Page 1 of Reverb

PART 1

NOW AND THEN

ONE

THEN

Sienna

The driver’s seat of a rented ten-year-old Toyota, parked in a New Orleans parking lot, was not where I expected my nervous breakdown to begin. I hadn’t planned to have a nervous breakdown at all. But here I was, scrolling through the app on my phone that showed hotel after hotel with sold-out status, feeling panic rise in my chest.

Sold out. Sold out.

This hotel had a room available. For sixteen hundred dollars.

The next one: Sold out.

I was almost halfway through a ten-week tour with the Road Kings, the legendary band that had reunited after five years apart. I was the journalist assigned to cover the tour and write about it exclusively for Soundcheck magazine. I was—supposedly—given transportation, hotel, and tickets to every show on the tour. I was given four days of bus access with the band. I was put on the list to get backstage at every show. I was being given all the access any journalist could ask for, and there was no question—it was my dream job.

Since the day I first saw Almost Famous at age thirteen, I’d wanted to be doing exactly what I was doing right now. Touring with a legendary band, writing for seventies-era Rolling Stone—okay, not quite, but I could imagine—and learning life lessons along the way. I dreamed that I’d create great writing, live my passion for music, and have an experience that was nothing less than extraordinary. And here I was, living that dream.

Everything about it sucked.

Exhibit A: The band hated me. They’d hate any journalist, because they were famous for loathing publicity, but they most definitely hated me. Not one of them wanted to talk to me, and they avoided me like I had a particularly hideous type of infectious disease.

Exhibit B: Because the band hated me, they struck my name from the credentials list to get backstage every night, so I had no special access. I was stuck watching the shows from the audience with everyone else.

Exhibit C: Because the band hated me, I was not allowed to travel on either of the tour buses. Instead, I had a jarring, lonely, exhausting schedule of airports and rental cars, while the band bonded on the bus rides, talking (I imagined) about all of the things I was supposed to be writing about.

Exhibit D: As a result, the pieces I was turning in were terrible. I tried, but they were still terrible.

I could just about deal with all of this. The music business isn’t for weaklings, especially female ones, who everyone assumes can’t hack it. I didn’t care if the band didn’t like me—I had a job to do. So I’d sit in airports and follow them around like a bad smell, and if they wouldn’t talk to me, then I’d write whatever I wanted about them, whether it was true or not. If they didn’t like what Soundcheck was publishing, they could damn well give me an interview and set the record straight.

Also, the music was good. Really good. The Road Kings were a legendary live band for a reason. They had devoted fans who followed them from show to show just to soak in the brilliance of each night. The guys were in the second half of their thirties, at a point at which their musical skills and their attitudes were hitting a maturing point—it was no longer the raw, undisciplined playing of twenty-year-olds, but it wasn’t fossilized into “classic rock” status, either. Even from where I sat in the audience, I could see what was happening with the changing setlists, the new arrangements, the new songs. Those assholes were at the top of their game.

And god, I loved writing about that stuff. I lived for it. I wanted to pick those jerks’ brains apart and listen to them jam and know everything about what they were thinking about next. Those dumbasses thought I wanted to intrude into their private lives and ask them about their outfits or their childhoods or their sex habits or something, and all I wanted to talk about was music.

The Road Kings didn’t trust me. That was fine. I would make them trust me. I was determined to stay on the tour.

Except, Exhibit E: I now had nowhere to stay.

I’d landed in New Orleans, where the band was to play three sold-out shows, to find I had no hotel room booked. I had no idea why. I only knew that I was stranded in my rental car, scrolling through a booking site, seeing that every hotel in the city was fully booked unless I was a millionaire. Was every convention in town on the same days? What was going on?

I kept scrolling, feeling the panic close in. I was weeks into this shitty disaster of a tour, and I could feel it: this was the thing that would break me. Not the loneliness, the hatred from the band, the creeping certainty that I was failing in my career. I was either going to have to spend thousands of dollars of my own money, sleep in this rental car, or go home to Portland.

I didn’t want to go home.

I pressed a palm to my forehead and closed my eyes. I was hungry, I needed a shower, and I needed to do a few hours of work. “Think, Sienna, think,” I chided myself out loud. I’d already called the Soundcheck office, where I’d told an admin assistant about the cancelled booking, and he’d promised to “check it out” and call me back. I didn’t hold out much hope.

I could stay outside of town, maybe. Or find a youth hostel. Even the hotels by the airport were booked up. Airbnb only had sketchy single rooms in some dude’s house, and even those were overpriced.

Whatever I chose, I’d be paying for it myself, at least until I could sort this out and claim back the money. I had maybe a few hundred bucks’ room on my credit card and another few hundred in the bank. If I spent it all staying in New Orleans—then what? The tour had almost six more weeks to go.

I had no friends or contacts in town, no one who owed me a favor. I hadn’t been in this business long enough to have a network. This tour with the Road Kings was supposed to be my big break.

I put my phone down, then picked it up again. Put it down. Started to panic again. Even if I wanted to give up, I had no way to get home unless I drove to the airport and bought a ticket. Which I couldn’t afford. Maybe I’d try the Soundcheck office again. In the meantime, I was starting to understand that it was possible I’d have to sleep in this rental car tonight.

I picked up my phone again, then dropped it with a screech when someone knocked on the passenger window, two sharp raps.

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