Since they were the only act on the card, Brandee needed a significantly longer set than they had used in Laramie. After “Honky Tonk Broad” they offered up “Jamaica Moon” for the appreciative Coloradans. It was a medium-paced number with a touch of calypso in it, giving Diane a chance to show what she could do on the rims of her drum kit. Bruce accompanied Diane with an assortment of blocks, rings, and triangles. They had enjoyed themselves a great deal working all of that out, and their enjoyment translated well to the crowd in Grand Junction. The vocals kept Brandee's voice in her mid-range, giving it a break after the rambunctious “Honky Tonk Broad”.
Next, Suzi was turned loose with her new favorite part of the show. She pranced around the stage during the opening bars of her guitar solo, before kneeling at the edge of the stage and beating the living hell out of her piece as the tempo increased to a fevered pace. Of everyone in the group, she had shown the most growth as a performer during their time together. Diane and Bruce smiled widely as the crowd roared in response to their friend. Suzi was sweating up a storm on the floor of The Opera House, but she was entertaining the crowd and soaking up the cheers.
Brandee was well rested by this time, and a little hungry to be back in the spotlight. She appreciated the strides that Suzi had made, and appreciated the breaks that the others' solos gave her voice, but she was Brandee Evans after all.
During rehearsal, they had left open what was going to happen at this point. If Brandee was up to the strain of “Bad Girl in Town”, they would do that one. If not, they would use “Diva”, still a powerful and fast-paced piece, but one without the vocal cord shredding characteristics of “Bad Girl in Town”.
Brandee made a “Crack the Whip” motion with her microphone cord. That was her signal to the band that she wanted to do “Bad Girl in Town”. It was what Bruce was expecting and also what he wanted to see.
It may have been the response from the crowds over the past two nights. It may have been his talk with Jake that afternoon. It may have been because he was so fired up inside himself about Suzi and the baby. It may have been a combination of all of the above with a dose of the improvement that he had made as a performer himself. Whatever it was, there was about to be a thunderclap on Colorado's West Slope.
“Bad Girl in Town” already relied on strong pressure, pushing Brandee Evans from behind by the keyboard and percussion. In Laramie, Bruce and Diane had given her the ride of her life during “Bad Girl”, and Brandee had loved every second of it. Tonight was another, higher gear than Laramie had been.
Brandee knew that something was different during the opening 12 bars. Bruce was pushing the rhythm. Diane's eyes found his as she followed his lead. Bruce looked at Diane with an expression that seemed to say, “Who, me?”
When it came time to pick up the pace, Bruce shifted down and pressed on the throttle. Diane stayed in step, and Brandee did too. She shot Bruce a quick look before re-engaging the crowd with the lyrics about how no one was going to tell this bad girl where to draw the line.
Bruce pushed again! Diane's muscled arms gleamed as she gave it back to him. They were just two-thirds of the way through the song, and they were going as fast as they had gone at the end of the song the night before in Wyoming. Brandee exploded through the second chorus, and the crowd burst into a frenzy.
Usually, by the third verse of “Bad Girl”, Brandee was down in the crowd. Tonight, she stayed on the stage. Frankly, she didn't trust Bruce and wanted to keep an eye on him.
Bruce's eyes gleamed as he pushed the pace still harder. Brandee was being asked to sing at very near the top of her range and do it faster than she had ever sung anything in her life. Could she do it? Bruce Jackson was determined to find out. If she fell off of the pace and turned it into a keyboard solo, he would feel like he won.
She would have felt the same. Brandee turned her back on Bruce and mentally asked the crowd to help her. She started to drop her hips with the notes and use the muscles in her butt, looking for the power to go higher, faster, and longer. She felt less like a bad girl and more like a girl trying to hang on. She could not lose!
She didn't lose. The end of “Bad Girl” came like an onrushing locomotive. Brandee finished with a note that she held for a good 15 seconds. Bruce finished with a keyboard flourish. Diane finished with a drum tour of everything on her kit. Brandee, Diane, and Bruce were all a bit spent from the exertion and their emotion. The crowd didn't know that. All that they knew was that they had just witnessed something magnificent on the stage of The Opera House. They rose to their feet and cheered loudly.
Brandee absorbed the cheers, allowing them to refresh her for the rest of the set. She stepped back and acknowledged Diane, allowing her some love from the assemblage. Then she stepped back and acknowledged Bruce, not allowing the crowd to see what she said to him as she acknowledged him. Most of the crowd would have been surprised to know that the singer had just called her keyboardist an asshole. Bruce beamed at her as if she had just said he was the sexiest man alive.
Jake, no musician himself, knew that something had happened onstage. He knew that after they did “Peinado Ora Amante”, which was Brandee's only foray into singing in a foreign language, he would be taking water to her during Bruce's official keyboard solo. Maybe he would be able to figure out what had happened out there from how she would seem then.
“Peinado Ora Amante”, or “Golden-Haired Lover”, was a slow song about a girl whose man has gone off to war. She wrote to him every day, always promising to remain his golden-haired lover. At the end of the song, the man came home after having been blinded in the war. He knows his girl, though, by the touch of her hand and the feel of her hair under his. The group had first used the song in Chico and again at the USANA Amphitheater in Utah.
The group had decided to do something different with “Peinado Ora Amante” tonight. Normally, Diane accompanied Brandee with brushes, and Bruce accompanied with a soft rhythm throughout the song. Tonight, they decided that Brandee would sing the moving last verse of the song a cappella. Standing under a sole bright spot, Brandee made the crowd believe that she had a man fighting in an overseas conflict who was in grave danger.
During Bruce's keyboard solo, Jake brought Brandee her water. He looked at her carefully to see if anything was different. She seemed to be the same as always. He asked her if she was okay like he always did and she answered “Great!”, like always.
She went back to the center of the stage and hit her spot perfectly. Right after she had her water and short break, she needed to center herself under the wind machine. They were going to use the wind machine twice tonight. They usually did “Kneel Before You” with the wind on. This time, they were going to do that right after the break and then bring on the breeze later for “I Will Always Love You”, the Whitney Houston show-stopper from the 90's. That would be their second-to-last number for this evening.
Jake watched his wife's slithering body under the touch of the wind machine. He still wasn't happy, but he would have to be made of stone not to be aroused by that sight. It reminded him again that love has many different facets, not the least of which was simple animal lust. He suddenly realized how much he wished that they had a wind machine at home so that he could turn it on over her while she made a sandwich.
“Kneel Before You” was almost six minutes long. By the time it was over, Brandee was ready to kick the slats out of the place again. They rocked the joint with “Your Ass is Mine”, getting the crowd back on its feet. Brandee ventured into the crowd for the first time in almost 45 minutes during “Your Ass is Mine”, allowing some of the crowd to touch her green with black tiger-striped mid-calf dress that was new for tonight. She had ordered it from Pizzazzwear when they had left California and it had just caught up with her in Grand Junction. The crowd fondled her as she moved through them, showing her the love that she craved.
Next on the list that Brandee had compiled for tonight was “Granite Heart”, a country ballad that gave Brandee a chance
to show off the yodel that was becoming renowned among those who followed the group. The feedback that they received from critics and fans alike about the CDs they sold often mentioned the country yodel that they had included in the disk. It wasn't Brandee's favorite part of the show, but if that's what turned on the crowd, that's what she would give them.
The second half of the show went off without a hitch. “I Will Always Love You” got a tremendous response, and made Brandee decide that, in the future, they would use that for the wind machine song even on the nights that they sang a shorter set. “Kneel Before You” could be interspersed in other places and used in the longer sets.
For their two encores, the group played a reprise of “Honky Tonk Broad”, as had become their custom, and a shortened version of “Voracious Little Girl”, their closing number. There were isolated calls from the crowd for another round of “Bad Girl in Town”, but Brandee didn't have the voice left to go through that again. Bruce raised his eyebrows at her once, asking her if she was game for it, but she ignored him.
***
The group was tired by the time they went backstage for the last time. They had grown accustomed to playing sets that lasted 30-45 minutes. Tonight, they had been onstage for almost 2 hours by the time they had gotten through both of their encores. They were pleased with how the night had gone, and were ready for some food and a chance to unwind. They didn't count on a visitor.
Just before they got to the door of the dressing room, behind which they would find a light snack and a little solitude, they spotted a commotion ahead. Someone was trying to get past the one security guard that The Opera House had offered up for the show. He was gamely holding the person off, but he was being defeated by someone half his age, a third his weight, and twice as determined.
Janelle
The determined fan broke out of the security guard's grasp and ran to the group, skidding to a stop in front of them. Jake grasped the fan's upper arm, concerned about the safety of the group, particularly the female members.
Jake realized that he was holding on to a young lady, no more than a girl really. She was 20 years old or so, tops. She had shaggy dark brown hair that hung a little below her shoulder blades. The feature that he noticed first though was her eyes. They were dark brown, almost the color of dark chocolate, but it wasn't the color that Jake noticed. It was the fiery determination in them. She obviously thought that Jake was nothing more than some roadie, hired on to keep her from getting where she wanted to go.
“Whoa there, young one." Jake said, still trying to keep a grip on the writhing young woman.
“Let me go, asshole!” she said, twisting and turning in her efforts to be released from Jake's grasp. She almost escaped before Bruce stepped in to give Jake a hand. She relaxed visibly when she saw the keyboardist.
“Bruce!” she said. “Bruce Jackson. You were really hot tonight.”
“Thanks honey,” Bruce said, smoothly exchanging Jake's hold on the young lady for his own grip.
The young fan looked past Jake, her eyes finding the prize that she sought.
“Brandee! Oh Brandee! Ohohohohoh Brandee!” she stammered, one word climbing over the other. “Please can I come inside and talk to you, just for a minute?”
The members of the group looked at each other. They were tired and ready to get into the dressing room and sit down with their feet up on a footstool. They had never set up an exact protocol for having fans in the dressing room. Frankly, they had never imagined that it would be an issue. They were hardly renowned enough to have groupies and they always assumed there would be time enough to figure something out by the time they did. Brandee spoke up.
“Sure. Come on in for a minute if you want.”
Brandee was always a little more magnanimous after a good concert than she was any other time. Performing gave her a high and she was friends with the world if things had gone well onstage. She thought to herself, Why not give the girl a thrill? What could it hurt?
Jake thanked the wheezing security guard for his attempts to help. The guard readily left the group to themselves and their fan, remembering that he was needed for traffic control leaving The Opera House.
***
The young fan had two objectives in mind. Her first one had been accomplished. She had wanted to talk to Brandee Evans. This wasn't the first time that she had seen the group in concert, but it was the first time that crowd control had been so lax. She had decided by 20 minutes into the show that she was going to try to get backstage.
The second objective had to do with what she was carrying in her bag, but for now, she examined her surroundings. She had never been in a performer's dressing area before. The Opera House had separated cubicles for the performers to change in and out of costume in relative privacy. There was a performance mirror above the dressing table in the area where Brandee prepared herself for the stage. There was a small refrigerator, and an overstuffed chair with an ottoman.
However, the enterprising young fan wouldn't have cared if there had only been a bare bulb with a No-Pest Strip hanging off of it. She had come to see the person she most admired in the world, Brandee Reneé Evans!
Janelle Kelly had been at the concert in Laramie the night before. Up until this moment in the dressing room, the high moment in her life had happened at that concert. She was the lucky fan who had caught Brandee's damp towel. She knew that her friends would say it was lame and stupid to do so, but she had slept with that towel the previous night in Laramie. Tonight, she was going to try to get Brandee to autograph that towel with the indelible black fabric marker that she had brought from home.
Brandee asked Janelle her name and how old she was. The singer was flattered that Janelle had driven from Laramie just to hear her in concert 2 nights in a row. After a few minutes, when Janelle produced the towel, Brandee laughed and said that certainly she would be glad to sign her name on it. The two of them stretched the towel out on the dressing table so that Brandee's flowery signature, something that she had been working on since she was 12 years old, would be visible on the white towel.
Brandee found out during their time in the dressing room that Janelle Kelly was 19 years old. She lived in Laramie but didn't attend the University of Wyoming. She was in her first year at Eastern Wyoming College in Torrington, Wyoming. She had vague intentions to become a cosmetologist but didn't really know for sure what she wanted to do with her life.
Brandee took to the younger girl instantly. Maybe it was the way that she was both driven and at loose ends at the same time. It reminded Brandee a lot of how she had felt during the days after her father had passed away. She had known that she wanted to do something onstage, but couldn't seem to find a way to make that happen for herself as soon as she wanted it to. She reached over and brushed a piece of Janelle's hair that had gotten in her eyes. Janelle kept flipping her hair back, but this one strand seemed unwilling to be tamed.
This girl is like that strand of hair, Brandee thought to herself.
***
Janelle Maranda Kelly was born June 24, 1993 in Florence, Oregon to Terry and Connie Kelly. Her father had been a forestry worker in the rainforest near the Oregon Coast. Janelle's mother was a waitress when Janelle was young, later becoming a desk clerk at The Pier Point Inn, a motel just south of town. Her father was too old to be in the woods any longer, and had taken a job in the local Ace Hardware.
Terry and Connie Kelly had one more child, two years after Janelle was born. It was another girl, whom they named Francine. They had visions that Janelle and Francine would grow up to be fast friends: sharing secrets, clothes and makeup, but it was not to be. From the time Francine could walk, Janelle couldn't stand her. It didn't help that Francine was pretty. She was blonde-haired and blue-eyed while Janelle had hair the color of mud and what she called “stupidly big eyes”. Francine developed friendships, boyfriends, and breasts when Janelle still had none of the above, even though Janelle was two years older. Francine was, Janelle believed, a stuck-up bitch
. Her presence in the family only made Janelle that much harder to raise.
To say that Janelle was hard to raise would have perhaps been the greatest understatement of all time. Both in and out of school, Janelle always found herself in trouble. She had done time at Burlingame reform school in Eugene, Oregon by the time she was ten years old after she was caught shoplifting at The Piggly Wiggly near her house for the fourth time. Having served 90 days in reform school, Janelle decided that she needed to change her ways, but she had no intention of becoming a law-abiding citizen. She simply needed to change her methods to avoid getting caught as often.
She learned to get others to do her dirty work for her. By the time she was 12, she was talking boys into putting packs of cigarettes in their pockets for her when they stole their own. She accomplished this by becoming the only girl in her class at West Lane Junior High School to regularly give guys hand jobs through their pants during the lunch hour at school.
FAME and GLORY Page 11