Daron's Guitar Chronicles: Vols 1-3

63 Pour Some Sugar on Me

Pour Some Sugar on Me

The buses pulled in to our hotel at about 7 a.m. and we were shuttled into rooms where we went immediately back to sleep. At ten a.m. the phone rang and I noticed that the message light was on. John was asking if I was awake and I told him that I was because the phone rang, but if he wanted to bring the contracts in, fine. He gave me a couple of minutes to get dressed and then knocked on the door. I gave the contracts a cursory eyeballing, and asked him if anything was different from the original one. He pointed out the changes about concessions and I signed them. He gave me my copy of it and after he left I put it into the Ovation’s case, where I figured it would be safe.

The message was from Mills at BNC. I called him back thinking–gee, from this room, it’s on their tab, sort of. He was in a meeting but his secretary assured me he would get back to me ASAP. I tried Charles River next and got Gail.

“Omigod, Daron! I guess you should talk to Watt about this, but he’s on the other line right now.” Gail was Watt’s significant other (if they were married I wasn’t sure of it) and was the person who really ran the day to day biz at CR.

“Gail, can you at least fill me in on what’s up?”

“You mean you don’t know? And here we’ve been thinking you were snubbing us.” Gail was a tough, chain smoking woman who didn’t wear makeup but always had gorgeously styled hair. Go figure.

I couldn’t tell if she was being sarcastic. “I assure you it’s nothing like that. I’ve been playing phone tag with everyone since yesterday. Has something happened?”

“Oh, here’s Watt now.”

It sounded like she handed the receiver directly to him, and knowing the CR office, she did. I could hear a manual typewriter in the background. “Daron, it’s Watt.”

“Yeah, Watt.” I repeated my question yet again. “What is going on?” I trusted him to give me the scoop. Which he did.

“BNC wants to buy out your contract and, well, they say if we won’t let them, they basically want to buy all of Charles River just to get you.”

“Jeezus fucking Christ.”

“Yeah, that’s what I said. So what have they told you?”

“Nada. All I’ve talked to is voice mail. All I know is we’re doing the Eastern leg of the MNB tour and we cut a deal to be included in the concessions sales for those dates. I was going to check with you first, but…”

“Don’t worry about that, I’m sure it’s fine. But about this recording deal…” Watt was quiet for a moment. “I wish I could talk to you in person.” Watt was an in-person kind of guy. I think half the reason he quit the big corporate scene was because he preferred to have his business meetings in the back of a van or on a loading dock.

“Well, what do you want me… us, to do?”

There was a pause, like he was chewing on his fingernails or something. “I guess you should find out what they have to say, and then we’ll talk again?”

“Do you want us to stay with CR?”

“I don’t know, Daron. I want whatever’s going to be best for all of us. Right now, I can’t say whether getting bought out is a good thing or a bad thing, for you, or us. I mean, it’s hard to say no to a big hunk of money, but on the other hand I kind of like the way things are here now and would like to run with it a couple more years before I cash in, you know?”

“Well, if it’s worth anything to you, Watt, I don’t want to see you get screwed.”

“Thanks, man. Call back after you talk to them.” We talked a bit more after that, about how we wanted to do a video, and such, but a lot of decisions had to wait to see what might happen with BNC.