Dissonance - Chapter 9

Kent called as I was leaving my training session with Victor. I was sore and a little bruised from his habit of whacking me with the pad every time I missed a block or didn’t time a hit right, and part of me wanted to just ignore it and get back to Hanna’s aunt’s house so I could lay down and rest. That wasn’t an option, of course, but sometimes it was tough dealing with everything being thrown at me while other kids from school were just hanging out and playing video games.

“Hey, Kent. What’s up?” I said, answering.

“Just wanted to give you a heads up that Brent has finally made it into town, and he’s looking to meeting up with you. We have a small satellite office here in town and we’ve set up a meeting for you two tomorrow morning at nine. I’m sorry I can’t be there to officially introduce the two of you, but I’ve been called out to LA for some meetings. The office staff knows you two are coming, though, so you shouldn’t run into any problems.”

“We should be okay. I’m glad he made it. We’re only two days away from our first show. I was a little worried we weren’t going to be able to meet him before our first gig. I’ll let the guys know about the meeting.”

“He said he wants to meet with just you tomorrow, to get things squared away between the two of you before you involve the band or Hanna.”

“I thought you talked to him about keeping Hanna involved, at least through this tour.”

“I did, and he said he was on board. He just wants to start building a relationship with you, since you’re the primary person being represented.”

Considering everything that had been happening with Marco, the last thing I needed to do was hold secret, one-on-one meetings with our new manager before he met with the rest of the band. I also wanted Hanna to be involved, not just because it was good experience for her before she headed off to college, but because she’d already shown how valuable she could be. She was better about keeping her eye on what we really needed to focus on and putting her foot down when we were headed the wrong way. It was easy to get swept up in all of this, so it was good to have someone whose job it was to say ‘no’ when needed. Although I liked to think I was level-headed, I watched my dad make all the wrong decisions in his career, and there were countless stories of people who thought they could handle it and letting this industry twist them up. Most of the time, a lot of those mistakes could have been stopped simply by having someone around to put everything in check.

“I really would prefer to have everyone there. We’re all going to have to work together starting this weekend, and I’m not sure if we have enough time for this meeting, another get to know you meeting with everyone else, and still have time to get ready for our first gig. I think it’d be better if we got all the preliminary stuff out of the way tomorrow so we can get down to business. The next few weeks are going to be pretty busy.”

Kent didn’t say anything and I worried for a second I might have overstepped. Unlike the lawyers, who were the only other people from the label I’d met, Kent had been really informal with all of us, so sometimes it was easy to forget he was the one who made suggestions to the label about whether they should keep us on or not. If we were a big name that paid a lot of the label’s bills, we could demand how we wanted them to interact with us or specify conditions, but we weren’t. They might think we were commercially viable, but I was a minor and we were all but unknown, which meant they were taking a serious chance on us. Kent seemed like a good guy, but I needed to keep that in mind.

Thankfully, he didn’t seem to take offense.

“Makes sense. I’ll let him know to expect all of you.”

“Thanks, Kent,” I said, hanging up.

Everyone was pumped to hear about the meeting, since this was when the tour really started to feel real. The next day we all met outside the address we’d been given for the office and went upstairs together. The secretary must have been given my picture or something, or maybe just us being in a large group made it obvious, because she knew who I was the second we walked through the door, directing us to a conference room just off the reception area. Kent hadn’t been wrong when he’d said this was a small office. Other than the reception area and the conference room, there had to only be enough room for two or three other offices in the suite, based on them being on a corner of the building.

There was a guy already sitting at the table when we went inside. He was maybe in his thirties, had jet black hair that was slicked back, and was wearing a dark gray suit.

“Charlie?” he asked, sticking his hand out towards me as he stood halfway up from his seat at the table.

It wasn’t a hard guess. I was visibly the youngest of the group, with only Hanna within a few years of me, and there was no confusing her and me.

“Charlie, it’s so good to meet you. I’ve been hearing some really great things about you from Kent, and the early sample from the recording I heard was amazing. I swear, we’re going to have a really great time over the next few weeks. I’m expecting some big things for us.”

It was amazing how, for a guy who was smiling with his incredibly straight, white teeth, and using what I assumed was his most friendly tone of voice, I believed nothing he said. Everything about him read used car salesman. I honestly felt like he might whip out a vacuum cleaner or a set of steak knives to sell me before the meeting was over.

“Uhh, sure,” I said. “This is the rest of the band. Seth, Marco and Lyla. And this is Hanna, who’s been helping us keep everything organized.”

Hanna and I had discussed our first meeting with Brent the night before. She felt that, since she wasn’t a professional and this was our first meeting with him, it might start us off on the wrong foot to introduce her as our manager, since he was officially our manager and she wasn’t. I would have been fine describing her as our manager, considering the volume of work she’d already done to keep us organized and focused, but I understood her hesitation and wasn’t going to make her feel uncomfortable.

“So, our first few stops are going to be pretty small. I understand you’ve been playing in some local clubs in the Ashville area, so these shouldn’t be that big of a departure for you. The largest seats seven hundred, although I don’t want you to feel like the label is expecting you to fill those. You’re just starting out and we’re nowhere near your existing fan base, so we’re basically only relying on people just happening to come into the club or hearing the couple of drive-time radio spots we’ve managed to arrange for you. The goal of these shows is to build word of mouth for the album’s release in a few months. The first week’s sales numbers are the best you’re going to get, so it’s important to make sure people know it’s coming and are familiar enough with you to buy into it. As you pick up steam, in later tours, we’ll start worrying about things like audience capacity.”

“Okay,” I said.

Kent hadn’t discussed this, but Hanna had worked most of that out on her own and explained it, based on the people she’d talked to and a handful of trade publications she’d read. She hadn’t been as direct about it, but she’d told us the label wouldn’t be counting how much we fill the stops on this first go.

“Now, a couple of notes on these shows. You’re young and I know crowds can be kind of difficult, and the last thing we want is to leave these first crowds with a bad reputation since, like I said, a lot of what we’re going to rely on is word of mouth. Once you’re done with your set, I want you guys to pack up and head on out. We’ll use the appearances I’m lining up on some drive-time radio shows to let your audience get to know you, since those appearances are easier to control. If you get into a bind there, I’ll be there to help back you out and the DJs know what they’re doing and can step in and cover you if you fumble.”

That was pretty much the exact opposite of the first advice Willie had ever given me about touring when I’d gone with him to a few stops of his last tour. He’d said, more than once, that it was important to meet people at shows, especially when you’re at places where the audience didn’t come specifically for you.

I’d had a similar conversation with Hanna, although she approached it from a completely different angle. She’d read a study that talked about memory association and art. It had said that, when someone is first exposed to a piece of art, be it a movie, a painting, or a song, people were more likely to remember it if they had an experience associated with it. A theory in how memory worked was that we don’t just store events in our memory, that we called up the associated feelings.

A person was more likely to remember looking at a painting if they were on a date to an art gallery or if something emotional had happened recently, because they would tie in the feeling from that experience with viewing the art, and their brain would associate that every time they saw the art or experienced something similar.

The same was true of concerts. They were more likely to remember the music if they also had a positive experience meeting one of the musicians, or anyone else they might think about later, but that second part wasn’t really something we could control. It’s why, after Willie’s suggestion, I always went out and mingled with the audience before I left for the night. That might not have mattered much at the Blue Ridge, since it was the same crowd much of the time, but it mattered when I’d gone into Ashville to play.

We’d even had people from Ashville shows come up to see a show at the Blue Ridge, and specifically mentioned meeting us before at an earlier show.

“You know this isn’t my first gig, right? We play most weekends and deal with crowds all the time.”

“I know, but these will be real audiences, not locals in a small town bar.”

“We get a lot more than locals, but we don’t just play in our own town. We’ve played in several places in Ashville with some decent sized crowds, some the same size as places we’re playing on this tour.”

“Which is great. Don’t let the capacities of the location fool you. Those kinds of places are great for kids getting their start, but we’re going into real venues that have hosted real musicians. I’ve been doing this for a while, so I think you should listen to me on this.”

If he could name two places we’d played, I’d be shocked. He was just writing off everything we’d done as completely amateur, and written me off as some kid who didn’t know what he was doing. I know the situation was different and he was from our label, so he had some say over what happened, but I wasn’t going to sit around and let him treat me like I was an idiot.

“Brent, I appreciate that you’ve been doing this for a while, but I’ve been playing shows for a year now and I’ve drawn some pretty decent crowds. We’ve played festivals and we’ve played clubs where some big names have played over the years. After our set, I plan on being at the merch table while Hanna and Kat are selling merch, so I can meet people. You’re just going to have to find a way to deal with that.”

I tried to sound as nonchalant as possible, but some of my annoyance at once again being treated like a child started to slip through.

“Hey, no need to get in a twist. If you want to press the flesh at the merch table after a show, I’m not going to stop you. I just want you to be careful is all. I’ll try and be nearby. Just give me a sign if you get into trouble. How’s that sound?”

I just nodded in agreement. He was still being an ass, but at least he hadn’t fought me on it.

“Second note. We’re going to have a bunch of early mornings, and it’s important to be on time for those, and I’ve also started getting some other marketing set up. Some of it will seem out there, but I promise you, it will work.”

“Like what?” Hanna asked.

“Some local bloggers, some podcasts, renting some local mailing lists and having them send a notice about your show. None of them will bring in big crowds themselves, but put together they’ll bring some people in. Like I said, we aren’t looking for you to fill these places. We want to get your name out there. I’ve heard you guys already have a mailing list started, right?”

“Yes, although we haven’t had it for long,” I said.

That had been Hanna’s doing. I hadn’t even thought of it, even though once she explained the idea behind it, I kicked myself for waiting so long. We only sent out emails when we played somewhere other than the Blue Ridge, which we’d only done once since starting the list, but it’d worked. We’d gotten maybe five or six people to show up from cities other than Wellsville to hear the show, who’d specifically told us when we’d gone out to mingle that they’d heard about it through the mailing list. I don’t know for sure, but if we heard about it from them, then there was a chance there were a handful of other people in attendance who heard about it from the mailing list but hadn’t talked to us.

“Great. We’re going to start building out a separate list, but it’s okay to keep building your own list when you’re home. We’ll treat our list as your tour list.”

“Why?” Hanna asked, now sounding equally annoyed as I’d been a second ago.

“Because it allows synergy with other artists on the label. We’ll be able to work with your list and integrate it into other local artist’s lists, allowing you to cross-promote your tours to other people interested in bands similar to yours that also tour on the label.”

“Did this tour get promoted to the list?” Hanna asked, her annoyance turning into skepticism.

“No. We’ve found there’s a limit to how often we can promote to any list and have it be effective and not lose more subscribers than we gain. We let the marketing department decide the best strategy for using mailing lists to promote shows. I don’t believe they’ve promoted your show this time, but there will be future tours where you could benefit from this exposure.”

“Is there any kind of guarantee that they’ll get their next tour promoted to these lists?”

“Like what? I mean, why wouldn’t we promote you as best as we could. We benefit from these tours just as much as you do, both in the label’s share of the profits from the tour and in exposure to push up streams and album sales.”

“Then why not push them out this time? I mean, if it’s a no-brainer for the record label. Especially since, outside of our area, they aren’t that well known and could use all the help they can get if this album is going to do well. As I understand it, the decision whether to get a second album made is based on how well this first one does, so it doesn’t make any sense to push marketing to groups that already have traction over new groups.”

“Look, I know it can be confusing. These kinds of decisions are made by professionals who know their fields and track the numbers closely,” he said condescendingly. “If you just take their advice and …”

“No, I understand the decision. When I started up the list for Charlie and the band, I did a ton of research on this, and even traded some emails with Linda Chapman’s manager to get some clarification. As I understand it, there is a cost associated with these mailings. It costs to send them out, since you have to use platforms to get them into people’s inboxes. It also has, as you pointed out, a cost as far as losing subscribers, since the more subscribers you can send to, the greater response you can get. People tend to unsubscribe from lists if they don’t recognize the thing they’re being marketed, which is why Linda’s people suggested we maintain our own list, so that people who sign up with us aren’t being marketed to about groups they may have never heard about.”

“While we all know how good House of Grace is doing on the market, they’re a very different animal than you, since they can afford to insulate themselves and not team up with other groups to build each other’s brands. I think it’s best if …”

“She has a point,” I said. “You keep saying the reason we need to share our list with others on the label is to help build each other’s brands, but you admit that none of that is being used to promote this tour, which is kind of make or break for us, since it’s our first shot with the label. If our lists are only going to support larger bands on the label, then what’s in it for us?”

I could tell he was getting frustrated, but I could feel the rug being pulled out from under me. I couldn’t exactly figure out why he was playing games with stuff like this, since it was so minor. Our shows weren’t going to be packed, so we weren’t going to be adding many names at each show anyway. I knew there was an angle here, I just couldn’t figure it out.

“Guys, you’re going to have to listen to me on this.”

“I’ve read through the contract several times, and I don’t remember anything about this being required. As far as I can remember, I don’t remember the collecting of contact information for mailing lists being covered in the contract at all,” Hanna said. “I can call Kent and double-check, but are we required to do this?”

“Well, no …”

“Great,” Hanna said, rolling right over him. “What I think we can do then, is keep both lists, and give people a chance to sign up for their choice. One list if they want updates on performances by The Wild Cats and one if they want to hear about any performances from bands on the label.”

“Now, wait a …”

“If, in the future, it’s decided to market these guys’ shows to the lists they’d be contributing to, then we’ll of course be happy to just use one sign-up for the mailing list, and share it between both.”

Brent went a bit pink around the neck. I think he might have been willing to have one list and share it if Hanna pushed, but she’d taken it a step further than I thought she would. I would have been fine sharing the list with them, since I did want to support the label, and I was a little concerned she might be pushing too far, but Hanna usually didn’t do things without a reason, and I trusted her.

She could always explain it later.