuck on him even after we’ve taken off, on the road again, and the familiar hum of the bus engine fills my ears. Our bassist Wily, long hair, ripped jeans, and fuzzy bunny slippers, sits at the dinette with one of his late-night snackshe warmed up, a double-fudge Pop-Tart, doom-scrolling on his phone. He hasn’t said much since the show, but he’s had a lot on his mind lately worrying about his unhinged brother going through a divorce. Splayed over the side couch is Fiona, our keyboardist and backup singer, cowboy hat covering her face and arms crossed over her chest. Some point between now and 2AM, she’ll relocate to her bunk. She had caught me in one of the back halls right after the show and asked, “The hell was that opener?” I shrugged back and said, “Something new,” and after a second’s thought, she frowned and replied, “Open in E flat major, not G minor. It’s a love song for cryin’ out loud.” Then she popped a jellybean in her mouth—she always has a handful after any show, her eternal lifeblood—before slipping off to the green room to gossip with one of the crew. I’m still chewing on that mental note of hers, hearing the start of the song brighter than before.
If the song is ever allowed to have wings before Ian goes and clips them.
Sitting cross-legged on a cushy red chair across from Fiona’s long side couch is our newest member Raj, bleached hair, tiny loop earrings, drumming the air intensely with his fingers. The guy’s always honing his skills, never at rest. Though the moment he sees me glancing his way across the bus, he stops to smile back and give a thumbs up for some reason before returning to his lively air drumming. “Lovable puppy dog energy” works for drums, Ian said to me when Raj joined us last year. He replaced our old drummer Cam who left us for a death metal band called Havoc Heaven. To each his own?
“You’re not going rogue, are you?”
I turn to Wily, surprised by his first words since the encore of our show when he mumbled something about a leg cramp. “Huh?” I grunt back. “Rogue?”
“Happened in my first band.” He finished his Pop-Tart, talking to me with his attention still on his phone. “Everything was totally perfect. Rolling along. Vibing. Then our lead singer gets an ego and goes solo, ditched us overnight.”
“I’m not ditchin’ anyone, Wiles.” I’m kinda stunned he’d even suggest that.
“Started with him shoehorning his own songs into the set.” A muscle draws tight in his jaw. “Like you did tonight.”
Ever since this nasty mess with his brother’s divorce, he acts like everyone in his life is about to leave him, too. I guess he was close with his sister-in-law. I shake my head. “Wily, nah, it wasn’t like that. The song … it was just …”
I search for what to call it.
It’s the most honest thing that’s come out of me in years.
And I didn’t struggle over a single note or lyric. Like the song already lived inside me, fully written, merely waiting to be let out. That’s how my music used to happen. Poetry, melody, guitar in my hands, and a bunch of honest ears and faces in front of me.
Is that what I’ve been missing all these years? Honesty?
But it isn’t honesty Ian wants. It’s focus. It’s a wider-reaching rock sound that only edges into the country sound that used to define me—or pigeonhole me, as Ian put it.To the top… “Shouldn’t have sang the song,” I finally conclude. “Wasn’t even rehearsed.”
“Nothing’s wrong with the song,” says Wily, surprising me. He finally looks up from his phone. “Just don’t forget about the rest of us, man. Whatever it is on your mind. What you’re going through. Because I’m not giving up on you. I ain’t Cam.”
“I know.”
He gives me a long look, then lifts a fist toward me. I bump it with my own. He gets up, crawls into his bunk, yanks his partition curtain shut, and I’m left with his plate of Pop-Tart crumbs. After taking it to the sink—I’m used to cleaning uparound here, call me Daddy Chase—I crouch at the opened mini-fridge with its bright light blinding me in the otherwise dark bus. Don’t even know what I’m looking at. Or looking for.
“I thought it wasgreat,” comes Raj, his face appearing through the glass fridge door. When I stare back blankly, he clarifies, “Your new tune. Reminded me of the old you. Like,Hate Meera.”