Page 2 of Wild Fixation
We turn down another hall and then into a room, and I find my whole band waiting for me. Keannen settles behind his drum kit, the place where he always seems most comfortable. One of our guitarists, Shawn, regards me with a worried gaze. Much like Keannen, he’s all dark hair, dark eyes and broody eyeliner. Stubble shadows his cheeks, and if I didn’t know him so well, I’d assume he was some aloof rockstar type.
“You okay, man?” Shawn says.
“I’m fine, I’m fine,” I say, brushing aside my band’s worrying.
“You had a way tougher time getting here than the rest of us,” Shawn points out.
He’s not wrong, but I wave the comment away. The hazards of being a lead singer, I suppose. People see me as the leader of the band. It doesn’t help that I’m the one who does most of the talking. Shawn and Keannen certainly aren’t going to do it. It’s up to me to slap on my trademark dimpled smile and answer questions when we’re forced in front of a camera.
I run a hand through my wavy brown hair. It’s grown out, almost reaching my shoulders, but Emmett assures me it’s “the right look” for Baptism Emperor’s frontman.
Whatever. I’ll leave my hair a little long if that’s what it takes for me to make music.
“You guys ready to focus on music, or are we going to chit chat all day?” I say, strutting toward the microphone stand in the center of the padded room.
“Yeah, yeah,” Shawn says, hefting his guitar over his head.
Keannen is already at his drums. Levi lounges on a couch with his bass, but gets up when I glare at him. Our backup guitarist, Dan, complies with a shrug.
I guess I kind of am the leader of this group. At my urging we all get to our instruments and start playing one of our newer songs. I wrote it during our journey home after the tour, but it’s rough around the edges. We’re in the very earliest stages of a second album. It’s grueling coming off our first tour and being asked to make more music right away, but Emmett and the management company insist we need to stay relevant if we don’t want our career to be a flash in the pan.
Judging by the press stalking my every step, we’ve got time before people lose interest.
We settle into a familiar rhythm as we work through the music. Even when we stumble, we recover quickly. The five of us have been making music together for years. We know each other. We know each other’s playing. The fancy record deal and big tour aren’t enough to change us. Alone in a practice room with nothing but our instruments, we’re exactly the same guys who used to play dive bars in exchange for a round of drinks.
The world and fame can only change us so much.
I relax, the startling experience with that grabby paparazzo fading to the back of my mind. Words pour out of me and into the mic. I close my eyes, feeling the lyrics, letting them shift and change as I belt them into the mic. I barely need it in a room this small. I’ve always had a voice people describe as “big,” so it’s absolutely flooding the practice room as I barrel through my band’s newest song, “Escape.” We’re aiming to release this as a single to whet people’s appetites for a second album, but part of me cringes at the thought of the media flurry that will surely inspire.
The silence rings in my ears when we hit the end. I open my eyes and find my band smiling and nodding around me. They can feel it too. This new song is a winner, but it’s only the beginning. We need a lot more if we’re going to give the label and our new fans something to sate their hunger.
I sag as the weight of the expectations rushes back in to rest on my shoulders. At least I have these four men around me to help me carry the burden. I’m not sure what I’d do without them. Remove even one of them, and our little rock band would topple like a house of cards in a hurricane.
We get back into the music. Shawn and Dan work on some guitar riffs and solos while I talk about tempo with Luke and Keannen. Eventually, we come back together, running the song again with slight alterations. We try a couple others as well, but none of them are as far along as the first one.
The time slips away, taking my anxieties with it. There are no windows in here, and I don’t go near my phone during practice, so I have no idea if it’s been a few minutes or a few hours by the time we decide to stop. It feels like both at once, the time simultaneously slow and gone in a blink.
When we start packing up, however, Shawn, the broody guitarist, hesitates.
“Hey, maybe we should leave together,” he says.
“Seriously? We’ll be fine,” I say. “Besides, didn’t we all drive separately?”
“Yeah but you barely made it through the door,” Shawn says. “Keannen had to rescue you.”
“He did notrescueme. He opened the door for me. It wasn’t a big deal.”
Despite my words, the ghost of a hand tugs at my arm. What were they hoping to accomplish? Would they really have hauled me into that pack of paparazzi?
I suppress a shiver, smiling instead. “It was just some reporters. They must have gone home by now. Come on, let’s head out. I’m getting hungry.”
The mention of food finally moves my bandmates. We’ve been here all day, and if any of the other guys are like me and rolled out of bed late without eating, they’re probably starving.
“Maybe we can go to that burger place nearby while we’re in the area,” I say as we make our way down the hall. “They had the best fries. You know, the ones with that sauce.”
I get a few nods of agreement. It seems even Shawn isn’t so dire about our parking lot prospects that the idea of a big greasy meal can’t sway him. We can afford fancier dinners now. We can afford fanciereverythingnow. But sometimes a burger that’ll leave your fingers shining with grease is better than all the five-star meals in the world.
I’ve moved on to fantasizing about the milkshakes by the time we reach the door. I throw it open without thinking—
