I should’ve known you’d find the moment to strike
You were the priest, I was the lamb on the altar
I’m not naïve, I just forgot what you’re like
The chorus grew progressively angrier as the song went on, with Trix joining him in a two-part harmony that culminated in shout-singing, a technique that had taken them years to do well. Tonight Jeff felt the strain on his vocal cords and knew the fans could hear it and feel the raw emotion the words evoked for him.
And for Trix.
This was what had bonded them, once upon a time. It hurt to sing it now and think of her instead, knowing she was probably doing the same. But audiences responded to honesty, and when the last notes of the song faded away, they were on their feet, hollering, the sound echoing in Jeff’s ears even past his noise-reducing earpieces.
He took a moment to catch his breath and happened to look back and found Trix’s gaze by accident. She inclined her head.
Good enough, Jeff thought, and subtly cued Joe for the bass intro of “Ginsberg.”
The tension on the stage might feel uncomfortable to Jeff, but it hadn’t impacted the audience. If anything, they had more energy than Jeff could remember from any other show in the past two years.
The first set ended on “I Like the Thrill,” Max’s homage to e.e. cummings. Jeff yielded center stage and let him get into it in sensuous, crooning detail while Jeff, Joe, and Trix took turns with breathy backup vocals. As the last orgiastic harmony faded into the finally fallen night, the crowd ignited in cheers. Jeff was glad for them that it was dark now. The song tended to put people in a certain mood.
They didn’t have a lot of downtime while the tech crew prepped the stage for the second set of the show, which had different lighting needs due to a stronger focus on acoustic numbers. They also had to roll out the piano for Joe as well as Trix’s second drum kit, which had a slightly different tuning.
They reopened with Joe at the piano under a bright spotlight, tickling through the delicate intro of “That Summer.”
As the melody transferred to Jeff, Joe’s light went out and another came on, illuminating Jeff standing on the piano, feet shoulder-width apart, guitar cradled against his hips, head bowed.
The sound of five thousand people losing their shit would never get old, even if Jeff couldn’t see them: if he opened his eyes under the spotlight, he wouldn’t be able to see to get down from the piano when the spotlight moved.
Trix came in, the heat of the spotlight left his skin, and Jeff carefully jumped down as Joe sang about his childhood adventures climbing trees and terrorizing his grandmother’s chickens.
Unlike the show the night before, they stayed mainly with recent releases, bantering back and forth with snippets of history—how the songs came to be, who suggested what lyric, who was responsible for what songs.
With one or two songs to go, Joe was back on bass, picking out a muted background leitmotif as he quipped, “If the song’s about breaking the law, Trix probably wrote it.”
Trix groaned theatrically but tapped out a rimshot anyway. “Just because I wrote out my fantasy of keying a cop’s car—”
“Also that one about breaking into a museum,” Max put in.
“That was for a movie.”
“What about ‘Catch Me’?” Jeff asked innocently. “How many speeding tickets do you have again?”
She snorted and made a face at him. “Since when are you such a narc?”
Jeff played a minor ninth to indicate his disagreement with the statement.
Max picked up the thread. “Joe’s songs are all pretty personal. Life experiences.”
It wasn’t a secret or anything, so Joe just nodded. “Max, you know, he’s a little of everything. A poem he read, a place he’s been, a woman he—”
“Treated very respectfully,” Jeff broke in because he knew his cue.
“Respected all night long,” Joe continued.
Trix tapped out a quick beat—tom-tom-tom. “And then there’s Jeff.”
Oh boy.
Jeff felt his face going redder under the bright lights of the stage, even though he’d seen this coming. It had been one thing before, when he could pretend that the songs were just songs, not written about anyone in particular. Now—well, Carter must at least suspect they were mostly about him. Which was fine. Except Carter’s entire family also knew. Most of Willow Sound would follow.
