Exhale and Move On

by K. L. Shandwick

  “I hear you. Work first and always, play comes after. Gotcha.”

  Paul turned his head and gave me a pointed stare. I stared back with what I’d hoped was the same seriousness in my expression. When Paul was satisfied I meant what I’d said, he gave me a sharp nod. “Apology accepted.” Moving on swiftly he reached into his bag for the notes he’d made. “Now that’s been dealt with, let us get the facts straight so you don’t make an ass of yourself again today.”

  Like Paul predicted I was last to the meeting. Gibson and his drummer Lennox were present, Alfie and Lily, and Lily’s bandmate, Cody, was with her. I was disappointed it wasn’t Lennon because we were tight friends whenever we got to spend time together. We had a connection. He was intelligent and interesting, and it felt like I’d known him my whole life.

  “No Len today, Lily?”

  “No, sorry, Rick. He had a dental appointment, so Cody’s come in his stead. Hope that’s okay.”

  “Sure. I just figured with Lennon keeping y’all on a tight leash in your band he’d have wanted to be here.”

  Cody smirked, “Don’t worry, Rick, he gave me my orders so he’ll be brought up to speed as soon as we’re done.”

  “You wanna check this out?” Gibson asked, interrupting, as he slid a few sheets of computer paper in my direction across the coffee table. I glanced at the paper then to him as he leaned back confidently in his chair. Adjusting himself on the seat he opened his legs and spread them wide like he had two baby’s heads for balls. I think he drew the first genuine smile from me that day because I was stoked to be working with him.

  I loved the guy; he was one of my favorite people. In all the time I’d known him he had always delivered. I liked his no bullshit or drama approach to everything and the way he turned up, did his thing, then took off. My mind flitted back to some of the great times we’d shared in the past, and some women come to that, and I smiled again. Let’s just say at one time, Gibson and I were party animals, and that made us pretty close.

  I knew the people around the table in that room like the back of my hand. However, in the twenty years I’d been in the music business I had deftly avoided organizing collaborations, leaving it to my managers to judge the dynamics, so it was weird for me to feel excited to work so closely with all of them. In fact, I thought so much of them, I’d have given any of them my right nut if they’d asked for it.

  Life as a rocker on the road was fun but sometimes it was tough. With so many people wanting—metaphorically and literally—to ride my ass, those I trusted became family. Blood or no blood, the ones around me in that room were like brothers and sisters… well maybe not sisters… some of the images I’d had in my mind about Lily weren’t the ones any brother should ever imagine.

  Alfie and Lily were soulmates and so infatuated with each other I could have puked at times, but a lot of shit had gone down between all of us and their bands that made us firm friends and tight for life. You could say we’d been through ‘the wars’ together and that gave them royalty status in my affections.

  As for Gibson Barclay… well who the fuck wouldn’t want to be associated with the guy? Everything he touched turned platinum, and he was a demi-god in the music business. At one point I was sure his shit would’ve exchanged for gold, but more than that he was a great and loyal guy with a beautiful wife and a steady home life.

  “Ah. So, I was right. I thought if I left you kids to it you’d hammer out a timetable for this gig,” I said like I’d planned to be late so as they’d figure it all out. “Great, I’ll just check it out and reshuffle the order just to fuck with you all,” I added and took a seat beside Cody.

  Gibson and Alfie laughed, but Lily’s eyebrows bunched, “I disagree with the running order. There are too many female bands back-to-back. I want you to look at it again please, Rick,” she interjected.

  I glanced over and watched as Lily crossed her fabulous toned legs drawing my eyes to them like a hungry newborn baby to his mother’s tit. “Baby, you… can have anything you want if you do that again,” I said making a point of staring at her pins just to yank Alfie’s chain.

  I chuckled when his jaw ticked in reaction; the jealousy in those green eyes of his made them darken considerably as they always did when he thought I was hitting on Lily. I chuckled wickedly because I knew eyeing his wife’s legs would incense him. It was something I did to get a rise out of him since the first day I saw him and the lovely Lily together.

  Lily found it funny because she knew it was my way of keeping the upper hand with Alfie, and it kept him on his toes, because although he trusted his wife implicitly, he trusted me less than the distance he could have thrown me. The way I saw it, I was ensuring Alfie knew what he had with Lily and the lucky bastard should never be allowed to forget it.

  “Knock it off, Rick,” he warned in a menacing voice and I snorted at how easy it was get him going .

  “Alright you two, that’s enough. Put your ‘my-dick’s-bigger-than-your-dick' attitude away. We all know my pecker is the biggest, so no competition there unless it’s for runner up. Sit the fuck down, Rick, and let’s get this over with,” Gibson said, amused at his own contribution to the comments. I had another small smile to myself because I knew Gibson had found me winding Alfie up as funny as I had.

  Cody chuckled, and Gibson had a small smile on his lips as he leaned forward and picked up the A4 pieces of paper from the large coffee table in front of him.

  “We didn’t wait for you because you’re always late, so we’ve been busy in your absence. This is the line-up we’ve come up with so far. Chris Daughtry is still checking his schedule to see if he can move one live TV interview or record it instead, but the others are all confirmed. Like Lily said, you may want to look over the running order before we face the press.”

  Taking the computer print-out from him I scanned the names on the list. “Damn, there are some pretty big egos in that lot, what’s the bet they all start bitching and vying for position?”

  “We all think you should be the headliner. Everyone else can be in alphabetical order. Last names not first. That should take care of the gender issue you were concerned about, Lily,” Gibson said speaking to both Lily and me.

  “Sounds good but I don’t think it could only be band names, some need to be spaced a bit better because if you go with that list Flynn Docherty’s band CraVed, and Alfie’s Crakt Soundzz will be directly after each other and we’d be second to last with XrAid. There are bigger bands than ours who will want that position,” Cody offered.

  “I don’t mind Crakt Soundzz being warm up for us,” I replied and snickered.

  “Oh, grow up, children,” Lily snapped, rolling her eyes at Gibson like she was embarrassed to know us.

  “Oh, really? It’s all right for you, Lily. Your band will be one from the headliners anyway. You’ll get a better atmosphere working the crowd in the dark. Some of these guys will get pissed when they see the running order,” Alfie whined pretending to be pissed with her.

  “Right. Stop. This is my ride,” I reminded them. “My name was the main driver for the event. Here are the changes I want. Everyone goes in alphabetical order apart from our bands. We take the last four spots with me last. M3rCy, Crakt Soundzz, XrAid, and Cobham Street, doing four numbers each and one song where we’re all on stage together. Only because Lily’s band will be the rose between thorns. After we’re done, we’ll invite everyone on stage to sing “Wind of Change”, The Scorpions number.”

  “I know it’s the name of the event but isn’t that song about an uprising? Challenging regimes and stuff?” Cody asked.

  “Yeah mostly… but this is the music community rising up to change peoples’ circumstances—so I guess it fits—oh and you’d better send a memo to the bands to make sure they all learn the words. Last thing we want is anyone humiliating themselves on camera miming the wrong words on close up.”

  “Fuck. There’s a hint of genius hiding in that overused body of yours,” Alfie mused then softly ch
uckled to himself.

  “Ah, but that’s the secret to a long life in this business, buddy. Let everyone think you’re stupid. Use your intelligence to dig yourself out of the shit and only show them how far that intellect goes when someone tries to fuck you over.”

  Our heads turned when Paul came back into the room. He had left us on our arrival and gone into the conference room to ask for questions from the press relating to the event. He informed them that any questions we didn’t get to in the time we had would be answered by us afterward and made available to press.

  “Ready, guys? The natives are getting restless out there,” he told us without a hint of humor in his tone.

  Gibson stood tall and stretched his arms above his head. The guy was so good looking it was painful for the rest of us to be alongside him. Put it this way, none of us were ugly, but the guy had as many men lusting after him as he did women. Even the straight ones.

  “Lead the way,” Gibson replied, gesturing toward the door for Paul to go out first.

  Alfie stood and adjusted his junk in his jeans, drew his hand through his hair then reached out and took Lily’s hand. Lily glanced up at him like he’d just invented a cure for a devastating illness and smiled like she wanted to fuck him on the spot. They were sickly sweet as a couple, both gorgeous to look at, but sometimes I looked at them and wondered how they ever made it as a couple. They’d had one hell of a rocky start to their relationship.

  Walking behind Alfie, another smile stretched my lips because I loved to give Alfie shit about Lily. The woman was really all that as a person, but then again so was he. I was a fan of him and his music—he had serious talent—but I’d never make that common knowledge.

  However, no matter how much I wound him up, I couldn’t fault the way he took care of Lily after they’d sorted through their differences. Attentive, protective, and affectionate, it didn’t take much to see that for Alfie the world revolved around his wife, not the sun.

  Each of us filed into the packed press conference which was held in the large ballroom of a swanky hotel in my home town. The reporters were at least twenty deep and twelve seats wide in numbers.

  Everyone else who got to the party late like me were filed two or three deep along both walls to the side and crammed in at the back. Most new artists would have been intimidated by the sight of them but to us this was pretty intimate considering the numbers we performed to.

  Being first on the platform, Gibson took the middle seat, sitting smack bang in center stage and he left the rest of us to shuffle around him. It wasn’t arrogance with Gibson, he had ADHD and found it easier to focus if he was centered by people around him. Had it been anyone else, I’d have told them to move, but Gibson’s face sold papers and as the biggest dude of all of us it made sense to place him right where he was because he’d balance any pictures out they printed in the press.

  Sliding into my seat next to him, I grabbed a glass of water and took a swig because I was still dehydrated from all the alcohol I had drank the night before. Anyway, the press conference wasn’t about who had the biggest ego, it was about bringing attention to the gig and racking up donations.

  As the rest found their seats, Alfie guided his wife to the chair next-but-one to Gibson, placing himself between them. I chuckled when he saw Cody sit next to Lily and smiled because that dude had it bad for his woman as well.

  Our asses had barely hit the seat before the questions started. “Which one of you had the idea for this?” asked one reporter, “Katrina was a while ago, why now?” another chipped in, “Which single artists, and bands have signed up?” shouted another. We knew we had the best gig of the year brewing and I waved my hand for the opportunist questions to stop. Clearing my throat, I smiled for the cameras then stared seriously at the journalists in the room.

  “We’ve been working hard to make this a truly kick ass gig, and so many bands have come forward which shows you how formidable the music industry is when we take up a cause. This one is special to us for a couple of reasons.

  "Number one, I’d only left New Orleans a day before the hurricane struck. It was a pretty scary feeling to watch all those people as they tried to evacuate. Some couldn’t even do that: no gas or no money and nowhere to go. I was one of the lucky ones. I had my own plane. Had I not… who knows if I’d have gotten out in time?”

  Cameras shuttered, whirred, and clicked, but I could have heard a pin drop in the room in between. We had the media’s attention, and we had to make sure it stayed that way until we’d wrung every last cent out of those who tuned in to the fundraiser on TV or came to the live gig.

  “What happened following that catastrophe was a catalogue of disasters. Not one but many and I was ashamed to bear witness to a lot of what happened. Yeah, I hear you, a long time has passed since then but to this day there are still people who are trying to rebuild their lives—many will never regain the standard of living they had before.”

  More cameras clicked their flashes temporarily blinding us, but no one interrupted me. “That standard may not have been very high to begin with, and for others who had worked their whole lives they faced the devastation of being thankful for their lives but not sure if they had the energy to rebuild.”

  “I hear what you’re saying, but don’t you think this charity concert is a little late in the day for this particular cause? I mean there have been other disasters since then.” The question came from a short wavy-haired blonde in her thirties as she looked over her half-rimmed spectacles used to assist her in taking notes.

  “It’s never too late, and this is why this particular cause has my focus. There are people who need our help, so we’ve got to try, right? Winds of Change is an important festival to remind people that some still support. According to the media, news stories relating to Hurricane Katrina have long since died, but those people living down there are still in need of help and support. Some still haven’t even returned to the area because they can’t afford to repair their properties. Believe me this gig is just as important now as it was then.”

  Gibson talked in a commanding voice and sounded like a missionary when he said his two cents worth. I suddenly remembered why we’d brought him on board.

  His understanding of basic needs cut through all the irrelevant questions the press may have wanted to ask and even before Alfie and Lily made their verbal contributions, the media were totally sold on the relevance of it all. I was in awe at his knowledge and clarity of thoughts surrounding why the money needed to be raised and what it should be used for.

  “It isn’t like you to get involved in something like this, Rick,” a small brunette with a huge pair of tits called out from the second row. When she said it the way she did, it sounded like I never gave to charity—she was wrong. I didn’t make my contributions public knowledge that was all.

  “True. Usually, I just make quiet charitable donations to my chosen charities yearly if that’s what you mean, but that doesn’t mean I’m not conscious to what goes on in the world.”

  “I’m surprised he’s sober for long enough to know what’s going on,” one weedy looking thin-haired reporter mumbled to his peer in the front row. I heard the comment but chose to ignore it.

  “What was that you said?” Alfie asked, raising his voice in challenge. Standing up he pointed to me and looked the guy in the eye. “This guy here—the one that’s pulling all this together, has given more of his time and money to charity than you could ever imagine. The reason this event will make the millions it does is because it is Rick Fars who is pulling it all together. There are literally hundreds of bands offering sponsorship for the event hoping to be picked as one of the performers on the day. Do you know why? Because they get to share a gig with Cobham Street, the best band on the planet in my view,” Alfie said with conviction. “What was your contribution to charity last year?” I bit back a grin and watched as the reporter visibly shrank in his seat at Alfie's defense of me.

  When the reporter had nothing to say, Alfie scof
fed. “I thought so. Now apologize to my friend here then get your ass out the door. Sarcastic remarks are not welcome when we’re trying to do something positive to help those in need.”

  Gibson glanced in my direction and raised his eyebrow, “I feel a bromance in the wind,” he muttered under his breath and chuckled.

  “Ah, yes the winds of change can do funny things to a man,” I joked and we both bust out laughing. Paul shot me a dagger of a look and it only made me laugh harder. I was secretly pleased that Alfie had jumped to my defense in that way, but it showed me once again we were family. We could say whatever we wanted about each other, but God help anyone else who fucked with us.

  The atmosphere changed after Alfie made the smart-assed reporter eat crow and the rest of the press conference went as smoothly as a baby’s talcumed ass. Even when they tried to catch me out on the details of the gig, I showed them how together we were.

  As the questions continued, I got to utilize one of my favorite skills. I was great at memorizing lines; a talent which had gotten me out of so much shit in the past when I had been able to recite something I’d read at the last minute, to make me look like I’d been paying attention all along. I surprised everyone when I recalled every name on the paper Gibson had shared without referring to it. It had even made the guys on my side of the table sit up and take notice.

  “Oh. My. God. You’ll have a riot on your hands for those tickets. This gig has just about all the rock royalty in attendance. Careful the stage doesn’t catch fire!” a reporter exclaimed.

  “I hope not,” Lily said as she cringed in memory of a harrowing event of her past. Alfie squeezed her hand, but she smiled like the true rock chick she was, and the other reporters laughed with her.

  “Flynn Docherty, Kane Essex, and Gray Dennison‘s bands as well as all you guys? That’s an incredible line up. How soon do the tickets go on sale?” someone enquired.