She didn’t elaborate and I didn’t push it.
For the next three hours I gave her the Reader’s Digest version of my life. When I got done she knew more about me than anyone alive other than my parents. She seemed spellbound. When I finally wound down she had only one thing to say.
“Wow.”
Of course, for all my openness, I made her promise to keep what I told her in confidence.
We made it back to Crockett with forty five minutes to spare. Jim was about to give me shit but Moira warned him off.
When the show was over I went to Wal-Mart and got one of those cheap pay as you go phones with an unlimited plan. It wasn’t my IPhone but it would keep me in touch until I could get it back.
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I had called Sammi every day but she wouldn’t talk to me. So much for my new resolve to be a better communicator. I checked, she did turn the rental in and they had my phone.
Sammi actually did me a favor by letting everyone know as far as she was concerned the wedding was on hold. We were having ‘communication’ issues.
Since she wasn’t talking to me and hadn’t returned to the house, I had to agree with her.
It was the week of the benefit, finally. Everyone involved was keyed up, the rehearsals had gone well, the equipment had been checked. We had been advertised heavily on radio and TV, and a few of us hit the local morning shows to promote it.
My band and the horn section actually played a couple of songs in studio, trying to generate more interest. It went so well they played a clip on the evening news cast. Luckily, we had a last minute addition to announce. Mr. Chance Blaze was going to make a brief appearance, and might bring a friend or two.
Freddie confirmed this on his Facebook page, saying he wasn’t sure which night he would appear because of rehearsal schedules. He did this deliberately, hoping to boost ticket sales.
It was a three night event, and you had the option of buying a ticket for one performance or for all three nights.
We had a few tickets given away on radio, but since it was a benefit they were limited. Pre-sales were actually pretty good.
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Nonnie’s grandson decided to run the same week. He cut his ankle bracelet loose, hoping he could be gone before anyone noticed it.
The flaw to that plan was that the bracelet had a temperature sensor built in. If it dropped below body temperature for more than two minutes it alerted the monitor.
The monitor went off just as he was leaving the house. The guy who was spot checking for me was already on the scene.
He followed the car he was in, calling for backup.
In a classic box move they bracketed his car and forced him over within sight of the city limits.
The driver was high, and showed mighty poor judgement by waving a pistol around. Bondsmen don’t play. They had their weapons out and were in a pretty tense standoff until the police arrived.
The driver was arrested for weapons and drug charges, along with aiding a fleeing felon. The grandson was arrested for violating his bond and remanded, without the availability of bail.
Nonnie got back ninety percent of the money, but spent it all on lawyers, even though they advised her to just let it happen.
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Sammi finally called me on Wednesday morning. She was staying with Sandy, of all people. Seemed she had moved back to town when her bisexual lover decided he really wanted to play on the boys’ team. She even had her old job back.
“”She wants to talk to you, to apologize in person. Will you let her?”
I thought that was a conversation I really wanted to have.
We agreed that Sammi should stay where she was until after the benefit. I did make her promise to come, and had tickets delivered to the restaurant, including one for Sandy and Gary, telling her she should bring him along as a thank you for helping her. He was just as big a fan of Freddie as she was and I was pretty sure he would take the bait. I sweetened it by promising to introduce them to Freddie.
……………………
Freddie surprised me by agreeing to make an appearance, but there were motivating factors.
One, he had a niece with cancer, and two he really wanted to record the song I had sent him.
“I Got A Plan’ was written when I was thinking about proposing to Sammi. Freddie’s whole production team was drooling. This could be his signature song. I didn’t tell him who wrote it, but he suspected.
“This is yours, isn’t it?” He hadn’t called, just shown up.
When I admitted it was he immediately wanted to know if I had more. I showed him my file cabinet and told him there was probably a hundred and fifty in various stages of completion. I thought he was gonna wet himself.
He immediately demanded first choice, and I told him we would talk about it after the benefit.
After swearing the whole group of us to secrecy, he wanted to debut ‘I Got A Plan’ during the benefit, to gauge crowd reaction. We practiced it four times in private, just Freddie, Moira, Jim, Al, me, and Frank, the guitarist from Hard Country. Moira stepped in and totally reworked the music, turning it into a wide open party song instead of the ballad I envisioned. It was a hundred percent better. I finally allowed myself to get excited about it.
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Finally it was Thursday night.
After talking it over we decided to limit the number of tickets to twenty two hundred, and leave a space for dancing. We were all veterans of bar bands, and knew that if people wanted to dance we should make space. It would make them happy, and happy people tended to donate more. A quick ticket count confirmed there were about sixteen hundred paying customers out there. Not bad for an opening night.
We were all seasoned professionals, but the adrenalin level was way up for everyone.
Mellow Mel, my engineer/singer/rapper buddy was MC. He walked onto the stage and under a single spotlight greeted the crowd.
“Welcome to the show. Thank you all for coming. As you know, 100% of all proceeds go the the cancer research foundation. And if for some reason you feel an urge to donate more, we have volunteers to assist you.”
“Now for the show. We’re going to start with a light classical number and go from there. Please, sit back and enjoy the show.”
A spotlight hit the chamber quartet, stage right on a raised platform. They started the opening notes of Beethovens’ fifth symphony, and the horns joined in, also on a raised platform, stage left.
Three bars in a spotlight hit Moira, and she hit the Chuck Berry chords, followed by everyone on stage as we launched into ‘Roll Over Beethoven’.
Three drummers, five guitarists, three bassists, three keyboards, all playing wide open. The crowd loved it. We stretched it out to a little over ten minutes, and already had people on their feet.
We didn’t stop, just switched over to ‘Rosalita’, one of the best Springsteen songs ever written.
Next came ’10th Avenue Freeze Out’, since we were into the Springsteen thing.
By now we were interchanging musicians as the song called for them, allowing most everyone to take a breather while keeping the music going.
We played a full hour before taking a break. You have to stop once in a while or the audience goes into auditory overload.
We had preplanned it, and at the break all twenty four musicians worked the crowd, shaking hands and thanking them for coming.
People had already started dancing, so we did a beach music set next. ‘Back To Louisiana’ a Delbert McClinton song, ‘Thank You John’, oddly enough about a hooker, her pimp, and john, and one of my favorites, ‘Rainy Day Girl’, a song written for the Harlem Globetrotter cartoon of the early seventies, that actually has two of the Globetrotters singing on it. A few more beach standards and the crowd was shagging its’ ass off.
After the next break we did what we called a “girl power’ set. Moira, Jenn/Ginny/Jen, Amber from Hard Country, and three of the chamber quartet, all women, took the stage. Nodding to the country element they did ‘Passionate Kisses’ and ‘Feels Like A Woman’ with the horn section.
A version of ‘Girls Talk’, ‘Walk Like An Egyptian’, and the great rockabilly song by Imelda May, ‘Mayhem’, finishing out with ‘Walking On Sunshine’. The crowd was roaring by then.
We did five sets, playing from eight until about one thirty. The crowd definitely got full value for their money. Everyone seemed happy when they left, so I was pretty sure we would get buzz the next morning.
I was right. By lunchtime Friday ‘Roll Over Beethoven’ had been playing on the local access channel almost hourly, along with clips of the girl power set and the beach set. Local TV, radio, and newspapers all gave us good reviews.
I did a radio interview, saying that the sets tonight would not be the same as last night, there was a lot of good music we hadn’t got to yet. I also hinted strongly that Chance Blaze might show up. We sold out all twenty two hundred tickets by show time.
The energy was even higher that night. We had gotten the small flaws worked out from last night and we were almost machine like in our precision.
We decided to give each group a nod and feature them just before and after the breaks. Blue String Theory, the bluegrass band went first, doing ‘Sis Draper’, with me helping with claw hammer banjo.
After the break, Hard Country did ‘Drink In My Hand’, the Eric Church hit. It had the crowd jumping. The house roared when Freddie walked onstage.
He did his best song, then went into two western swing songs. He really sounded great, he had the voice for it.
Then he talked the audience up, introducing his newest song, to be released in the next few weeks.