Daron's Guitar Chronicles: Vols 1-3

103 OUR HOUSE

“So,” Digger began, and my eyes unglazed to focus on him. “Chris here tells me you’re having some trouble getting BNC to go along with your program.”

The hairs on the back of my neck and arms tingled. “Typical stuff,” I said. I still hadn’t told any of them about Mills’ phone call that day.

He sipped his coffee from its tiny china cup. “Spin article mentioned you’re trying to self-manage, too.”

“For some definition of self-manage, yeah.”

“What do you mean by that?” He sipped his coffee. He was speaking in a groomed professional voice I couldn’t remember having heard before.

“I mean, we hire managers when we need them. Road manager, stage manager, you know. But there’s no… manager manager.”

“How about agent?”

“You mean booking agent?”

“An agent does a lot more than booking, you know that,” he said, matter of factly. “A good agency hooks you up with all kinds of stuff, not just venues.”

“We’ve been shopping around.” That was true, actually. I knew there was no way we could tour the way I wanted to without a decent agent. Especially with BNC being dicey about supporting us.

Digger put his cup down on the white saucer. “There’s business stuff you need to consider now, too. There’s a lot of things you need to be thinking about: cash flow, incorporation, insurance…” His eyes flicked to the splint on my hand.

“Yeah, yeah,” I began. “Guys, I talked to Mills today.”

Chris leaned forward. “And?”

“And he’s busting my balls about not having a demo for the next record ready. It’s almost like he either wants to sign us right away to a multi-year deal, or he wants to get rid of us.”

“And…?” Bart said.

“He wants to send Jordan Travers up to record some stuff like next week. And he’s going to be at the Orpheum show.” I held up my hand. “But I didn’t tell him about this.”

“No shit, Jordan Travers?” That was Digger and we all looked at him. “He produced probably four out of the current top tens on the Billboard chart right now. They want you bad, kiddo.”

“Would they send a guy like that just to produce a demo?”

Digger fiddled with the tiny china cup in front of him. “Sounds like he wants more than just a demo.”

“We’re not ready for this.”

“So how are you going to handle this Mills character?” Digger looked at me.

“I don’t know.”

“You need somebody who can intervene on your behalf.”

“That’s what worries me,” I said.

“Listen to me, Daron. You need to be able to play good cop bad cop with these people. You, as the artist, always want to be good cop to them. Let them think you’re doing what they want all the time. Stay on the good side of the people who have to work for you so that they’ll be motivated. But when that isn’t enough, you need someone else to play hard ball.”

“But I…”

“And when you do hit the road, are you going to do it your way or theirs? If you don’t already have a road manager, merchandising, a publicist, you know you’ll end up with who they give you to, am I right?” He looked at the others, not at me.

Bart was nodding slowly. Ziggy’s face was unreadable.

“And how about finances? Your taxes this year are going to be a nightmare, and how are you going to handle things next year? Not that the kind of lump account you have now can’t work, but have you thought about paying salaries from a central body? Incorporate, have your health insurance paid out of that account, and give yourselves salaries, and you reduce your taxable income. Have you ever thought about that?”

“Yes,” I said automatically, although that wasn’t strictly true. I’d thought about all that, but never known what to think. I’d been too lame to find out exactly what it takes or who it would take to get it all done. “I’ll get around to it soon.”

He waved his hands over his coffee cup like he was about the pull a rabbit out of it. “Oh no, kiddo, why bother? You get yourself a good manager, he’ll think of those things, he’ll handle those things, and free you up to worry about stuff like, oh, music?”

“No kidding.” I took a sip of my own coffee which was so thick with sugar as to be syrupy. I liked it that way. “But we’ve seen plenty of managers who treat their artists like slaves.” Or who were just plain promise-breaking sleazebags. “Yeah, their job is money but it’s the artist’s money. And how many managers claim they were doing things that were in the artist’s best interest that really weren’t? Nobody likes being treated like a commodity.” I was on a roll.

“So get somebody who really cares.”

“Oh yeah, and find me a fairy godmother while you’re at it.”

He smiled and folded his hands into his lap. “You’re looking at him.”

“Looking at who?”

“Your fairy godfather, a manager who really cares.”

We all sat without saying anything for a few moments while two voices in my brain went back and forth, no way, you know he has a point, no fucking way, why don’t we hear some more? The others were looking at each other and at me.

“If you say yes,” Digger said, “I can write off the whole dinner, too.”

“I…” I had that strange electrified feeling all over my skin, like none of this was real and I was just a projection from some camera somewhere.

When in doubt, defer, defer, defer. “We’ll think about it,” I finally said.

“Cool,” said Christian under his breath.

“I’d love to do it,” Digger said. “Let’s walk some of this food off while I tell you about what I’ve been doing this year with WTA. I think it’d fit in good…”