Page 12 of Accidental Fire
Sold out?Shit!We were supposed to be starting small so we could work up to larger crowds like we experienced at Rocktoberfest last year. This year, though, there was no Regal, From the Ashes, or Skyler to show us the way. We were on our own.
My heart began pounding at the thought of facing all those strangers. What if they didn’t like us? What if they just started walking out of the venue while we played, and we were left with just us on the stage? I’d had that fucking nightmare for over a year, and waking up in a pool of my own sweat wasn’t fun.
“Gimme that.” I held out my hand for the pipe Arlo was holding and the lighter from Goldie. I just needed to get a little buzz to stop the panic.
My fingers weren’t cooperating, but the crowd didn’t seem to care. We’d scrapped my idea of playing the beginning of “Chasing You” acoustically because now that we’d all smoked, we wanted to rock out. I could hear the clunkers as we played, but the crowd was singing along, and none of us cared.
“Welcome to the— Where the hell are we?” Arlo was behind the keyboard, swaying as he greeted the crowd after we played the first song. “Who the fuck cares? We’re Accidental Fire. Let’s rock!”
Hardy counted us in and rolled the cymbals for “I’ll Find You,” and we played the fuck out of it. Even in such a small-ass venue, people were bouncing off each other in a mosh pit until Rowdy, Yeti, and Cavalry broke it up when people started throwing empty cans at us.
We played the set list, ending with “Mr. Brightsides” for nostalgia’s sake. As the set had gone on, I’d sobered up and was able to keep up with Hardy’s hard-driving beat, but the rest of the band seemed to be lagging. It was the reason I wanted to figure out another way to get beyond the panic. Even I could hear we were playing for shit.
Everyone headed to stage right behind the glittery curtains to wait for the encore calls. We had a new song ready to go, but they never came. There were no encore shouts, no loud applause, and when I glanced through the curtain, everyone was just leaving. It was my worst nightmare come to reality.
The roadies were there waiting for us to play the encore so they could collect our instruments, and they seemed as surprised as I was that we weren’t called back for an encore. I couldn’t even fathom that we wouldn’t be singing the new song. I handed my Fender Telecaster six-string to… “What’s your name?”
We’d been introduced to the roadies, but I hadn’t been paying enough attention at the time to remember names. That was my bad.
“I’m Coaster Jennings. You okay, man?”
I wasn’t sure how to answer him, then I glanced toward the back of the club to see Kit Hansen leaning against the wall, a frown of disappointment on his handsome face. His gaze met mine, and he shook his head before he walked out the front door.
“Dressing room, now,” Marsh barked as he walked by.
I followed our agent, dragging my feet like a petulant child. Hell, I guess I was.
Everyone was in the dressing room changing from their tour clothes, so I stepped over to the rack and began unbuttoning the flimsy purple shirt Lauren had chosen for me to wear with a pair of tight jeans that cut off the circulation to my nuts.
When we met with the tour members the week after dinner at Mr. Ashby’s, Lauren had suggested ways we could set ourselves apart from each other. Her reasoning was that each band member should adopt a certain persona to give our fans their ideal crush.
We’d all balked at her idea, but as I looked around, I could see her point. We looked like a bunch of raggedy stoners—which was exactly what we were. That definitely wasn’t a desirable album-cover image.
The door to the dressing room slammed hard, and we all turned around and found Marshall looking as angry as I’d ever seen him. The room grew eerily quiet, all eyes settling on the fuming man standing in the middle.
“I hope you’re happy that you all ruined the show tonight by being too fucking stoned to perform.” He picked up a plastic bottle of water from a table and threw it at the wall, where it exploded. “You sounded like absolute shit, guys. Goldie, what the fuck, man? You were off-key through the entire first half of the set, and JD, do you know how to keep the beat at all?”
His angry snarl landed on each of us as he scanned the dressing room before he finally landed on me. “And you, Mr. Ashe. What the fuck was wrong with you? You were fine earlier when I spoke to you, and then you came on stage high as a kite, and I’d bet my dick you didn’t know where the fuck you were. Hell, River, you weren’t playing the same song as the rest of the band half the time.”
My mouth dropped, and my face heated to the point I thought I was going to explode. I’d known I was struggling, but I hadn’t realized I’d played that poorly. Clearly, Marshall, who barely paid attention most of the time, had noticed.
I was fucking everything up. For me. For the band. For Marshall. Hell, maybe for Skyler and Sandy too.
Regal was right. I didn’t have enough talent to make it in the rock-and-roll business.
House of Blues, San Diego
Marsh was sitting in the booth at the front of the bus, staring at his phone. Across from him was Cavalry, the protection guy, who was on his phone as well.
Marshall rarely rode the bus with us, choosing to fly or drive separately. He was clearly still pissed and wasn’t taking his eyes off us. It was completely unnerving.
We pulled into the parking lot of the House of Blues just after ten in the morning, having left our hotel at seven-thirty that morning. I was fucking starving, but the idea of eating anything and throwing up before we performed that night had my anxiety off the charts.
After everything that happened at The Offbeat, I understood why Marshall was watching us like a hawk. We owed Marshall a debt for sticking with us, but I had the impression we’d be paying him back for a long time.
I sat on the edge of my bottom bunk with my leg braced on the floor to keep my balance before the bus stopped. I was attempting to work out the melody for a new song, and it wasn’t coming easily.
The expression of pity on Kit’s face the previous evening was burned behind my eyelids. His frown and headshaking showed his disappointment in me, and that image kept me from sleeping the previous night.
