Encore to an Empty Room (2 page)

 

“Spread it on thick, Admiral.”

musings on the music life

Out of the Shadow: The Son of a Fallen Star Steps into the Light

—posted on December 19 by Nellie Martz

You all remember when the news broke this fall: Eli White, guitarist and singer for famed late-nineties band Allegiance to North, had a son: Caleb, born two years before Eli drowned in Santa Monica. To protect him from the scrutiny and notoriety, Caleb's mother, Charity, kept his dad's identity a secret, finally revealing the truth to Caleb on his eighteenth birthday.

The internet caught on not too long after that, and suddenly Caleb was at the center of a storm of questions: What was it like to be the son of a rock star? To have a ghost for a dad? To find out now? How much did the son resemble the father? And, could Caleb shed any light on Eli's final, mysterious days?

The only problem: Caleb wouldn't talk.

Not. One. Word.

Until now.

Toast & Jam has the exclusive interview with Caleb Daniels right here!

There is no worse time to live in Mount Hope than the holidays. When most of your town is a sprawling labyrinth of factory outlet malls, and every streetlight is decorated with a banner that reads
Mount Hope. Get Your Giving Here!
, it's hard not to feel like your Christmas spirit has crawled into a corner and died.

The constant drone of modern holiday remixes, crazy traffic, no parking, and endless lines at the coffee drive-through because everyone is ordering drinks with eggnog and peppermint and cinnamon and extra froth but then also “skinny.” It seems like we're all unhappy and exhausted and jostling into each other, like, the bigger the
sales, the more severe the frowning.

Everyone that is, except for me. No time for frowns! Me and my classmate Maya Barnes have work to do. Sure, in one fuzzy-red-fingerless-gloved hand I'm holding a drive-through-stalling venti triple two-pump peppermint skinny mocha (ho ho ho!), but in the other I have:

“Take a break from shopping to see the best new bands in town!”

Flyers.

Maya and I are stationed at a clogged mall intersection. For the last hour and for—I tap my phone, carefully balanced against the side of the mocha—twenty more minutes, our job is to hype up our big first-semester project: the Holiday Meltdown concert. Soundcheck is happening right now. The rumble of bass and drums startles some shoppers out of their zombie shamble. We've been promoting for weeks, and this is our final chance: a search for those last few upbeat souls just yearning for a break from shopping and a dose of rock.

“Great new bands playing right over at the Marketplace!” Maya calls.

The young professional woman whose attention she's trying to woo brushes past her without looking. Her bag even bumps Maya's arm and makes her mocha spill.

“I want to kill them,” I say out of the corner of my otherwise smiling face. I'm kidding. Mostly.

“Hate is only wanting someone to love you,” Maya
replies, her smile equally plastic.

This makes me laugh. Maya's right. And I know that when I'm out walking anywhere, the sight of people handing out stuff always makes me think,
No! Don't see me!
And yet, now, here I am. Except this is different because what I'm handing out is awesome! A show with great bands under the lights, with a crowd full of scarves and fog from breaths and real cheer! How could anyone want to miss it? They need to know!

And also, I'd rather be the upbeat, smiling version of me, as opposed to the hunched, grizzled veteran who's cynically bah-humbugging the whole thing.

That person is so much less fun.

Maya and I are getting graded for this show, and one of the scores is for turnout. This group project is the biggest grade we get for the quarter. Our PopArts classmates are flyering at other key intersections nearby. We already got a great score on our promotional campaign (poster with fire-breathing snow monster), our grassroots marketing (online blasts and giveaways, plus Arctic Apocalypse costume contest), and our social justice component (a portion of snack and merchandise sales go to support the county's transitional housing program).

We'll also have to present a report on the effectiveness of all this, including statistical analysis of things like actual attendance versus online responses, money raised versus budget spent on promotion. Yes, rock and roll can
occasionally involve spreadsheets.

Actually, I vastly prefer that stuff to this moment with the flyers. Here, it's just you and your cheery smile against the indifference of the universe. But these are the final minutes, and I need to bear down and turn some heads.

A young couple walks by. College students home on break? Exactly the listening audience I'm after.

“Take a break from shopping to see the best—”

“Oh, no thanks,” says the guy, super polite.

Ugh. Oh, well, I pep up my smile for the next target: a trio of middle school girls. Another perfect Dangerheart demographic.

“Awesome high school bands playing over at the Marketplace tonight,” I say. Two of the girls are chatting and the third is buried in her phone. Their eyes barely register me but a hand does flash out and take a flyer.

As they walk away I hear her say, “What's this?” Like the paper magically appeared in her hand. But then she taps it against her friend's shoulder. “Hey, check it out.”

Just that little comment fills me with hope. In this sea of stuff, in this planet of seven billion, Dangerheart could be noticed!

The crowd surges past and I pick my spots. It's weird to categorize people. We're always being told that labels are bad, but being selective helps to minimize the cosmic sadness that is finding your flyers crumpled and recycled on the next corner.

Older couple = no.

Thirties-ish solo guy = yes. Takes flyer. Score!

Parents with kids = halfhearted try. Even if they stopped by, would they post about it online? Come back for another show? Doubtful. I've seen parents. Have two of them. The only things they post about are their kids, or pictures of what they're eating for brunch.

“I'm sick of your flyers for strip clubs!” a middle-aged woman snaps at me, brushing away my hand. “I should call the police.”

“It's . . . ,” I start to say but it is no use. The woman hurries on.

Maya takes a risk on three jock guys walking by. “Oh, cool,” the guy taking the flyer says with what might be real enthusiasm. But out of the corner of my eye I see him ball it up and flick it at his buddy's face.

I notice Maya noticing this. “Jerks,” I say.

Maya sighs. “We should head over.”

Maya is only a sophomore, so she's absorbed a few less blows when it comes to this kind of thing and hasn't quite learned how to shrug them off yet. Not that I'm any pro at it, either, but I've definitely developed a thicker skin. Whenever I'm jaded or sarcastic, it's just to hide the sound of air slowly escaping from my inner optimism balloon. Luckily it's time to just enjoy the music.

I flip through my pile as we walk. “I think I handed out about seventy-five,” I say.

“Same here,” says Maya. “I hope some people show up.”

We weave our way through the succession of shopping quadrangles. The thump of bass hits me in the ribs. I love that feeling like no other. I never played an instrument as a kid, except for a few short piano lessons, so while managing bands may not get me up on the stage it gets me close enough to feel the music seeping into me, to get lost in its loud.

We arrive at the plaza and find the Unfortunatelys up onstage doing their final checks, lit in blues and reds. Strings of large glowing stars extend from the stage out across the plaza, bathing the crowd in a golden aura.

“We should do our start-of-show head count,” Maya says, her enthusiasm back. She likes the numbers, too.

We split up to opposite sides of the crowd and gather our data: total attendance, approximate ages, and text each other the results. The crowd isn't bad. I count over two hundred, with a mass of students up in the front, and then a mix of adults, some parents with middle school kids, a few families and grandparents.

“I'm going to find the Commander backstage,” says Maya when we reconvene at the back of the crowd.

“Cool, I'm meeting the band for burgers.”

“Don't miss our set!” Maya says with a smile, but I hear the note of worry. Even though Maya and I are friends, there is an inequality that comes from me and my band being older and, well, better. It's a subtle thing in music, the way pecking orders work. Dangerheart could get away
with eating dinner through Supreme Commander's set. It's acceptable, fits the status quo. But it would also make us just a little bit jerks. You have to keep these things in mind all the time. Because even though it might be okay now, in the long run, musicians are always keeping score.

As I head around the corner to the restaurant, my phone buzzes. A Twitter post:

Oh, sweet! Finally, the blog post is up.

After Caleb's identity as Eli White's son was revealed, we had to set up a separate account to deal with all the interview requests. Caleb didn't want to do any of them; he doesn't want Eli to overshadow him or the band, but I finally convinced him that the shadow was there whether we liked it or not. Do a search for Dangerheart and well over half the results are about Eli. It's been driving the band crazy.

And every day that the world has that conversation without us, the less chance we have of owning it. I pored over the different interview requests for weeks, looking for someone who wanted to write about Caleb, not just use him as a vehicle for talking about the tragic figure of Eli. And definitely not someone who would spend the whole time comparing the two, or the two bands.

I've seen the draft of what Nellie is posting and it's perfect. It doesn't hurt that Toast & Jam has a national following. So hopefully it will calm the world down a little bit, which we need for two reasons: first, so that Caleb can relax and be himself and the band can function without weird expectations. And second . . .

So that we can pursue our other, top secret agenda.

Which is the real reason we're eating burgers right now instead of watching the opening bands.

I find Dangerheart in a back corner booth. They look cool sitting there together, shrouded in mystique. Seeing them makes me smile, but only Matt, the drummer, even notices me approaching. He smiles back. Everyone else is hunched over Jon's tablet.

Caleb has his head in his hands. Something's bothering him. Probably preshow nerves. He gets them pretty bad, even though he's really talented.

“Hey, guys.”

“Hey,” says Val, getting up so I can scoot in beside Caleb. She's frowning, but that's sort of her default position.

What worries me is that everyone else is, too.

“What's up?”

“We're looking at the interview,” Caleb mutters.

“Oh,” I say. “Cool. It's good . . . right? I thought it was good.” I try to keep my energy positive, but it's faltering, being sucked into the black-hole mood at this table.

“We haven't even read it yet,” says Matt.

“We're still just looking at that graphic at the beginning,” Jon adds.

“Graphic?” Nellie didn't send me a graphic.

Caleb finally looks up. For just a second he smiles. “Hey,” he says. He rubs my leg. “I ordered you the jalapeño garden burger. Was that right?” He's speaking quietly. It's the tone his voice gets when he's fighting his stormy insides, trying to find his center.

“Always.” I give him a quick kiss that makes a smile briefly grow on his face, and when he smiles, his nose wrinkles and his cheeks squint up against his dark eyes and it almost makes me want to look away, like he's too beautiful, and I grip his hand tighter . . . but the smile flames out in an instant. He pushes the tablet toward me. “Check it out.”

I see the Toast & Jam header, the title of the article, and between those two things there is a piece of graphic art, and . . . oh no.

It's a giant close-up on Eli White's grizzled face, staring wounded into the camera, a few days unshaven, hair a mess, bags under his eyes. In front of that, small and only reaching up over Eli's chin and mouth, is literally a tiny shadow silhouette of Caleb.

“That's . . . ,” I say with a sigh. “Exactly the opposite of what we wanted. She never said she was going to do that!”

I rub Caleb's back, hoping to steady him. He pushes the pad toward Jon then takes my hand. “I mean . . . wow.”

I feel a surge of guilt. “Are you mad?” I ask.

“Not at you . . .” He sips his already empty Coke.

I quickly send Nellie an email.

“It's definitely attention-grabbing,” says Matt. He's our youngest member and often the most optimistic of us.

“And if you look real close I think you can sort of make out your left eye,” says Jon, our lead guitarist and resident master of sarcasm.

“Bastards,” says Val. Bassist and surliest.

My phone buzzes with Nellie's reply.

I'm torn about how to reply. I know what I really want to say, that this image totally undermines the idea of making the story more about Caleb, and yet it's already out there, and we can't exactly afford to tick off a blog like T&J . . .

Our food arrives and everybody starts eating quietly. A couple bites of salt, ketchup, and jalapeños renew my strength and I tap the table. “Look, this sucks, but at least the article is good. And things like this are just all the more reason why . . .”

Caleb meets my gaze and lowers his voice. “We need to find the other songs.”

“Exactly.”

“It's the only way we're ever going to really have our say,” Val agrees.

“And know the real him,” says Caleb.

“Right. Until we do,” I say, “there are always going to be editors like this who are going to screw things up.”

“And don't forget the part where we play the songs and get world famous,” adds Matt. “I still have no problem with that.”

We all check in with each other, a table of conspirators. I notice that Jon is the only one who hasn't joined in. He's still looking at the article, but then he feels our gaze on him and looks up. “The Eli White All-Stars!” he says in an overly enthusiastic radio DJ's voice. Then he makes the devil horns and rolls his eyes. He's joking . . . I think. Of everyone, Jon has been the least comfortable with how every other conversation about Dangerheart now also includes Eli White. But he's on board enough, I feel sure of that.