The high notes, p.3
The High Notes, page 3
“Yeah, and take ten percent off the top for yourself and spend the rest you were supposed to save for me, like you did last time, Dad?” She’d been eighteen then. She was grown up now and knew better.
“I was acting as your agent,” he said righteously. “That’s what agents get. I could have taken twenty.”
“You spent the rest,” she reminded him. “All of it. You cashed the checks, you told me so yourself.”
“I never lie to you. I had some heavy expenses. And work’s not as easy to find as it used to be.”
“Maybe if you didn’t drink so much, you’d find work a little easier.” He’d lost a number of jobs because of his drinking.
Chip encouraged her to sign on with Hendrix. She’d save some money, since he had blown all of hers, and he said he’d heard Hendrix was a class act. Iris doubted it. Her father wouldn’t know a class act if he saw one. She thought of calling Earl Drake, but she didn’t want to.
She asked some of the musicians she knew what they’d heard about Glen Hendrix, and some of them said he was okay. He organized domestic tours in the United States and some in Europe and Asia, and she might get opportunities that she wouldn’t otherwise. After five years on the road to every miserable small town in America for Weston, she wasn’t enthused. The contracts were long, and some performers didn’t stick it out for all of it and just disappeared, but most were intimidated enough to stay until the end, which gave tour managers a flock of long-term slaves to exploit and keep their tours moving.
But the job at the bar ended, the good casinos had no openings, and she had no way in, and no money. After two months of waitressing and doing odd jobs, she called Earl Drake and signed with Glen Hendrix, for another five-year contract, at a better rate than she’d had from Weston. Hendrix only wanted her to be an opening act for six months, until she proved herself, and then she would be a featured act, with a backup band he’d provide for her. It sounded hopeful, and she told her father about it when he dropped by the restaurant where she was still working as a waitress until she left on tour. She sat down with him during a break for a cup of coffee, and he ordered a beer, as usual. He started drinking beer at breakfast, and added a whiskey chaser to it at night, as he always did.
He was stunned to hear that she had signed a contract without him, and even more so that she had her own bank account, which he had no access to.
“I’m still your agent,” he reminded her.
“Not anymore, Dad. Those days are over. I can’t afford to have you clean me out again, while I work my ass off on tour.” Her face was still innocent, but her eyes were wise now. She’d learned a lot about life in five years on tour.
“I started you on your career,” he said, instantly irate. “You’d be nothing without me. You owe me big-time for that. I’ve been your manager for eleven years, and now you’re trying to screw me!”
“You’ve got it ass backwards, Dad,” she said quietly, not wanting to make a scene at the restaurant. “You screwed me out of every paycheck for the last five years. You never even gave me my tip money when I worked at Harry’s when I was twelve.”
“We needed that so we could eat,” he said, indignant.
“And so you could drink,” she said under her breath, and he looked at her in a fury. He’d been counting on cashing in on her next job, and if she went on tour. He needed the money. He always did. He had sold his truck and was even driving the car of the stripper he was living with.
“Are you going to give me a percentage of what Hendrix is paying you?” He put it to her bluntly, and he forced her to be equally so.
“I can’t, Dad. You’re not my manager or my agent. You’re just my father, and you’ve been cashing in on me since I was twelve. I’m twenty-three, and I don’t have a penny to my name. I need to save something to live on when I finish touring for Hendrix. I can’t come home to an empty bank account again.”
“And how am I supposed to live?” he said, outraged.
“I don’t know. You’ll have to figure it out, and do what you always did, get a job here and there. He’s not paying me that much, and I need it too.” The concept that he should be taking care of her was totally foreign to him. He barely fed her when she was a kid, he never bought anything for her, except old clothes at a garage sale or Goodwill. Harry and Pearl and Sally had been better to her than her own father had ever been.
“So that’s it? You’re cutting me out? You set up your own bank account and you think you’re hot shit?”
“I’m twenty-three, Dad. I’m an adult,” she said. He left no doubt in her mind that his only interest in her was in exploiting her, as he had for half her life. He had made her sing for her supper, literally, nearly all her life, and he wanted it to continue forever, and thought she owed him that.
“You’re a bitch, just like your mother,” he said fiercely, as he set down his empty beer bottle with a bang on the table. “Watch out you don’t end up like her, dead in a bar fight in some shit town somewhere.” She could have said the same to him, but didn’t.
Iris was a profoundly kind person, the lyrics of her songs reeked of it, she had turned out to be honest and moral, hardworking, and a good person, in spite of everything she’d seen with him, and all the slimy characters she’d met with him, and since. None of it had touched her. Her integrity had remained intact. Her father never had any. He was a user to the core. He saw her as an opportunity and someone he could take advantage of. He wanted her to become a star, so he could cash in on her big-time then. He stood up and looked down at her, sitting at the small restaurant table. “Don’t come whining to me if you need something or get into trouble. You think you don’t need a father, well I don’t need a daughter who’s ungrateful for everything I’ve done for her. You’re on your own,” he said, turned his back on her, and walked out of the restaurant without looking back. But she knew only too well that she had always been on her own with him. It was a terrible feeling having him walk out on her. She was still young and she did need a father, just not one like him. He was the one person who should have protected her, and instead he wanted to exploit her more than anyone else and already had.
She bussed her cup and saucer, threw away his empty beer bottle, wiped off the table with a damp rag, and went back to work. She wondered if she’d ever see him again. Maybe not, now that she wouldn’t give him a free hand with the money she made. He was entirely capable of abandoning her completely if she served no purpose for him. She had to take care of herself. She always had. Nothing had really changed.
Chapter 3
Iris didn’t hear from her father again before she left on tour. She thought of trying to call him, but decided not to. He could hold a grudge longer than anyone she knew, and she was sure he was still furious at her. She had no one to say goodbye to when she left Las Vegas. She gave up the small room she’d rented, put one suitcase and a couple of boxes in a storage unit, and left a box of fragile items and small, sentimental things with her landlady. Las Vegas was the closest thing she had to home now. She hadn’t been back to Texas in years, and had no one there.
You could still hear the remnants of her soft drawl. It wasn’t strong, but it was there, except when she sang. She accentuated it on the country songs, but there was no Texas twang in the rest of what she sang. Her father’s accent was still strong.
Several of Glen Hendrix’s tours left on the same day. They met at a garage, and she jumped in a stretch van with a young woman with jet-black hair, and four men, and all their equipment. The others were a featured act; the woman was the singer, and the men her band. One of the men was going to drive. There were four other groups leaving the same day. The tours were better organized than Billy Weston’s had been, and the performers were a little older and more experienced than the kids Billy Weston trapped into contracts. And the performers on Hendrix’s tours were slightly better paid. And her father wouldn’t be getting her checks now. She was hoping to save some money.
They were heading north that day. It was eight in the morning and they had an eleven-hundred-mile drive ahead of them, an estimated eighteen hours. The four men were going to take turns driving, and they expected to arrive in Seattle around two A.M. the following morning, check into the hotel, sleep for a few hours, and then go to the venue to set up and rehearse, and play a concert that night. In all, three bands would be playing, with Iris as the opening act. The woman with the black hair had brought bags of snacks with her for all of them, and they had a cooler full of sodas. She smiled at the woman as they hopped into the van, and took the middle row of seats.
“Hi, I’m Pattie Dixon.” She had long shining jet-black hair and was wearing heavy eye makeup, even at eight A.M., but she had a sweet face and a gorgeous smile. She had the faintest trace of a Southern accent and said she was from Mississippi. As they drove onto the freeway, she told Iris she had been touring for twelve years. All Iris could think of was that she hoped she wouldn’t still be touring seven years from now, but she was in for the next five, like a prison sentence. Pattie said that she was thirty, she had a seven-year-old son living in Mississippi with her mother, who took care of him, and she supported them both. “It’s either this or work at the convenience store where my mama lives. The only thing I know how to do is sing,” she said with her dazzling smile, and Iris smiled.
“Yeah, me too. I’ve been singing in bars since I was twelve.”
“I’m lucky my mama takes care of my boy. I’d be screwed otherwise, I don’t have anyone else to leave him with. His dad took off before he was born. He was a drummer in a band I was touring with. We never got married. He’s a big deal in Nashville now. He’s never seen our kid. So here we are,” she said, glancing at the scenery as they reached the open road. “Where do you live when you’re not on tour?” she asked Iris, who paused, thinking about it.
“Nowhere, actually. My stuff’s in a storage unit in Vegas and with my landlady. I’ve been floating all my life. I’m not sure where I’d live if I had the choice. We lived in Austin for almost nine months when I was a kid. I liked it, and California looks pretty good, but I’ve only been in and out on tour.”
“Have you been to Seattle yet?” Pattie asked her, and Iris shook her head.
“We never toured there, I was with Billy Weston before.”
“The child abuser,” Pattie said with a grin. “I hear he hires teenagers, works them to the bone, and treats them like shit.”
Iris laughed at the description. “That’s about right. I was eighteen. Supposedly Hendrix does better quality tours,” she said, and Pattie looked cynical.
“Don’t count on it. They’re not the worst in the business, but they’re not great either. None of these guys treat their performers right. They milk us for everything they can get, and make a bunch of money off us, and pay as little as they can get away with, while they have us loaded into vans all year, driving all day and night.”
“Yeah, I thought we were getting a night in the hotel before we go on tomorrow night.”
“Not likely,” Pattie said knowingly. “We’ll get a few hours before we have to set up and rehearse.” She had brought a pillow and a blanket so she could sleep on the trip. “We do country, what do you do?” Pattie asked. The two women had formed a bond as soon as they started talking. Iris liked Pattie immediately. There was something vulnerable and sweet about her, despite the hard-looking makeup. Physically, she was the opposite of Iris. She was tall, with a sexy, sensual body, with her dyed black hair. She was very theatrical looking, but normal when you talked to her. She was knitting a sweater for her son while they drove. The two men in front were talking in low voices, and the two men in the backseat were sleeping. They were all about the same age, older than Iris. “So what do you sing?” Pattie asked her again.
“Just about anything. Usually, a lot of hits, some Elvis, some Dolly Parton, Carrie Underwood, Taylor Swift, old favorites, and a lot of material I write myself. Sometimes I do gospel if the mood is right. It depends on the place and the crowd and where we are. I try to tailor it to the audience.”
“A couple of my guys are playing backup for you. They’re good,” Pattie assured her.
The drive was long and boring through Nevada, and they drove north toward Oregon. The trees were tall and thick by then, and the air cooler. It was a pretty drive, and tedious, as the boys took turns at the wheel. They stopped at a truck stop to buy sandwiches for lunch, and ate them as they drove, and stopped again at dinnertime, and had burgers, as Iris realized she had just signed on for five more years of fast food.
By the time they got to Seattle at two-thirty in the morning, it was raining, and they were all exhausted.
They checked in to the hotel they’d been assigned to, and slept two to a room. Pattie had slept on the way, but Iris hadn’t. She was grateful to fall onto her bed, and was asleep before Pattie came out of the bathroom in her pajamas. Iris was dead to the world. They had left all their sound equipment in the van, and would unload it at the venue that afternoon. They had agreed to meet up again at noon.
When Iris woke up in the morning, Pattie was already dressed and had her makeup on, and had been to Starbucks. She handed Iris a cup of coffee, which she took gratefully and sipped it. It was still steaming hot. It was nice to wake up feeling like she had a friend. Pattie said she had gotten up at five to FaceTime with her son before he went to school in Biloxi.
“He sees more of me on FaceTime than he does in real life. I go home between tours, but it’s so little time. I keep telling him I’ll come home to stay one of these days, but I don’t know if I ever will. I make more doing this than I would working at 7-Eleven, making Slurpees. You gotta do what you gotta do, especially when you have a kid. I used to think I’d be a big star one day, now I’d be glad with a job at a nightclub in Vegas, but you’ve got to know someone to get those jobs.”
“I know, I’ve tried. They put you on a waiting list, and you never hear from them again. I think it would work better if you had an agent, but I don’t,” Iris said simply, drinking her coffee. “I don’t want to tour forever,” she admitted.
“Neither do I, but braces for my kid, piano lessons, doctors’ bills for my mom, new brakes for her car . . . and I sign up for another round of tours. Real life is a bitch, but at least I have my son. I have no regrets about that, even if his dad was an asshole. My Jimmy is the sweetest kid.” She had shown Iris pictures of him on her phone the day before, in the first hour they met. He was a beautiful little boy.
“I don’t have that excuse for being here,” Iris said, “but I couldn’t get any other job singing and it’s all I want to do. I’m not ready to give up.”
“You’re right. At your age, I didn’t want to either. Now with a kid, I’m torn. Sometimes I think I should quit and go home. I’ve got another three years in my contract; we’ll see where things are then. If I got a steady job in Vegas, I could bring Jimmy and my mom out to live there, but I haven’t found a regular job in Vegas yet. I don’t know if I ever will.”
“What about Nashville?” Iris asked her.
“It’s a thought. I don’t know if I want to live that close to my ex.”
They left for the concert venue to set up and rehearse at eleven-thirty, with their clothes for the performance, since they wouldn’t have time to come back, and they’d been told they’d have a dressing room. The hotel had been clean and decent, with no frills, but the sheets were clean and there were no rats or cockroaches, which they had both experienced before on tour. When they got to the concert hall, while the boys unloaded the equipment from the van, Pattie and Iris went to check out the dressing rooms. They were tiny, but big enough to change in. Sometimes they weren’t.
“It’s a glamorous life, isn’t it?” Pattie said, and they both laughed as they looked at what must have been equipment closets in another life and turned into dressing rooms. Each one was just big enough for a rolling rack for their clothes, and a dressing table with a mirror and a chair to put their stage makeup on. Iris wore very little, but Pattie went on in full war paint in a low-cut black leather halter and tight black leather pants, and looked incredibly sexy when she was onstage. Iris wore black jeans and a black sweater, her long blond hair brushed straight, in order to draw the least amount of attention to herself. She wanted the songs and the music to speak for themselves. Their theories and their styles were completely different, but they got along anyway, and were each grateful to have a friend.
After they set up, Tom, Ben, Willy, and Judd from the band went out for something to eat, and brought food back for Pattie and Iris. They rehearsed at four, and were finished at six. The concert started at eight. The other bands had arrived before that, and rehearsed before Pattie and her group.
Iris was nervous before she went on. The stage was completely dark when she took her place on a tall stool, with the two musicians from Pattie’s band in the darkness behind her. Iris wanted the music to hang in the air and envelop the crowd and pull them in.
The audience was excited and hadn’t settled down yet when she came on. She had to work when she started, and by the end of the first song, she knew she had them in her grip. Pattie watched her from the wings and was fascinated. Iris held them totally captive with the sheer power of her voice. She was a tiny, little thing with an angel’s face, and as soon as she started singing, the crowd didn’t move until frantic applause at the end. She warmed them up beautifully for Pattie, who exploded onto the stage. She gave a wildly athletic performance, which Iris thought was good enough for any show in Vegas, but no one had discovered her yet.
