Daron's Guitar Chronicles: Vol 4

224 BACK ON THE CHAIN GANG

BACK ON THE CHAIN GANG

We didn’t work on Candelight that night, but we did do Why the Sky, which far as I was concerned was probably the bigger hit than Candlelight because the video had gotten so much more play. At least that had been my impression. But then I remembered what Jonathan had said, about Candlelight crossing over into multiple radio formats. Would those be the people who would come to the shows? I had no idea. It was kind of odd to think that thousands of people–well, hundreds of thousands actually, if the sales projections held up–had paid money for our music and I had no idea why. Because they liked it, I guess. Liked it enough to buy it instead of something else, even.

I was thinking way too much.

We had a few debates about song order, nothing major. Which was fairly amazing. But maybe it was that we actually agreed on some things, and the warm-up tour had done its job in helping us figure out what worked. You try to build things up, pace out which songs are fast, which are slow, which are intense, which are well known. We knew, for example, it was a bad idea to put Candlelight after a song like Grenadier, because Ziggy’s voice needed to recover enough to handle it. Grenadier was even rough on my throat and I only sang the chorus.

The one thing we did debate, and didn’t settle, was whether Candlelight should be the first encore, or part of the main set.

“I feel like it’s cheap to hold it back for the encore,” I said. “Because people are going to be waiting for it, they’re going to demand it, so it’s like we ransomed their applause.”

“But what do you think the first encore ought to be, then?” Bart asked. “I’m assuming two encores at least.”

“I don’t know. If we get Why the Sky out of the way early… I mean, if we’re opening with Welcome, which just works on every level… I dunno.” My fingers picked through a melody while I thought about it. “We can come back from break big, or we can come back quiet and let it build slowly again…”

“In which case Candlelight actually would work perfectly,” Chris pointed out. “But I see your point about it being cheesy to hold it back.”

“What are they releasing next?” Ziggy asked. “I think we ought to know that before we figure it out. Maybe that should be the one we hold back.”

I didn’t see Carynne anywhere. “Last I heard we didn’t know.”

“We don’t? It’s not going to be Windfall?” Chris asked. “I thought that was the one Jordan was pushing as lead single.”

“Yeah, Windfall’s already out,” I said. “The question is whether they kick a second single out when we hit the road. I guess we better find out.”

Louis listened to all this keenly but said nothing until we were done. What he said, when I was putting the guitar in the case, was, “I’m meeting Shiree for a beer. You want to come along and talk about some stuff?”

“Um, sure.”

Ziggy crouched down next to me. “You mind if I come along?”

“Everyone can come along as far as I’m concerned,” Louis said. He pulled a beat-up baseball cap onto his head.

Bart wanted to get home to Michelle, Chris didn’t feel like it, and Carynne had to get up in the morning, so in the end it was just me and Ziggy and Louis who went for a drink. I rode with Louis and Ziggy drove behind us.

“Is it going to be okay to talk business with your ex-wife there?” I asked.

“It’ll be fine,” Louis said, with a little chuckle.