“Um, Mr. Hawk, sir?”
I turned to the kid with the shaved head, the one Jeff had introduced as his bassist, and raised an eyebrow.
“Just Hawk, man.”
“Right. Hawk. Can you, uh. Can you tell me how many people are gonna be out there?”
I stared at him, wondering for a moment if he was gonna shit his pants right there in the greenroom.
“You sure you want to know? Because it’s okay if you don’t. You can go out there and just stare up into the house lights and pretend you’re back in someone’s garage, rocking out with your boys and that this is just a regular night for you all.”
They gawked at me, barely breathing, and I went on.
“Or you can go out there, hold your heads up high, and look each and every one of those eighteen thousand people in the fucking eye and let them know exactly whoSavage Donkeyis.” The bassist swallowed, and I could see Jeff grinning from behind his back, while the drummer twirled his sticks as he leaned on the counter, staring at me like I was gonna disappear any second.
“This is real, boys. And you deserve to be on that stage. I wouldn’t have asked you to come if you didn’t. But only you can prove that. You can go out there, shaking in your fucking boots, and let those people see that this is your first time. Show them just how raw your fucking cherry is, and they will eat you alive for it.
“Or you can go out there like you own the fucking place and rock their goddamn faces off!”
The three of them cheered, Jeff wrapping his arms around his boys as they jumped up and down like they’d just won the lottery. In a way, I guessed they had.
Watching them, something inside of me shifted, the dark and tired places in my chest moving aside for a few moments to let the bright joy of these three kids filter in.
This was what it was all about. This is why we did what we did. Because music brought people together. It made peoplefeelthings, and it allowed them to feel heard, to be seen in a way that the real world rarely did.
Watching those kids live out their dream made me long for the days when playing felt like that. When getting up on a stage was about the music, and not the money. When I didn’t have a label and an agent and a publicist breathing down my neck about numbers that didn’t mean shit to me.
I just wanted to make music that people could feel in their souls.
And standing backstage, watching asSavage Donkeymade their arena stage debut, I knew that I would do anything to find a way to feel like that again.
I just didn’t know how.
Chapter eighteen
Hawk
Present
Nothing.
We had been writing for over a week and the three of us had absolutely fuck all to show for it.
A handful of lines that refused to come together into something cohesive. A few riffs that Alex had strung together, waiting for the lyrics that would blend in perfectly.
Lyrics that seemed to be completely unreachable for me.
We didn’t even have an idea about atheme.
How did we fit these songs onto an album we’d completed over five years ago? We were different people now, in different places emotionally, mentally. Anything we wrote now was going to stick out like a sore thumb on that album, and it was only making us more and more frustrated.
“How about a ballad?” Alex offered, not for the first time. It seemed to be something he was more and more focused on in the last few days. “We could really rock out a power ballad, you know? I mean,Kissdid it.Bon Jovihad several.Staind, Green Day. There are tons of wicked rock bands who have produced killer ballads. It’s not out of the question.”
I hummed in thought. We had a ballad on the first album, and it had been pretty popular. ButHoly Trinityhadn’t had one, and our third album,Back In Action, hadn’t been the right fit for one.
This final album had more of an emotional tone; something deep and slow wouldn’t be completely out of place and could actually round out the track list nicely.
I just had to fucking write it.
