Rough country

17

THE DOUBLE-WIDE SMELLED like Dinty Moore beef stew, coffee, sweat, and the vagrant vegetable odor of marijuana. Jud Windrow leaned back in the beanbag chair, scuffing his boot heels across the shag carpet; sucked on a Budweiser, tried to stay alert, and listened to Wendy, Berni, and Slibe snarl at one another.

He'd seen all this before. You had artists who'd spent thousands of hours learning how to play a musical instrument, who could tell you anything you might want to know about writing a song, about bridges and transitions and about single specific words that you couldn't use in a song. Cadaver? Had anyone ever used cadaver in a song?

They knew all that, worked it, groomed it, smoothed it out, sat up all night, night after night, doing it-and they didn't know a single fucking thing about business. They were in a business, but they didn't know it. They thought they were in an art form.

He sighed and let them fight it out.

HE'D PUT THE SKUNK among the chickens when he mentioned the necessity of recruiting another drummer, and possibly somebody different on the keyboards. Berni had gone ballistic, and he'd thought for a few seconds that she might come after him, physically, but then she had started pleading with Wendy, trying to save her job, and when Wendy had looked away, Berni began to cry.

"I… I… I get this asshole cop who drags me down to the police station and tortures me, and now you guys are kicking me out of the band… No, don't say you're not."

Windrow then suggested that she could help front the band: play a rhythm instrument of some kind, sing backups, and she'd quieted down a bit.

"As long as I get to stay…"

Wendy defended the keyboard player: "We put too much weight on her, is all. She's fine on recordings, but hasn't got an act, you know? She stands back there and plays and looks kinda dead. We can work on that."

"She can play," Windrow said. "But you don't see many big bands without everybody having some kind of personality."

"We'll get her a hat," Wendy said. "I'll work on her. The thing is… she does the melodies on the songs. She made the 'Artists' Waltz' into a waltz… used to be a straight-up ballad."

"Okay," Windrow said. "So she's okay. Get her a hat."

THEN THEY MOVED ON to the terms of the contract, and that's where Slibe jumped in with both feet. There were terms which, Windrow admitted, were favorable to him. After the initial month-long house-band gig, they agreed to play the Spodee-Odee for a week in each of the next five years, at Windrow's option. If they refused, they'd agree to pay Windrow the equivalent of fifteen percent of the royalties from any records released during that period. On the other hand, if Windrow didn't want them, in any particular year, he could cancel them without penalty.

Slibe shouted at Wendy: "You see what happens? This guy takes a cut out of everything. He owns your ass."

"Not her entire ass," Windrow said. "Fifteen percent of it."

"That's how these guys steal from you," Slibe said. "They get you all tied up in legal contracts that you can't get out of."

Wendy wanted to sign anyway, for reasons that Windrow told her were good.

"Listen: you can stay up here and be a ratshit band and play at the Wild Goose or maybe get a couple gigs down in the Twin Cities, or wherever, but you aren't going to break out that way. You won't," he said.

"They could get people to listen to them up here-" Slibe began, but Wendy said, "Shut up, Dad, let him talk."

Windrow went on. "If you wanna break out, you gotta put it on the line. That means I bring you down for a month, expose you to some of the top acts and top managers and agents in the business. And I pay you. What do I get? I get a new band that nobody knows-but you're pretty good, and my big payoff comes if you do well. You make a couple records and they sell okay. So then you gotta come back and play the Spodee-Odee for not much money, but hell, that won't hurt your reputation any. It's one of the top slots on the circuit. I pack the place for a week, and you get to keep all the money from your albums."

They heard a car turn in at the driveway, and Slibe got up to look. "It's that Zoe," he said.

"I called her," Wendy said.

"What the fuck for?" Berni asked.

"Because she's smarter than we are, and she knows about things like contracts and taxes," Wendy said. "And besides, she's in love with me, so we don't have to pay her."

"She's a pain in the ass," Slibe said. "And she hates my guts."

Zoe knocked, and Slibe let her in. She said, "Slibe," and he said, "Zoe."

ZOE TOOK THE CONTRACT, saying, "I'm not a lawyer."

"Just read the thing," Wendy said.

Zoe went into the kitchen to do that.

Slibe said to Windrow, "But if you don't want them, even if they do make an album, but it doesn't sell that well, then you can throw them away."

Windrow nodded: "Absolutely. The contract is written in my favor, because I'm the one taking the risk here. Show me a bank mortgage where it says the buyer doesn't have to pay, if he doesn't feel like it. Bullshit, there are no bank contracts like that. They all favor the bank. In this deal, I'm the bank."

THEY WERE ALL SITTING in the living room area of the trailer-home, Windrow closest to the exit, which was near the middle of the trailer, Wendy and Berni on a long couch against the end wall. Windrow was looking at Berni when he thought he saw something move behind the venetian blind, where the bottom blade of the blind was bent. Something like an eye, but then it was gone, leaving nothing but the gathering darkness.

Zoe came back, handed the paper to Wendy, and asked, "What do you want to know?"

"Basically, if I should sign it," Wendy said.

"I can't tell you that. Depends on what you want to do. I don't know anything about this Spodee-Odee. Is it a big deal?"

"Pretty big deal," Wendy said.

"According to this guy," Slibe said, nodding at Windrow.

"We're not the biggest club in the country, but we're up there," Windrow said.

"Well, I've seen a few contracts with writers, and it looks like those. Mr. Windrow is sort of acting as an agent here. That's the fifteen percent part. Of course, if you get another agent, he'll also want fifteen percent… but you don't have to pay Mr. Windrow if you play, you know. Depending on how much money is involved at that point, you could decide to go either way. Unless…"

Wendy: "Unless what?"

"Unless the band breaks up and you quit singing," Zoe said. "I don't see what happens then."

"One of two things," Windrow said. "If she wins the lottery and is worth a hundred million bucks and doesn't want to sing, I sue her, hoping to get a piece of the hundred million bucks. The second thing would be, she doesn't win the lottery, the band breaks up, she quits singing, goes to work in a diner, and what the fuck would I sue her for? Half of her next cheeseburger? If that happens, I wave it off. There's no profit in going after what doesn't exist."

"That's some pretty fancy tap-dancing right there," Slibe said.

Wendy started flipping through the contract. "What about this chick O'Hara? It says we've got to take O'Hara while we're with you. How about if we kept Berni for that month?"

Windrow said, "Bite the bullet, Wendy. O'Hara's the best female drummer out there, who's loose. She'd fit you guys like a glove. Divorced, no kids, and she's looking for a new band. I'll make the deal with her, she'll come up here and work out with you. And Berni can start working on her front act, right up on stage with you, singing backup, showing off, playing the tambourine, maybe. Strut-tin' her stuff."

"Fuckin' tambourine," Berni said, and she dropped her face into her hands, and again, Windrow saw the flash behind the venetian blind. Was there somebody out there?

Wendy put her hand on Berni's thigh and said, "We can do it. We can make you into the hottest thing on the stage. I've got these big cow tits, but you're what every cowboy wants… It'll work."

Slibe said, "Something else about this contract…"

SO THEY ARGUED into the evening, watching the clock, and finally Wendy turned to Slibe and said, "We gotta get down to the Goose. But I'm gonna do it. I gotta talk to the other guys, but I'm gonna do it."

And to Windrow: "Are you in town overnight?"

"Yup."

"So let's get together at the studio tomorrow, we can talk to everybody at the same time, and I'll give you the contract. You coming to the Goose?"

"Gonna get something to eat first, if you got a recommendation."

Wendy looked at Zoe, who said, "Probably… the Duck Inn. Right downtown."

"This is bullshit," Slibe said. "I say we take the whole thing to a lawyer tomorrow. What's the rush?"

"No big one-day, two-day rush," Windrow said. "But I've got to get somebody lined up, quick. I got a hole I'm trying to fill. You take it, fine. You don't-well, we're lining up people for next summer and fall. That'd be your next shot with us. If Johnny Ray hadn't drove his Mustang into a ditch, there wouldn't be this hole."

"I'm doing it," Wendy said. "I'm doing it."