Page 133 of Code Word
“We’ve done this a few times, Bec,” Luke tried.
“You walk out there with your fly down and no amount of PR savvy will save you,” she said, and I snorted.
The stage manager interrupted. “You’re up in four, three,” two fingers, one, and go.
We walked on stage to a huge round of applause. It was our first scheduled, official interview in three years.Funnily enough, it was on this very stage onLA Nights Live.
We took our seats across from the host’s desk and the applause quieted down.
“Welcome back,” the host said. “It’s been a while.”
Luke took the lead. “It has. We’re excited to be here.”
“For any of our viewers who have been living under a rock, you were both part of Atrous, the multi-multi-platinum, award-winning, biggest band in the world. And that’s been what, three years now?”
I nodded. “Yep.”
“But you’ve hardly been living the quiet life. You’ve started your own production company called Point-Four.”
Luke grinned. “That’s right.”
“Point-Four,” the host repeated. “The name is a tribute, of sorts, to Atrous.”
I explained it. “Atrous was always the five of us. And point-four is two-fifths; we are two of the five.”
The audience loved this.
“And you’ve both settled into a ‘normal’ life after Atrous announced its end. How does one do that? You were the pinnacle of superstardom and all the craziness that went with that. How does someone adjust to everyday life after that?”
“It’s actually great,” Luke said, and the audience laughed. “But all jokes aside, it’s great now, but it wasn’t easy. We took about a year off. I don’t think we realized how burned-out we were until we came out the other side of it. I don’t think any of us picked up an instrument at all in that time. But then I missed it, ya know? Music had always been such an integral part of our lives, and that part of me was missing. So, I picked up a guitar and started to write again.”
The host waited for the audience to stop cheering. “But this time there’re no tours, no album, just purely digital, streaming, and social media platforms. And you’re killing it. Smashed records on TikTok and YouTube.”
Yeah, we’d been killing it. Making our music purely digital had cut our workload down considerably. We knew it was a testament to a constantly evolving industry, but I had to wonder where we’d be right now if we could have done this as Atrous.
“It’s been a nice surprise,” I said. “We’re older now, in a different industry than what it was when we first started. But we’ve done all that hard stuff. We’ve sold out stadiums, upward of a hundred thousand people all around the world, sold multi-platinum, won more awards than we ever thought possible. We’ve accomplished all there is to be done, and somewhere along the way during that time, it wasn’t fun anymore. So when we started playing again, we were like ‘Wouldn’t it be fun to just play music like we used to before the craziness started?’ So that’s what we’re doing. Just playing, putting our music out there, singing what we want, without the pressure or the stress.”
“Except, Blake,” the host said “when you decide to do a pop-up concert in an airport, mall, or on the pier.”
He ran some YouTube footage of the few times I’d done that, belting out a song at some random piano, and the studio audience ate it up. Especially the time I dragged Luke with me, giving all the late-night Christmas shoppers a three-song concert on the carolers’ stage in Santa Monica.
“Any more impromptu appearances planned that we should know about?” the host asked slyly.
“No,” Luke said quickly, and I laughed and nodded, but when Luke looked at me, I shook my head.
Of course, everyone laughed.
The host looked between us. “Any other news to share?” He was totally vying for gossip that the internet and whole damn fandom weredyingto know. “There’s been a lot of speculation online about you guys.”
If we were together. If Bluke was real.
The thing was, we’d decided they didn’t need to know.We didn’t want to give this part of us away and decided we weren’t going to tell the public shit. If we were photographed together, let them draw their own conclusions. But details about our personal lives? We didn’t owe them a damn thing.
“Yes,” Luke said, and the audience went wild. Someone squealed. Luke grinned and waited for the audience to quiet down as the host leaned in, excited. Luke grinned. “We’d like to share our newest song with you.”
The audience laughed and cheered, so we walked to the performance stage. There were two stools, two guitars, and we took our places.
Luke spoke into the mic. “We haven’t sung this live yet, so you guys get to hear it first. It’s a song that means a lot to us. It’s called ‘Code Word.’ I hope you like it.”
