Page 92 of August Lane
File Name: Luke Randall
Audio Length: 0:46:23
Transcriber: Emma Fisher
Date transcribed: August 28, 2023
Luke Randall:
[Excerpt] I never went on vacations growing up. We took a trip to see my mother’s family once, but that didn’t go well, so we never tried again. Used to go to the lake with friends, but that was less than an hour from home. I was still tethered during those trips. This is a terrible metaphor, but we used to have cows on the farm that had to be tethered sometimes to keep ’em from grazing outside a certain area. That’s what lake days were. Safe grazing. I could look at the skyline and it would be the same sky I’d seen my whole life. I’m telling you this so you’ll understand how different it was for me in Nashville. I was alone. No one knew I was there. And that city was big. Arcadia barely had four thousand people when I left. The Nashville bus stop was the size of my high school.
Country Starwas doing auditions, but that’s not why I went there. Never thought I could make it onto a TV show. I went because of August. She was always talking about moving to Nashville after graduation, and I wanted to be there when she did.Ifshe did. There was no set date or way to get in touch with her, but I was trying to increase the odds, I guess. Sounds silly now, but I was in a bad place. Made sense at the time.
But back to the tether. I get off the bus and it’s gone. I’m standing on some street I can’t name, surrounded by strangers staring at me like I’ve never been stared at my whole life. Blank, empty eyes. “Hello, nobody.” When peoplesay they want to be someone, they’re usually talking about fame, but this was different. This was I’m a tree falling in the woods. If someone shoved me into traffic, I’d bleed out and disappear.
My brother had given me aCountry Starflyer and I showed it to people, asking them to point me toward the Ryman. I walked there. Probably could have taken a cab, but I’d never done that before, either. Got lost three times before I found it. There was a line of musicians camping out early, so I lined up, too. People stared at me, asked what I played and did I know what kind of show this was, all so polite, like they wanted to point me in the right direction. First, I’m nobody. Now I’m this odd thing that doesn’t belong, even though we’re all sitting there with guitars and drawls, playing shitty Bob Dylan covers. Those white city kids were singing about missing a simple, small-town life they never had. Meanwhile, I’m so fresh off the bus you could still smell the country on me. But I’m the one they think is lost.
If they didn’t let me audition, I had no place else to go. So I smiled a lot. Made jokes. Laughed at their confusion because it reassured them it wasn’t racist to question my presence. I played Johnny Cash and Hank Williams because everyone loves them, and it worked. I made it to the quarterfinals. Then a producer asked for the title of my original song—not whether I planned to write one, but where is it, like “Hand it over, dummy.” And if you’ve ever been the person who knows nothing while being surrounded by people acting like they know everything, you’ll understand why I didn’t speak up, why I didn’t say,Hey, I’ve never actually written a song on my ownorWhat do you mean by “original”orWhat the fuck’s a copyright?I just kept smiling. Kept laughing. Then I pulled out August’s notebook to remind myself of what we’d written and the first thing I saw was “Luke’s Song.” My name was literally on the thing. So, I played it for them, the real version, not the way it sounds now. I had written some of themusic before I left, but the rest… I don’t know where it came from. Good melodies are like that. All gut and feeling. Like you didn’t write it, you found it waiting for you. That’s what I should have told them. I didn’t write this. Someone left it for me.
They came up with the title. Made it faster. I hated the changes, but when I played “Another Love Song” in front of all those people, I didn’t get blank stares anymore. They were screaming my name. Thousands of people at home were voting for me, saying yes, keep him. We love this guy. And that was it for me. I was hooked on the worst drug in the industry. It convinced me that as long as I gave people what they wanted, I’d never be that lost country boy again.
But that wasn’t true. Standing up there, serving bold-faced lies with a smile, that would never be my tether. August is. She always finds me.
PART SEVEN
THE CHORUS
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
2009
August finally had the house to herself. Birdie and Jojo had gone to the church picnic, and she’d volunteered to do chores while they were gone. She playedRumoursat high volume as she cleaned, starting with “Dreams” because it had the strongest hook on the album. She’d been studying song structure and had learned that a hook could be anything: a line, a riff, an instrument, whatever made you stop and listen. In “Dreams,” she’d initially assumed it was the repeated lyric about losing love. But after replaying it a few times, she decided it was the warning about loneliness.
August was singing along to the second verse when Jojo’s voice joined in with a dramatic flourish. Her mother danced into the room, waving her arms in a way that evoked Stevie Nicks’s witchy persona. She motioned for August to keep going.
They had sung together before. Birthday songs. Church hymns. All situations where pitch was irrelevant, and an off-key clash matched the moment. This was different. Jojo’s voice shimmered, her soprano soaring in a crisp, deliberate key. August couldn’t match that, so she sang beneath it, harmonizing with Jojo by using a smoother version of her real voice, the one she’d only shared with Luke. At the end, August closed her eyes, lost herself in the music, and it wasn’t until the last line that she realized Jojo had stopped singing and was now watching her with a dazed expression, as if she’d driven the wrong way down a one-way street.
“Do you always sound like that?”
August said “Yes” even though it wasn’t true. Sometimes she sounded better. “I was copying you, though. Trying to harmonize.”
“At first, maybe. The last bit was something else.”
August turned down the volume on the CD player. “You sounded different,” she said. “Is it the new voice coach?”
“Hell no. Voice lessons make me radio friendly. Sand down all the edges.” Jojo tapped her nails on the table while she spoke, a nervous habit. The sound was more muffled than usual. She’d gotten a manicure, and they’d been filed into blunt, red squares. “I don’t think anyone could do that with you. Take that away. Wouldn’t be much left.”
August hadn’t thought about that before. Songwriting was her main focus. But what if Jojo was right? What if her voice wasn’t “radio friendly” enough for anyone to want to hear them?
“I should have stayed with you instead of going to that picnic.” Jojo propped her feet up on another chair. “It’s too hot to be outside. And I never ate those damn fish sandwiches when I was little. Sure don’t want ’em now.”
August pictured the buffalo fish served with mustard and a single slice of Wonder Bread. “Why are they called sandwiches? The fish has bones in it.”
Jojo sighed. “You’ve always been like this. My little why-child. Never accepting things at face value.”
“Is that bad?”
“No. But sometimes it’s easier.” Jojo stared at her for a beat. “Where do you go after school?”
