by Neil Plakcy
“Cut to the chase, Gavin. What do you want?”
“I want a say in my future. For starters, I want to be on your conference call this afternoon. As you always told me, you can’t win if you don’t play. I want to play.”
“Fine. I’ll conference you in at four o’clock. And now, if you don’t mind, I have cars to sell.”
“Knock ’em dead, Dad,” Gavin said and then hung up.
Business Deals
At his father’s urging, Gavin had taken a couple of business courses at FU. He hadn’t hated them, but he hadn’t exactly loved them, either. When he got back to his apartment, he pulled out his marketing textbook and flipped through it, reminding himself of some key terms. Online he found bloggers who discussed the pros and cons of new bands signing immediately with labels.
He wished he could talk all this over with Miles before the call, but it was clear that Miles wasn’t interested in his input, and Gavin knew it was time he stood up for himself instead of always looking for someone to give him direction. Stand there, turn this way, smile, frown, lean forward.
He read a bunch of case studies of artist development. Some groups, like the boy bands and girl groups of the 1990s, had been assembled by a music producer, who had provided them with their identity, their music, and their marketing. Other acts had begun in someone’s garage, singing covers at dances and small clubs, building their identity from the inside out.
The typical pattern was that after gaining the attention of a major label, the band would be fronted with cash to produce an album. The label would arrange promotion, touring, and radio play in exchange for a big share of the group’s earnings.
With the rise of the Internet, more and more artists had made their own way. Justin Bieber had launched his career with a series of YouTube videos, just as the Sweethearts were doing.
Gavin sat back in his chair. He had never considered the cost of producing music; it was just something that appeared on the radio or online. But he learned that it was expensive to pay for songwriters and engineers and cover design, for promotional materials and public relations help.
Miles owned his own equipment, and all he’d put in so far was his time and his skill. But why? Because he saw a financial windfall. Gavin hunted through his e-mails, trying to find the agreement Miles had signed with his father, and realized he’d never been sent a copy. He doubted that Erica and Archie had, either. They’d just signed those contracts at Starlit Lake without question.
So Miles had been using him all along. The sex was probably just to keep him quiet. And Gavin had been the one to say “I love you” first—all Miles had done was parrot it back to him, and in Spanish, then translate it, as if Gavin was too stupid to know what it meant.
How could the guy be such a slimeball? Gavin felt like he needed a shower just thinking about the way Miles had touched him.
Promptly at four, he dialed the number his father had texted him and then put in his code. “At the sound of the tone, please say your name, then press the pound key,” a robotic female voice said. “You will be the fourth participant.”
As soon as he was connected, he heard someone say, “Hello, Gavin. I’m Alan Questron. I’ve been handling the business deals for the Singing Sweethearts for a few years now, and I’m excited to see things heating up.”
“And you already know Miles,” his father said. “Now, let’s get started.”
Gavin followed the basic outline of the conversation, and he kept his mouth shut, waiting for the time when he felt he had to speak up. That came when Alan and Miles began debating the group’s image and how to appeal to the largest market share.
“Excuse me,” Gavin said, breaking in. “But shouldn’t Archie, Erica, and I have a say in what kind of group we want to be and what kind of music we want to sing?”
“Let the people who know the business talk, Gavin,” his father said.
“Happy to, Dad. Once I get a chance to say my piece. I may not know the music business from the inside, but I know what it’s like to be in the audience. My friends and I won’t listen to crap that sounds manufactured. There’s a reason why they call musicians artists, because there needs to be something creative, something artistic, behind the music. That’s what people respond to, and that’s what makes them buy music and share it with their friends and join communities.”
There was silence on the line for a moment, until Alan said, “Gavin’s right. We can’t impose an identity on them. That has to come from the music they choose to perform and the way they perform it.”
“So what do we do?” Gavin’s father asked.
“The first thing we have to do is make sure that Archie and Erica want to continue singing,” Gavin said. “Anybody asked either of them?”
No response.
“I thought so. Archie has a career, and Erica’s about to start grad school. In order for this group to be a success, both of them have to give up what they’re doing. And you haven’t even asked them.”
“I think we’ve jumped ahead too quickly,” Miles said. “Gavin’s right. We need to step back and see where we can go from here. Four songs aren’t enough for a CD. And the group can’t make a career out of covers. I know a songwriter I can hook them up with, a friend of mine in Nashville who can do amazing things with choral harmony. Why don’t I ask if he has any songs he thinks might be right for the group, send them to Gavin, Archie, and Erica, and see where we go from there?”
“Sounds like a plan,” his father said.
They ended the call, and Gavin hung up. Almost immediately, his phone rang with his father’s number.
“Do you remember the campaign we did when the Highlander launched?”
It was so not what he was expecting his father to say that it took Gavin a moment to connect the dots. “You mean the TV commercial when I was about ten and I got behind the wheel and pretended to drive?”
“That’s the one. I may not have said so at the time, but it was genius. And every so often, I see a glimmer of that in you, Gavin. You made me proud this afternoon.”
“Really?”
“Remember, Grandma Frances is my mother. I know what it’s like to grow up with an artist. You should have heard the way she sang when I was a kid—I wish we had recordings of those songs. She’d hear something on the radio and then make it her own. When she and her sisters got together, they didn’t just sing their old songs. They sang contemporary music too. Grandma loved Elvis Presley, and she could sing the hell out of ‘In the Ghetto.’”
Gavin had heard that song and couldn’t imagine his grandmother singing it.
“Are you busy this weekend?” his father asked. “Think you could fly up to Madison? I’ll get Archie and drive down, and we’ll sit down with Erica, get Miles on the phone, and see what we come up with.”
Gavin agreed and then hung up. He texted Careful, asking for the weekend off, and when he heard back, he made a reservation for a Friday late-afternoon flight to Madison. He texted Erica and Archie and asked if the three of them could get together Friday night without anyone else.
Erica called him a few minutes later. “What’s going on? Why are you coming up here?”
“Have you seen our videos on YouTube?”
“Yeah, I checked them out the first day. They were cool.”
“But you haven’t looked since? At the hit counter? And you don’t know about the iTunes upload?”
“Gavin, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
He walked her through checking the numbers for all four videos; then they looked up their cover of “I’m Yours” on iTunes. “Where did they get that picture to go with the song?” Erica asked. “I look terrible.”
“No you don’t,” Gavin said. “It’s a screen grab from the video.”
“This is all so surreal,” Erica said. “I mean, do they have the right to do any of this? We didn’t sign anything.”
Gavin remembered that morning around the kitchen table at Starlit Lake. “Sure we did.” He
reminded Erica of the way that single page had been passed around, collecting everyone’s signatures. “My dad said he was sending your dad a copy. Did you ever see it?”
“No. I never thought to ask my dad if he had it.”
“I’ll bet you that in addition to agreeing to perform, we must have signed away all our rights to those performances.”
“How could they!” she said.
“They’re our parents. We’ve always let them do everything. But no more.”
“Gavin, I have auditions this weekend for a concert. I can’t just skip out of school.”
“But this could be a whole new future for us,” Gavin said, appalled that she wasn’t as excited as he was. “We could be a group.”
“Do you know how many musical acts fail?” she asked. “I know so many people from college who are working as waitresses and baristas and waiting for some kind of stardom that’s never going to happen.”
“Ouch,” Gavin said.
“You know I didn’t mean you, Gav. But really? The three of us as a singing group? You’ve said yourself a hundred times you can barely sing.”
“But I’m learning. And we looked good at the Dells, and we sounded great. Look at all those YouTube views and iTunes downloads. This could be a launch pad for us.”
“I don’t know.”
“Please, Erica? Meet with me on Friday night. Can I stay over at your place?”
“I guess.”
“And see if you can skip at least one rehearsal so we can meet, all of us?”
“I hate you, Gavin.” She sighed. “But I’ll see what I can do.”
He didn’t hear from Archie until late that night. His cousin was similarly clueless—nobody had even showed him the YouTube videos. “So what?” Archie asked. “The MadHatters had a bunch of videos there.”
“With the kind of numbers we’ve gotten? Go look. And then we’ll look at iTunes too.”
“I don’t need to go look, Gavin. I agreed to sing at one concert. And then that got drawn out into a whole rehearsal extravaganza. I just got back to work on Tuesday, and I need to focus on my career.”
“Give it a rest, Archie. You don’t have a career. You have a job. At a tiny little bank in a tiny little town in Nowhere, Wisconsin. Is that all you want from life? What, you think you’re going to be manager someday?”
“Better that than being a barista all my life. I’ve got to go. Good luck with your star-struck career.” He hung up, and Gavin watched the screen of his cell phone fade to black.
See the World
Gavin worked a double shift on Thursday to make up for having the weekend off, and he was too busy making drinks, running the register, and cleaning up to obsess too much about a potential music career or Miles Goodwin, though he did wonder why Miles didn’t call, didn’t even stop by for a Jumbo Joe.
Friday morning, during his break, he called his father.
“Looks like this is a no-go,” his dad said. “Archie absolutely refuses, and Wally agrees. He doesn’t think music is the right career for his son. And Scott and Jenny are determined that Erica finish her degree. They figure she can be a music teacher with a master’s.”
“I’m coming anyway. I’m going to stay with Erica and work on her, and then she and I will convince Archie.”
“I think you’re wasting your time, son, but if you can pull them together, you let me know and I’ll get on the phone with you.”
Gavin had to change planes in Chicago, and while he was on the ground, he got a text from Miles. Super busy, hope 2 c u this wkend. He didn’t respond.
He landed at Dane County Regional Airport late in the afternoon and took a city bus out to the UWM campus, where he found Erica’s apartment a few blocks from campus. It was still high summer in the Midwest, and the trees were green and leafy. He rang her bell, and she buzzed him in the front door. He climbed the stairs to the second floor with his duffel bag over his shoulder.
“Hey, cuz,” she said, kissing his cheek. “Long time no see.”
She shared an apartment in an old building with another music student, and her windows looked out into the branches of an oak. She led him into the living room, where he put down his duffel and sank into an overstuffed sofa.
“How’s school?” he asked.
“They get you started early,” she said. “Our first concert is at the end of October, and they’re already running auditions. I’m worried that my voice is screwed up from all the focus on pop music.”
“How can your voice get screwed up?”
She shook her head. “You don’t know enough about music to understand.” She sat across from him. “So I had this conversation with my parents this morning. Turns out they think I have zero chance of getting a job with an operatic company, but they’re humoring me while I just get the master’s so I can be a teacher.”
“Do you want that?”
“No. Way. I am not spending my life corralling high school kids into performing. I guarantee you, it’s not like you see on Glee at all.”
“Then you should want to try singing with me and Archie.”
“Actually, I’m thinking of going for a joint degree—the Master of Music and a Master’s in Library Information Science. If I can’t get a job with an opera company, I’d rather be a music librarian than a teacher.”
“Get real, Erica. You? A librarian?”
“Librarians are cool, Gavin. Especially at the college level.”
“And how many jobs are there for music librarians? More than there are for coloratura sopranos?”
“Well, there’s that,” she said. “I don’t know, Gav.”
“I’m sure we could work things around your school schedule, at least at first,” Gavin said. “Miles says he knows a songwriter in Nashville who might have some original music for us to sing, so it would mostly be rehearsal and studio time for a while. Then maybe next summer, we could line up some gigs.”
“There’s a studio at school I could use,” she said. “To record tracks and send them to Miles. We don’t all have to be together.”
“See, you’re figuring it out already.”
“But what about Archie? I doubt he’d be up for it.”
“We’ll just have to convince him.” Gavin looked at his watch. “You have a car, right? Let’s drive up to Chippewa Falls and surprise him.”
“You mean ambush him,” she said. “It’s a three-hour drive. So we’d have to stay in Eau Claire tonight. And I can’t stay with my folks because they hate the idea.”
“Then we’ll stay at my house. You can have Wretched’s room.”
“This is a crazy idea,” she said, but she stood up and started to pack a bag. They were on I-90 by the time their conversation got around to Miles. “Have you been seeing him back in Miami?”
“He came into the coffee shop on Wednesday, and we talked,” Gavin said. “That’s how this whole thing kicked off. I was totally shocked that he and my dad and Alan had cooked up all these plans.”
“That’s all? You just saw him at the coffee shop?”
“It’s where I work,” Gavin said.
“You know what I mean. You didn’t go out or anything?”
Gavin shook his head. “He’s busy, and I don’t really want to see him again. So he didn’t call me, and I didn’t call him.”
“Why not? He’s nice, and he’s cute, and he’s definitely into you.”
“I don’t like the way everybody is working around behind our backs, moving us around like pieces on a chess board. If that’s all he wants from me—”
“You don’t know that, Gavin. He could be busy and thinking you’re on board with everything.”
Halfway through the drive, Erica switched to I-94, and Gavin leaned back in his seat to think about Miles Goodwin. What did he want? Had he just recognized the Singing Sweethearts as a meal ticket and used Gavin to get to them? It sure hadn’t seemed that way when they were together.
Gavin had had plenty of sex with a wide variety of guys, but he�
�d felt something different with Miles—something deeper, more emotional. The sex had been great, but more than that, he had liked it because he was doing it with Miles. But was he just being foolish, reading more into the situation because he wanted to?
Guys rarely turned Gavin down, but Miles had, at least at first. Was that what he felt—the thrill of the conquest? But if that was all it was, then why hadn’t the feeling gone away once he’d had Miles?
There was nothing special about Miles. His face was handsome in an ordinary way. He had a decent body, toned by those Zumba workouts, and his dance moves showed a sensuous Latin side, which, as a white guy from Wisconsin, Gavin found very sexy. Miles was passionate about music and very knowledgeable, but lots of men had passions that didn’t move or involve Gavin.
Gavin gave up and turned to Erica. “What are you studying, anyway?”
“I have a one-hour private voice lesson every week and then a studio master class. And I’m taking Musicology and Music Theory, which bores the crap out of me already.”
“I couldn’t go back to school,” Gavin said. “I was so glad to finish at FU.”
“You have too much testosterone to be a soprano. And you’re too old to have the operation.”
Gavin shivered. “I’ll stick to being a baritone.”
About an hour outside Eau Claire, Gavin called his mother at home. “Two more for dinner, Mom. I’m on my way with Erica.”
“That’s fine,” his mother said. “I made lasagna, and there will be enough for everybody.”
Dinner was already on the table when they walked in.
“So my son has already roped you in,” his father said as he stood to kiss Erica.
“I’m keeping an open mind,” she said.
They sat down to eat, and Gavin’s father seemed determined not to talk about music, instead telling stories about the dealership. “I believe the customer is always right. Even when they’re wrong. It’s just a matter of framing things correctly. I had a customer ram his car into his garage door, and I had to tell him I’m sorry that you’ve had problems with your brakes, but they’re not designed to work effectively while you have your other foot on the gas pedal. I’ll certainly pass that on to the factory, though. In the meantime, let’s talk about your repair bill.”