Chapter 10
“He’s making me regret my decision.” Clay rocked back in his desk chair. “Willoughby called to say Chance is now banned from appearing on the station, and he’s threatening to not play his new music when the time comes. We’re lucky Ruby is a pro. She easily could have trashed him after he took off, instead of rolling into one of his hits to make it sound as if the interview ended naturally.”
Naomi made no excuses. “I’ve already asked Ralph to deal with the program manager.” Ralph Sampson served as radio liaison for the label and had known John Willoughby for twenty years. “They have a long-standing relationship. I’m sure he can smooth this over.”
“Ralph shouldn’t have to smooth anything over. This is the second speed bump in less than a week.”
While waiting for her boss to arrive, Naomi had mapped out a plan of action. “You knew the risks in signing Chance. He has a long history of antagonizing the press, and there was no reason to assume that would change simply because he got sober.”
The reminder went over about as well as she expected. “His history involved taking down reporters who asked stupid or insulting questions. Asking about his music is neither stupid nor insulting.”
Naomi agreed. But she offered a counterpoint. “Actually, she was asking about music that doesn’t exist yet. Chance answered her question. He isn’t sure what it’s going to sound like, and she’ll have to wait for the album to find out. That’s a perfectly fair answer.”
“Just because we haven’t put the music on tape doesn’t mean he doesn’t know what the songs are. He’s writing them, for Christ’s sake.”
“Is he?” she asked. Naomi had replayed the morning’s events over and over in her mind. She’d closed her eyes and pictured Chance’s reactions. His body language when asked about the songs. And she’d come to one possible conclusion. “Maybe he isn’t writing anything at all.”
Sharp gray eyes locked on hers. “What the hell are you talking about? We’ve booked studio time for June one. He’s had that date since early February. Chance should have a dozen songs ready to go by now.”
She scooted forward in her chair. “But what if he doesn’t? Recovering from an addiction doesn’t happen overnight. His brain is learning how to rewire itself. What if that rewiring has blocked his process? Or shut him down completely?”
Clay rose from his chair. “If there’s a problem, they should have warned us by now.”
“Really?” she said. “Do you think a man like Chance Colburn is going to admit that he can’t do something? Would you, in his place?”
As her boss strolled to the wall of windows to her left, Naomi knew her plan was working.
“If there are no songs, then we have to cancel the session. We can’t afford to throw thousands of dollars down the drain.”
“I don’t think we should cancel anything yet.” Her heart rate quickened, as it always did when Naomi nailed the perfect solution to a problem. “We still have twenty-six days before the session starts. Not ideal, but still enough time to come up with some songs.”
Clay returned to his chair. “You’re forgetting that Chance Colburn only cuts songs he writes himself. I could line up two dozen for him to choose from and he’d refuse them all.”
The answer was obvious. “Then we help him write songs.”
Unbuttoning his jacket, the long-time executive began to relax. “I’m listening.”
Naomi pulled her chair closer to Clay’s desk. “This town is full of great songwriters. All we have to do is convince a few of them to write with Chance.”
“Chance doesn’t collaborate.”
“He hasn’t up to this point.” Reaching for the papers beneath her chair, she said, “Every writer on this list has at least five number-one songs to their name.” She slid her research across the glass surface. “They’re well respected and known for highly successful collaborations. It’s simple. We make Chance an offer he can’t refuse. Without songs, he has no album. Without an album, he has no career. And he’s in breach of contract.”
Clay skimmed her list. “You think he’ll agree to this?”
That was the one thing Naomi hadn’t quite worked out—how to present this solution to Chance without wounding his pride. The man was as stubborn as the day was long, and if he caught even a hint of why they were doing this, he might walk away and say to hell with his contract. If that happened, she honestly believed he’d fall back into the bottle and drink himself to an early demise.
“I’m not sure, but I think it’s worth the gamble. For better or worse, Shooting Stars and Chance Colburn are tied to the same ship. If he goes down, so do we.”
After a silent pause, Clay picked up a pen and circled three names on the list. “These are my top choices. I’ll give Ash Shepherd a call. Reach out to the other two and see if they’re interested. When we have answers, I’ll call Chance in to discuss it.”
She’d thought of another approach. “I’d like to run this by Shelly first.”
“You want to deal with Shelly?”
Naomi nodded. “If Chance is stuck, she’ll know it. And if we want him to agree to this, we’ll need her on our side.”
Clay tossed the pen down and leaned back in his chair. “All right then. Go see Shelly.”
Thanks to growing up in a hellhole, Chance carried the unlikely characteristic of being a neat freak. Keeping his house clean wasn’t a problem, since he was the only one there. Add the long stints on the road required by his job, and the place practically took care of itself. Archie didn’t share this trait. His apartment looked as if a tornado had picked it up, flipped it over, and dropped it back into place.
“I thought you hired a cleaning lady,” Chance said as his bandmate cleared a chair for him to sit down.
Three magazines and a pizza box hit the floor. “She quit.”
“Wasn’t that your third one?”
Archie shifted a stack of mail onto the already crowded end table. “Yeah. I don’t know what their problem is.”
Chance counted nine glasses and at least a dozen empty beer bottles scattered around the room, plus a bowl on the floor beside the couch that had grown something unrecognizable. “It’s a real mystery.”
“Have a seat.” He tossed a bundle of clothes from another chair onto the sofa. “You want a drink before I hop in the shower? All I’ve got in the fridge is beer, but I can get you a glass of tap water.”
Passing on the drink, Chance sat down. “I’m good. Get cleaned up, and I’ll treat you to breakfast.”
Instead of leaving the room, Archie hovered like a mother hen. “Do you want me to throw the beers out?”
Right. Because the addict might give in to temptation. “I’ve been dry for a year, Arch. I think I can make it another twenty minutes.”
“I just—”
“I get it, man. It’s all good.” And it was. Alcohol was the least of the bad habits on Chance’s mind this morning. “Hurry up, so we can eat.”
Archie nodded and disappeared into the bedroom. Chance considered trying the television, but didn’t see a remote and opted not to hunt through the mess. Since he didn’t own a TV himself, he had no idea what might be on anyway. The silence felt deafening. At least at his place he had Willie to talk to. Or he could go outside and listen to the birds and other critters. As if to offer entertainment, a siren blared outside before fading in the distance.
He remembered again why he couldn’t live in the city.
Propping an ankle on his knee, Chance tapped out a rhythm on his boot, slow and steady, with a deep thump along the heel. The tune took shape as words floated through his mind.
The sun came up this morning
As the moon left the sky
After repeating the lines twice in his head, he changed the second line.
The sun came up this morning
Chasin’ the moon out of the sky.
Better. Closing his eyes, he hummed the melody and more lines came.
I was glad the night was over
To know I had another try.
Chance searched for something to write on. Snatching a large white envelope off the stack of mail, he hunted for a pen, with no luck. Maybe in a kitchen drawer. At the doorway between the two rooms, he abandoned that idea. The chaos on the counter made the living room look pristine.
“Damn,” he mumbled, opening the drawers of the end tables. Who didn’t have a pen lying around?
Desperate, he pulled the phone from his back pocket and searched for an app that might work. Tapping the one that said Notes, he pressed the big plus sign and got the blank screen he needed. One touch and the keyboard popped up.
“This’ll have to work.”
With the four lines down, he read them again. Not a bad start. As usual, he didn’t know where the song was going, but any ideas were worth chasing at this point. Staring at the screen, a chord progression formed, bringing the next several lines.
’Cause when you live life for the bottle
Another day ain’t guaranteed.
You never know when Lady Liquor
Might take your soul to keep.
Going back to the beginning, he sang the eight lines straight through and felt a familiar twitch in his ear. After reading them two more times, Chance moved on to the chorus.
Now I’m sitting here in the light
Wondering what the day will bring
I could be a brand-new man
Write a different song to sing
But the bottle always calls me
I’m a puppet on her string
There’s just no use in trying
’Cause it’s always the same old thing.
Staring at the last three words, he remembered his conversation with Naomi back at the radio station. Nobody needs to know that you’re doing the same old thing. She hadn’t been talking about his drinking or failure to break old habits, but the statement had clearly triggered something in his brain. After months of nothing, Chance had come up with two new songs in less than a week, and both after run-ins with the fiery publicist.
By the time Archie finished his shower, Chance had the third verse typed in with the rest, and had made notes at the bottom for chord changes and progressions. Satisfied with what he had, he saved the entry and closed the app, but made sure to move the icon to the home screen for future use. Maybe this fancy phone wasn’t so bad after all.
Before putting the cell away, Chance noticed a high number of new notifications. With a quick swipe, the screen filled with messages from Instagram. He touched one and a picture popped up of him sitting on a stool in the Eagle studio. The caption read: “FIRST INTERVIEW TO TALK ABOUT THE NEW ALBUM. CAN’T WAIT TO GET BACK OUT THERE WITH THE FANS. #COUNTRYMUSIC #SHOOTINGSTARS”
To his surprise, the photo had two thousand likes, and more than fifteen hundred comments, most positive and many encouraging. There were a few telling him he sucked, which he ignored, and at least five of the three hundred or so Chance skimmed included sexual propositions. Good to know a stint in rehab hadn’t dented his appeal.
“What are you smiling at?” Archie asked, pulling a gray Merle Haggard shirt over his lily-white chest.
Chance turned the phone around. “A picture on Instagram taken during the interview this morning. Naomi’s doing. She took it right before I blew the thing to smithereens.”
Arch dropped into the other newly cleared chair. “What the hell did you do?”
He’d forgotten the bass player had slept through the fireworks. “Ruby asked about the new music and I didn’t have anything to say. When she pushed, I fell back on old habits. After a few short answers, I bailed.”
“You walked out of a live interview? Dude. What the hell?”
He was asking himself the same thing. “I’m already going to get shit from Shelly, and probably Clay Benedict.” Chance rose from the chair and slipped the phone into his back pocket. “I don’t need it from you, too. You ready?”
Snagging his keys and a Vanderbilt ball cap off the coffee table, Archie nodded. “All set. You think they put the interview up online, so I can watch?”
Chance hadn’t noticed any cameras. “They do that?”
“From time to time.”
Just what he needed. The world at large seeing his dumb-ass temper tantrum. “I sure as hell hope not.”
Naomi had no idea what to expect when she entered Shelly’s office. Despite the abrupt reversal in Monday’s meeting, there was no reason to believe she’d receive a friendly welcome. Like many of the businesses in the Nashville music scene, Needham Management occupied a small house in the heart of Music Row, an area southwest of downtown.
Established in the 1950s, the famed musical center of town still looked like a residential area, with many small companies, from publishing houses to studios to labels, filling homes that looked much as they had when built forty to fifty years before.
The receptionist offered a warm greeting, and within minutes ushered Naomi down a narrow hall to a large office at the back of the house. Shelly stood as she entered.
“Good morning, Ms. Mallard. Please, have a seat.”
Still suspicious, Naomi accepted the invitation. “Thank you for seeing me on such short notice.”
The manager resumed her seat. “Your call wasn’t a surprise. I heard the interview this morning before my appointment at eight.”
“Then you know things didn’t go as well as we’d hoped.”
“Unfortunately,” she said, “they rarely do with Chance.”
The admission seemed disloyal. “I’m surprised to hear you say that. I’d expect a stronger defense on his behalf.”
Rose-colored lips pursed. “Ms. Mallard, I am my client’s staunchest advocate and will always support him in any way that I can. That does not, however, mean that I am unaware or in denial of his, shall we say, self-destructive tendencies. To pretend Chance is perfect would be a waste of both our time.”
“True, no one is perfect,” Naomi conceded. “Chance, especially. But I’m not here to discuss his behavior on the Ruby Barnett show this morning. At least not directly.”
Removing a small church fan from her top desk drawer, Shelly asked, “Then why are you here?”
As the fan was put into motion, Naomi noticed a thin bead of perspiration along her counterpart’s top lip. Considering the frigid temperature in the room, the sweat seemed odd.
“Ms. Needham, are you okay?”
The fan hit the desk. “This is ridiculous. If we’re going to work together, please call me Shelly. All the Ms. this and that is giving me a headache.”
This woman’s moods shifted faster than a NASCAR driver on a restart.
“All right then. Feel free to call me Naomi.”
“Good. Now that we have that out of the way, back to my question. If we aren’t discussing the interview, why are you here?”
“Well,” Naomi began, recalling the speech she’d rehearsed on the way over, “if you heard the interview, then you might have noticed the point at which things went off the rails. Contrary to what I expected, Chance was perfectly willing to entertain questions about his encounters with the law and subsequent road to recovery.”
Shelly put the fan into motion again. “There’s no sense in pretending it didn’t happen. He knows that.”
“True. I tried to declare that topic off-limits before the interview started, but Chance overruled me, and I see now that he was right. He deserves the opportunity to tell his side of the story.” Naomi scooted to the edge of her chair. “The trouble started the moment Ruby brought up his new music, and what the fans can expect on the upcoming album.”
Shelly visibly tensed. “Yes, I noticed that.”
Time to reveal her suspicions. “He doesn’t have any songs, does he, Shelly?”
Boldly lined eyes dropped to the desktop. “Of course he does. Chance is a songwriter, first and foremost.”
“But he’s struggling, isn’t he?” Naomi asked. “It wasn’t that he didn’t want to talk about the music, it was that he couldn’t. Because there’s nothing yet to talk about, is there?”
The fanning increased in speed. “If Shooting Stars is trying to find grounds to release my client—”
“Shelly, please.” Naomi flattened both hands on the edge of the desk. “We don’t want to release Chance. We want to help him.”
Without confirming or denying, the manager asked, “How do you propose to do that?”
Encouraged, Naomi made her case. “I know that Chance has never written with a collaborator, but we’re prepared to recruit the best songwriters in this town to work with him. Think of it as creative assistance. They meet, bounce around some ideas, and see what happens. No pressure. No obligation. Just an open mind.”
Shelly didn’t respond immediately. Instead, she stared at Naomi, eyes narrowed and fan swaying. As if reaching a conclusion, she propped her elbows on the desk. “Who do you have in mind?”
Naomi struggled to hide her relief. “Clay has chosen Ash Shepherd, Lena Walton, and Jason Cheval to start. If Chance rejects any or all of those, we have a substantial list from which to pull more candidates.”
A manicured brow arched. “That’s an impressive starting lineup. But I have to be honest with you, Naomi. I doubt he’ll agree to any name you put in front of him. Chance is a challenging combination of proud and stubborn, and though he’d kill me for saying so, he’s also fragile at the moment. If you confront him with your suspicions, I’m not sure what he’ll do.”
Identifying the solution was often the easier part of dealing with a problem. The implementation is where things fell apart. “That’s why I came to you first. You know him better than anyone. The intention here is to create the best album of his career. We’re ready to do our part to help make that happen, but Chance has to be willing to do his. How do we make him willing?”
Delicate laughter filled the air. “Oh, Naomi. You have a lot to learn about my client. Making Chance do anything is damn near impossible.”
Naomi knew her client in ways she would not be discussing in a business meeting.
“Chance is a natural-born rebel. Which means he’s almost guaranteed to do the opposite of any order given, right?”
Shelly agreed. “That’s right.”
“Then someone needs to plant the idea that he couldn’t make a collaboration work. Play to his ego and make it a challenge.” She nearly applauded her own ingenuity. “Force him to prove the accusation wrong, and Chance will be co-writing songs within a week.”
With newfound respect in her eyes, Shelly let out a low whistle. “I can’t decide if you’re an evil genius or a just a master tactician, but I’m glad we’re on the same side.” The fan settled on the desk as she crossed her arms. “I assume you’re prepared to put this niggling bug in Chance’s ear?”
“His next interview is Friday with Country Today magazine. Considering how this morning went, I’d be remiss not to call an emergency meeting to discuss publicity interactions going forward. The topic of songs for the album would, of course, be included on the agenda. Since that is the area Chance seems least willing to talk about.”
Shelly stood and extended a hand. “My money is on you, Naomi. I’ll let Chance know we have a meeting scheduled for tomorrow. Say, ten o’clock?”
Happy finally to be allies instead of enemies, Naomi grasped the slender hand. “Ten o’clock will work.”