Bill Fitzhugh - Fender Benders (14 page)

Big Bill sat there, glaring at Franklin,
his finger poised on the ‘play’ button.
 
“Shut the fuck up and listen,” he said finally.
 
He pushed the button and the song
played.
 
Franklin
stood there, impatient at first, but halfway through the chorus he sat down and
started to pay attention.
 
After another
verse he looked at his partner.
 
Big Bill
smiled, nodding.
 
“What did I tell
you?”
 
He slapped his desk top.
 
“God, I love this business!”

“Shhhh!”
 
Franklin
looked toward the ceiling and listened.
 
It was the sound of money.

Big Bill jerked a finger into the air, waiting for
something.
 
Then, cued by a chord change,
he pointed at one of the speakers.
 
“Mandolin solo right there,” he said, already mixing the final version
in his head.
 
“Pedal steel comes in here,
way in the back.”
 
He tilted his head
slightly. “And right here, a low fiddle part, no, maybe a cello, just
underneath the whole thing.
 
You’ll
hardly notice it, but it’ll make you cry.”
 
The song ended and all they could hear was tape hiss.
 
  
Franklin
looked at Big Bill.
 
“Who the hell is
that?”

Bill held up a glossy eight by ten photo.
 
“Name’s Eddie Long.
 
Good looking
kid,
just moved here.
 
According to his letter
he’s looking for management.”
 
He arched
his eyebrows.

Franklin took
the photo and studied it.
 
“That’s quite
a smile.”

Bill snatched the photo away from Franklin.
 
“Yeah, the only problem is, we ain’t got it
under contract yet.”

Franklin knew
Bill was right.
 
That was a hit country
song with serious pop radio crossover possibilities.
 
“Any other songs on the
tape?”

“Mostly filler, but not bad.”

“Publishing?”

“Doesn’t say, but I betcha dolla he’s still looking.”

“You call him yet?”

Bill held up Eddie’s letter.
 
“Didn’t give a number.
 
Just invited us to come
hear him Monday night at the Bluebird.”

“Can’t go, Monday,” Franklin
said.
 
“That’s the Country Music
Confederation Awards.
 
We got somebody
nominated for Best New Countrypolitan Act Appealing to Women.”

Bill pushed the ‘rewind’ button.
 
“That’s very touching.
 
Send a proxy.
 
We gotta get this kid, or at least that song.”
 
Bill looked at Eddie’s cover letter.
 
“He says if he doesn’t get picked to play on
stage, he’ll play for us in the parking lot.”
 
Bill grinned.
 
“You gotta like
that.”

“Whatever.”
 
Franklin
shrugged.
 
He pulled out his digital
micro recorder and held it to his mouth.
 
“Reminder.
 
Print out standard contracts for artist Eddie Long.”

23.

Whitney had been driving around for quite a while when he
saw the ‘Room 4 Rent’ sign in the front yard of the simple brick house on 16th
Avenue.
 
Ten minutes after knocking on
the door he was signing papers on the place.
 
He couldn’t believe his luck.
 
First off, the room came at a fair price.
 
But the price didn’t tickle him half as much
as the
location at the south end
of Music Row.
 
Literally on the Row.
 
He could just sit on the front porch in the
shade of the big magnolia tree and play his songs, looking up occasionally to
see if any of the big shots were driving by.
 
“Man,” he said to the landlord, “this is some town.”

The next day Whitney went looking for work that would allow
him to pay his bills while pursuing his music.
 
The ‘help wanted’ ads led him to a job waiting tables at the South Side
Smoke House.
 
Situated halfway between
Music Row and Vanderbilt University,
the place was always filled with important looking music industry people and
good looking college girls.
 
It wouldn’t
make Whitney rich, but it was enough and it was close to home.

Whitney was driving back from the interview, humming the
melody of his favorite song, when something started to grind under the hood of
his old truck.
 
“Hang on,” he said as he
patted the dash board.
 
“We’ll get you
fixed up.”
 
Whitney loved his truck.
 
It was one of the few things that never let
him down.
 
He turned and headed to
Broadway where he’d seen some auto repair places.
 
The mechanic said he’d get to it as soon as
he could.
 
Whitney sat in the greasy
waiting area wondering how he was going to pay for the repair.
 
If worse came to worse, he’d leave the truck
until he got a few paychecks under his belt.
 
He could walk to work.
 
It wasn’t
that far.

Whitney looked through the magazines on the table:
Guns and Ammo, Field and Stream
, and
Road and Track
held no appeal for
him.
 
Over by the door was a tall stack
of
Nashville Scene
, a free local
alternative newspaper.
 
The front cover
screamed at Whitney: ‘Nashville’s
Power 100 — The 100 Most Influential People
In The
Music Business!’
 
It was exactly what
Whitney was looking for, and he didn’t even know he was looking for it.

Flipping forward from the back of the paper, Whitney
immediately came across the name of Big Bill Herron at number 99.
 
Whitney read the names of the performers and
songwriters that Herron & Peavey managed and/or produced over the
years.
 
There were some true legends on
the list.
 
Big Bill Herron was quoted as
saying, “We’re in the talent business.
 
We’re always looking for new songwriters and performers.
 
There’s nothing more gratifying than taking a
raw talent and guiding them, helping them find their sound or their voice.
 
It’s the best job in the world.”
 
These
fellas seem like the sort I should talk to
, Whitney thought.
 
Might help me with the ropes
.
 
He’d make an appointment to see them soon as
he had the truck back.

“Gonna need a new water pump,” the mechanic said as he wiped
his greasy hands on a blue shop rag.
 
“Gonna run about three hundred dollars.”

Whitney tried not to look poor, but three hundred was a lot
more than he’d ever had.
 
He twisted at
the ragged bandana tied around his wrist.
 
“Be all right if I just left the truck until I get the money to pay for
it?”

The mechanic shrugged.
 
“All right, but this ain’t
no
damn storage
facility.
 
You don’t come back by next
month, I’ll part it out.”

“Yes, sir, I understand,” Whitney said.
 
“I’ll be back soon.”
 
He turned to leave, then stopped and turned
around, holding up the copy of
Nashville
Scene.
 
“Okay if I keep
this?”

“It says ‘free’ on it, Jethro.”

On the walk back to his place, Whitney read the list of the
industry’s power brokers.
 
He was
surprised at how many he’d never heard of.
 
Whitney didn’t notice but the most telling aspect of the list was the
ratio of lawyers and executives to songwriters.
 
He focused more on the names of people he
recognized and anyone from his home state.
 
He figured any of those folks might be glad to help him, but still he
was going to start with Big Bill Herron and Franklin Peavy.

Thirty minutes later, Whitney was almost home.
 
As he stood at the corner of 16th and Horton
waiting for traffic to pass he got to thinking.
 
With the exception of the busted water pump, the news was all good.
 
Nashville
was all right.
 
It was green and there
were hills and it smelled more like the country than the city.
 
It’d do for now.
 
Five minutes later, when he got back to his
place, Whitney sat under the big tree in the front yard with his writing pad.
 
He wished he had someone to write a letter
to, but he didn’t, so he wrote a song instead.

24.

Megan held the razor between finger and thumb, unsure if
this was what she really wanted to do.
 
Her indecision was compounded by feelings of guilt for thinking about
leaving Jimmy this way.
 
Would he
understand?
 
Did she owe it to him to
talk it over?
 
It wasn’t as if they were
engaged or anything.
 
Sure, they’d dated
for a couple of months and, yes, she had feelings for him but, big deal.
 
They obviously weren’t strong enough to stop
her from doing this.
 
She looked at the
clock and saw it was four-thirty.
 
If she
was going to do it, she had to do it now.

This week’s
Radio
& Records
, the radio industry’s
Wall
Street Journal
, was on the table next to the old Ampex reel-to-reel where
Megan was editing her air check tape.
 
The R&R was open to ‘Opportunities.’
 
One ad was circled, for a radio station in Nashville.
 
They were looking for a female air
personality with strong production and promotion experience.
 
This had Megan’s name all over it.
 
She had to do it, right?
 
She was chasing her dream, right?
 
This was about her career.
 
This wasn’t about chasing Eddie Long.
 
Whoever said it was?
 
She looked again:
four thirty-five
.
 
She had to get the tape edited, dubbed, and to the Post Office before
five, so she made the first cut.
 
She rolled
the tape ahead until she found the other mark she’d made with her stubby grease
pencil.
 
Megan carefully laid the tape in
the editing block.
 
The door to the
production room squeaked open just as she was about to cut the tape.
 
She didn’t look up to see who it was.

“Surprise…”
 
When
Megan heard Jimmy’s voice she almost sliced through a knuckle.
 
She looked up and saw him pull some flowers
from behind his back.
 
“Pistils and
stamens for my radio sweetheart,” he said, smiling like a child who’d done a
magic trick.
 
He hoped the flowers would
make romance appear out of thin air.

Oh God
, she
thought,
not flowers
.
 
Megan already felt bad enough, and now she
had to proceed in light of a bouquet.
 
But as long as he’s bringing flowers, she thought,
why bring such cheap ones.
 
Don’t I
deserve a dozen yellow roses?
 
“Jimmy…”
 
Her inflection
implied he wasn’t supposed to do that sort of thing on account of the fact she
wasn’t really serious about their relationship.
 
“That’s very sweet, thanks.”

“You’re welcome.”
 
He
looked around for an impromptu vase.
 
Megan hoped he wouldn’t notice the ad she’d circled for the Nashville
job.
 
Of course, if he brought it up, she
could say someone else was considering the job.
 
Just because she was in the same room with a circled want ad didn’t mean
she was leaving town, right?
 
Megan
didn’t want to lie, but she also didn’t want to get into a big heart-rending
discussion about why she was applying for a job in Nashville
and what does that mean about her feelings for Jimmy and blahblahblah.
 
She only had twenty-two minutes to finish
what she was doing and get to the post office on time.
 
“What’re you doing here?”

Jimmy leaned over the mixing console and looked at the notes
Megan had made about her tape.
 
“I was at
the library doing some research for the book, was in the neighborhood,
decided
to drop by.”
 
He turned the notes slightly so he could read them better.
 
“What’re you working on?”

Megan ignored the question.
 
She made the second cut on the tape and spliced the ends together.
 
“This is so primitive,” she said, nodding at
the reel-to-reel.
 
She imagined herself
in an all-digital production room of the station in Nashville.
 
“What were you researching?”

Jimmy admired Megan’s soft hands as they deftly manipulated
the tape.
 
“I was looking for newspaper
accounts of Tammy Long’s death.
 
There
wasn’t much written about it, so I guess I’ve got to go up there and interview
some people.
 
The
sheriff, coroner, that sort of thing.”