Some Part of Me is You Read online

  Some Part of Me is You

  Adrienne Marsh

  Copyright © 2018 Adrienne Marsh

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means — except in the case of brief quotations embodied in articles or reviews — without written permission from its author.

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Cover design © 2018 Adrienne Marsh

  Cover photo by The Digital Marketing Collaboration on Unsplash

  For those who believed I could.

  Prologue

  “Wait, what did you just say?”

  Ali could count on one hand the number of serious meetings they’d had in the last three years. One had been about how they were going to keep the band going after college—or, well, when Brian and Mitch and Tony had graduated, anyway. That meeting had ended in a lot of incredibly drunk hugging and crying. None of them had been ready to grow up; not all the way.

  The other meetings had all been organized by their manager. Kevin had preempted their signing to a local indie label two years ago with millions of questions, all related to where they wanted to go with the band. It had been fun during college, but what did they want to do with it now that it was getting real? Did they understand that GSharp Records had a great reputation locally but no money? And how were they going to combine promoting their forthcoming first full-length album with their now very real lives: gigging was possible, but the next step was obviously a tour—their agent, Nico, had been hinting about pursuing a regional one ever since one of their demos had gotten a lot of play on local college radio—and that raised a lot of big questions. How long could they afford to be gone, given their jobs and families?

  The biggest concern there had been Brian, who’d had a budding career in graphic design and a pregnant wife to accommodate; but all of them were even now nigh-on broke after years of putting most of their part-time job earnings back into the band. They'd ended up compromising on a short 7 city tour in Illinois and Wisconsin, and had made a grand total of 1500 bucks off it between the four of them because the LP had sold pretty well at most venues.

  The romance of being in ‘a real band’ had faded by now; it was hard work, and all that kept them going was a love of music and the joy they got out of performing their stuff. They’d scaled back on their wild fantasies, and instead enjoyed every instance of seeing someone other than the four of them get what they were about. Every single sale of the album felt like a victory, even if they walked away from it to return to their other jobs.

  Mitch leaned back in his chair and drummed his fingers on the table. “Yeah, okay, I knew you were going to react that way, Al—but just hear Kev out.”

  Brian took a slow sip of his IPA, raising his eyebrows, and Ali snorted. Kevin's serious face aside, this was nice; just hanging out with her closest friends, who might have started out as Mitch’s gang, but were basically brothers to her by now. She’d first been grudgingly invited to come and mess around with them when she was only 14 years. Privately, she’d thought it the coolest thing in the world back then, though in later years had wondered to what extent she had simply turned out to be an available body with some ability on a string instrument. Kevin assured her that without her guitar work, GSharp wouldn't have bitten—but she would never be entirely sure that Mitch had already seen that in her back then.

  “So—remember that gig Nico set up at that club in Madison last September. The four act thing, for charity.” At their nods, Kev continued. He looked somehow completely out of place—slicked back hair, properly done up tie—and utterly comfortable. “Yeah, so, it turns out that one of the people there for... I don’t know, a twenty year old’s birthday party or something, was the cousin of a producer over in Nashville, and tipped them off to us—”

  “Nashville?” Tony asked, making a face, and they all laughed, but Kev held up his hand, asking for silence.

  “So this producer goes looking, finds your full-length, has a listen—and actually came to see you when you last sold out the Bottle.”

  “Without introducing himself to you, or to us,” Ali guessed.

  Kevin, mid-swallow of his G&T, nodded. “But he liked what he saw. At which point he passed your details to some of the managers and agents he knows. Just on the off chance. Didn't have any clear ideas about why, because, well, you're an indie outfit and he's...”

  “Nashville,” they chorused.

  “So—a few weeks pass, and the producer gets contacted by an existing client, but with a very new brief. The artist wants to do something different for this next album. Has written their own material. Our producer fan has a go at it, and it’s refreshing. Not what he was expecting, both in the sense of the quality and in terms of the sound.” Kev swung the straw around his glass, looking up and examining Ali’s face in particular. “But selling it to the artist’s existing fan base is going to be a challenge. It’s going to be a rebirth of sorts. And that requires appropriate supporting acts. Nothing else Nashville. Something... new. And so you come to his mind, and he passes on the album to the artist’s team. The manager comes back asking what you're like live; they tried your LP, and thought it was great.”

  They’d reached the part of the story Mitch had started with, which had been an order for a round and an arm slung around Tony preceding a quick, “So—do any of us have any unmovable plans this summer? Because Kev may have just hooked us up with a 12-stop tour, opening for a genuine headliner.”

  “The money would be shit,” Kevin warned, but after a second, gave them a rare smile. “But the signal boost would be priceless. This is going to get you heard in ways GSharp and Nico just can’t.”

  “A 12-stop tour,” Brian repeated. “As a stage warmer for a... former country singer? Is that what we're saying?”

  “Singer, songwriter; multi-instrumentalist, actually,” Mitch chimed in.

  Ali snorted and rolled her eyes at her brother and Kevin both, pulling a knee up to her chest. “I can’t help but notice you’re both giving us a very hard sell without actually telling us who they are.”

  The sound of the bar around them seemed to dip for a moment, but Ali knew that was just her imagination; a side-effect of Mitch averting his eyes, maybe.

  Kevin sighed and ran a hand along his faint five o’clock shadow. “Now—Ali, I want you to take a moment and think this through before you dismiss it, okay—”

  She narrowed her eyes. “Kevin... who is it?”

  Another deep breath and a look exchanged with Mitch, who clearly already knew and had told Kevin it wouldn't go down well, and Kevin looked at her plainly.

  “It’s Kristen Nichols. We’d be opening for Kristen Nichols on what by her standards would be a small, intimate tour.”

  It was hard to say who reacted first. Brian whistled softly, Tony’s feet abruptly stopped tapping and he exhaled on a “Woah”, and Ali let out an unstoppable, “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

  Kristen Nichols. Teen television sensation; an all-American package destined for family consumption, with her long flowing blonde hair and her easy, seemingly genuine smile. And her treacle-heavy but utterly sexless songs about the boys she had crushes on; Ali couldn’t remember the last one that hadn’t been a top five on the country charts and hadn't broken top twenty on the regulars. They were the kind of insipid sing-along four chord basic rhyme spectacles that got stuck in your head for the sheer frequency of hearing them. Adding Kristen Nichols’ face and voice to them had meant an empire for the studio that had cast her as the youngest sister in a family-friendly musical comedy for five years. That show had ended ye
ars ago, but Kristen’s star had only started shining brighter; her array love songs had become slightly more convincing now that she was in her twenties and was occasionally photographed with an equally farm-pure boyfriend on her arm.

  Ali hated that she knew all of this off the top of her head. She would have gladly lived in a world where Kristen Nichols wasn’t a thing, but that wasn’t this one. The girl was everywhere, and that meant awareness even if it was combined with instinctive distaste.

  “Look. Look, I know it sounds crazy, but think about what we’d be a part of. That’s—an audience we could never get together ourselves. Built in,” Mitch started, ticking what was clearly a prepared set of points off on his fingers. “A real tour. Not just fucking around up and down the state with Nico frantically running around putting out fires, but the real deal. And I’ve asked, obviously, before I told Kevin to bring it to all of you, if we get to do our thing.”

  “The answer’s an unequivocal yes. No compromises.”

  “Wait, has she seen us play?” Tony asked, shooting a very disturbed look at Mitch.

  “No—no, but she likes the sound. She said yes after hearing the second song. Not even all of it, apparently.” There was some pride in Kevin's voice—he’d been a casual fan before they asked him to manage—and Ali noted with no end of annoyance that she felt it too. Pop princess produced to within an inch of her life or not, Kristen Nichols undoubtedly had a musical ear.

  “So that’s the positives. Now for the negatives,” she said, deliberately annoying Mitch by also ticking points off her fingers. “We’ll forever be associated with a sound or at least a product history we despise. I mean, there's mainstream and then there's what she stands for. Best case scenario is that her new material is somehow good and that it fits with our sound; but what if it tanks? Then we’ve been a supporting act for a failed former pop country sensation. And—” She sighed and looked at Brian. “Twelve stops sounds like it’s at least a month, probably two. We all have lives outside of the music. More of them than we had last time touring came up.”

  Brian shot her a somewhat grateful look and turned to Mitch. “Gotta take it home and discuss it, man. You know that.”

  Mitch nodded and looked at Tony, whose fingers were beating firm patterns on his thighs. “Tone?”

  “I can get the time off. But obviously only if everyone else is on board. I share some of Ali’s concerns. I’m not sure it’s selling out—but it’s something very close to it, maybe.” Tony pursed his lips and ran a hand through his messy dyed blond hair. “Can we get sight of her new material? Because maybe it’s as simple as that. She hears us, she’s in—and we hear her—”

  Kevin winced. “I can ask, but the answer may be no; it’s pretty under lock and key, from what Steve—the album producer—tells me. No leaks desired. They want to manage this transition closely; it’s a pretty make or break thing for the brand, apparently.”

  Ali looked at her older brother and tilted her head. “And for us?”

  He looked back at her and shrugged a little helplessly; the kind of Mitch Wright gesture that sent girls in the audience running for him, with how easily disarming it was. “Yeah. It's how we find out if we do this just for fun, or if we could handle... this, for a living. Our whole lives - not just our spare moments.”

  “I really don’t know—” she started saying, but Mitch cut her off with a, “It would mean a lot to me, Al. To at least try.”

  That was an impossible sentiment to argue against, and after a moment she sagged back into her chair with a nod at Kevin. “Okay. Find out about the new music, and if you all don’t mind, I’d like to graduate before I commit to this—”

  Mitch whooped loudly, pushing back from the table and jumping to his feet. “Absolutely, I’m not going to ruin the future of the only Wright with functional brain cells just to go on a twelve city tour with my best friends and my sister.”

  Within seconds, he’d spun towards the bar and was shouting out for shots, and Ali looked over at Brian, who pulled her into a one-armed hug and laughed softly. “None of us can say no to him. And we’ve always survived the yeses before.”

  She shook her head but pressed a kiss to his cheek, reaching for her rum and coke and toasting it to Tony and Kevin. “Here’s to us surviving, then.”

  1.

  Right Turn: Empty Ballroom, March 9th, with support from The Crits

  by John J. (and Jenny E.)

  You know what to expect from Right Turn at this point: Mitch going crazy and pulling you with him, and that really tight rhythm work by Bri and Tony (who was on fire last night, I thought for sure he was going to pound right through his toms) and of course the life highlight that is seeing Alison go from like, calm and quiet artsy student librarian to insanely hot rock chick over the course of about three songs. Which like, okay, Jen wants me to clarify that she’s both insanely hot and insanely talented, but if you’re reading this I’m guessing you know about Right Turn and what they’ve got to offer already, right?

  They did a kick-ass cover of Monkey Gone to Heaven with Ali actually doing backup vocals for a change—she told us over a rum that she’d needed at least two shots of tequila before Mitch had talked her into it—and worked on some new outro stuff for Endstate that made it hit a lot harder before the transition to Counterfeit and yeah, the crowd was eating them up. Swear I saw some girl actually jab fingers down at her crotch while shouting at Mitch at some point, but when I asked him later, he just laughed and said, “Well, hey” and jabbed his own fingers into the sky.

  I don’t think we’re going to keep them as a local secret much longer? We were standing next to two dudes who had come in all the way from Minnesota to see them because their cousins swore by the band, and someone at some point shouted for them to come to New York, so it’s finally starting to happen for these guys. Jen and I just want to make it very clear we were there first, and loved them from their very first shitty set onwards, when Ali still disappeared entirely behind her guitar—she reminded me when she read this that she was only seventeen at the time, which is insane—and Mitch forgot some of the words and Tony accidentally flung one of his sticks out into the crowd. Brian, of course, was always keeping it together, and when I pointed this out, they all laughed and just yelled, “That’s because he’s the Dad”, which—yeah.

  It’s like watching your family become like gods at something they do, and Jen and I can’t wait to see everyone else go nuts for them as well.

  The live stream stuttered as they left the city and headed south; she pointed her phone more directly at the window, but signal was going to be intermittent at best. It didn’t really matter anyway. Who watched their own graduation ceremony when they couldn’t attend?

  Ali clicked out of the feed and rested her head against the window instead, phone on her thigh. This was going to be a long drive; Chicago to Nashville, in Tony’s van, stuffed to the roof with their equipment. They’d debated the Team Nichols offer to stock the rehearsal space with basically everything, including instruments, but this was the only part of the tour they genuinely knew what to expect of: their own gear, a little creaky around the edges from being banged around this same van and countless small stages, but fundamentally theirs.

  The rest of the tour definitely wouldn’t be. A conference call from Kristen’s management—or K-Nic, as her people apparently called her—three months prior, before contracts were signed and promotion kicked off, had made it clear that the music was the only part of their existence not subject to at least some retouching. Stylist appointments had been booked for them within hours of their arrival; it was part of the touring contract, however much Ali had protested the idea that she couldn’t dress herself or do her own makeup. Only at the sworn promise that they wouldn’t try to turn them into parts of the ‘K-Nic army’, sundresses and cowboy boots and ribbons in hair, had she surrendered the point.

  They were going to produce a more finessed version of what she was now. The kind of thing her mother was nagging
at her to pursue anyway: now that she was an adult, and had even (finally) finished with college, wasn’t it time she bought some pants that weren’t just jeans that were threatening to rip? Dresses, they’d stopped talking about; it wasn’t that Ali was opposed, but that what she found appealing in a dress, her mother merely scrunched her nose at. They either covered not enough, or just covered the wrong things. Most of her tattoos were usually visible in the style of high-cut dresses she favored, and those were just another thing that they decidedly didn’t talk about.

  It had been an easier concession to make for the guys. Mitch would wear anything, and had only insisted on limits to messing with his hair; it was thick, dark and loosely curled like hers, and an absolute girl magnet—for both of them, really, even if hers was much longer and managed with far less product. Tony had never stopped dressing like the fourteen year old video game and anime nerd who had befriended Mitch when his family had first moved to the Chicago suburbs, and that casual attitude carried on into him not really caring at all what they wanted to change about his style. Brian’s style, they were unlikely to find any problems with. Designer by day, rock star by night, outfit pretty much unchanged.

  Tony was tapping along with the music playing on his iPhone as he took the first shift driving. Brian was working through some last emails before formally going on ‘band leave’, as he had jokingly started calling it, and Mitch was reapplying some black nail polish on the dashboard, occasionally singing along with Tony’s musical picks. Kevin, sensibly, was making his own way down; once in the van with the band had been enough, he liked to tell them, nose wrinkled in disgust.

  As much as this still felt on some level like both a bad idea and a dream—like diving into an abyss, and leaving their hard-earned rep behind—she’d missed this in the last few years, when road trips had become scarce. The van was her home in a way her parents’ house hadn’t been since she had awkwardly come out in her senior year of high school. Or whatever you'd call her mother having walked in on her reaching something beyond second base with her lab partner. It had caused a fissure that wasn’t going to close anytime soon, if ever. The fact that she’d made salutatorian hadn’t gotten her much more than a somewhat chilly and surprised congratulations, at which point she wasn’t sure anything she did would un-disappoint Mom.