The Fatal Darlings

Report 002

Filed · Sanderson TX

Venue: Terrell County Memorial Building — Sanderson, TX
Booking: Private event. Wedding reception.
Date: Saturday
Load-in: 2:00 PM, front doors, one step
Guarantee: $600. See notes.
Merch: Not offered
Damages: None

Notes

Booked five weeks out by the groom's brother, by phone, which almost nobody does anymore. Pleasant, organized, called back when he said he would. Six hundred for four hours, cash on the night, and he asked twice whether that was enough. It was.

Three hours from the house. We left at eleven and stopped once.

Eight days before the gig he called again.

He said, "One thing. Don't play the first one."

I said, "The first one of what?"

He said, "On your list. The one you open with."

I said, "Any particular reason?"

He said, "Just not that one," and then he talked about the parking situation for four minutes and got off the phone.

Two days after that, the bride's mother called. Different number, different voice, and she introduced herself carefully like she wasn't sure I'd know who she was.

She said, "I understand you've already been asked, but I want to be sure."

I said, "Asked what."

She said, "Don't play the first one."

I asked her the same thing I'd asked him. She said, "It's just not the night for it," and thanked me, and hung up.

Neither of them named it. Neither of them asked what it was called. Neither of them, at any point, seemed to think there was more than one song it could possibly be.

Here is the part I want in the report.

That song has opened every show we've played for four years. It is not on a record. It is not on our page. It is not on anybody's phone that I know of, because we have never once let anyone film the first three minutes of a set — that was Cass's rule from the beginning and we have never broken it.

It has no title in public. It has no title on the setlist either; the setlist just says 1.

I don't know how anybody in Sanderson knows what it is. I especially don't know how two people who, as far as I could tell, have not spoken to each other in years both know what it is.

The hall was a hall. Linoleum, folding chairs, a stage at one end about eight inches high. Crepe paper again — white and pale green — and a sheet cake on a table by itself with a plastic cover over it.

About a hundred and ten people. Bride's side to the left of the aisle, groom's side to the right, and in four hours I did not see one person cross.

Not hostile. Nobody argued, nobody glared. It was more like a rule everyone had agreed to a long time ago and nobody needed to enforce.

Things I catalogued, in order:

The head table was set for the bride and groom and two more. Nobody sat in the other two chairs and nobody moved them.

The PA in the hall — theirs, not ours — had been unplugged at the wall and the cord coiled and zip-tied. Rae found it while we were running our own lines. Somebody had made sure of it, and it took effort, and it was done neatly.

Somebody's grandmother had a program in her hand the entire night. There were no programs.

The cake was never cut.

We played four hours. We started with the second song on the list and never mentioned it.

The room was fine. Not the best we've had, not the worst. Older crowd, polite, a handful of kids running the perimeter the way kids do. The bride danced with her father and then with about nine other people. She looked happy. I want that in the report too, because everything else in it makes the night sound worse than it felt while we were in it.

Around ten, a man in his sixties came up between songs and asked if we were going to do "the one from the beginning."

I said we'd been asked not to.

He said, "Good," and went back to his table.

He did not seem disappointed and he did not seem to be testing me. He seemed relieved, the way you are when somebody confirms the doors are locked.

Cass wanted to leave at three hours and forty minutes. For the record, that is a shorter fuse than usual for her, and I think it was the two chairs.

Tear-down was easy. One step, wide doors, and three people helped without being asked.

The groom's brother paid us in the parking lot. Six hundred in an envelope, counted out, exactly as agreed. He shook my hand and said we did a nice job and he meant it.

Ninety seconds later the bride's mother came out with another envelope.

Six hundred.

I said, "We've been paid."

She said, "Not by us."

I said, "It's the same six hundred. You don't both owe it."

She said, "It isn't for the playing."

I asked her what it was for. She had already turned around.

We sat in the van in the lot for a while with two envelopes.

Rae said, "So that's twelve hundred."

Cass said, "That's twelve hundred."

Nobody said anything else about it and we drove home.

One more item, and I only know it because I asked the man who helped us carry the bass rig.

They had a DJ booked before us. He cancelled a week out. His name is on the deposit slip taped inside the kitchen door, and under his name somebody had written, in pen, in block letters:

NOT THE FIRST ONE

The handwriting is not the groom's brother's. I have his handwriting on the envelope.

We took the money. Twice.

Next week: a bar outside Fort Stockton where the owner wants us to start at 9:00 and stop at 11:00 exactly, and has put it in writing three times.

Report 001

Filed · Rankin TX

Venue: The old gym on the north side of Rankin, TX
Booking: Private event. Class reunion.
Date: Saturday
Load-in: 4:00 PM, through the east doors, no ramp
Guarantee: $800
Merch: $0. See notes.
Damages: None

Notes

The booking came in by email eleven days out. One paragraph, no signature, a Yahoo address. Class reunion, four hours, covers welcome but they'd heard the originals and preferred those. Eight hundred flat, cash on the night, plus a hot meal.

Cass wrote back asking which class. No response. She wrote again the day before load-in and it bounced.

That is not, by itself, a reason to turn down eight hundred dollars.

The gym was a gym. Folding tables around the perimeter with paper tablecloths, a punch bowl, one of those slow cookers with a hand-lettered card in front of it that said BRISKET — DO NOT MOVE. Somebody had strung crepe paper across the bleachers in two colors and run out halfway.

The banner over the stage said WELCOME BACK CLASS OF and then nothing. Not a blank space. The banner simply ended, and the material had been folded under and stapled, neat, deliberate, like whoever made it had gotten to that part and made a decision.

Rae said it was probably a printing thing.

Load-in was fine. The east doors had no ramp, which we knew, so we did it the hard way, and a man in a maroon windbreaker held the door for forty minutes without being asked and without going inside.

He said, "Y'all sound just like you did."

Cass said, "Like we did when?"

He said, "It's good to have you back."

I want to be clear that nothing about this was hostile. He was pleasant. He carried Rae's floor tom.

By seven the gym was about sixty people, which in a town that size is more than any class ever graduated.

Every one of them was the same age.

I don't mean around the same age. I mean I stood at the merch table for twenty minutes doing the thing you do at a reunion gig, where you try to figure out which year it is by the haircuts, and I could not find a single person who was older or younger than anybody else. No parents. No kids. Nobody's aunt. Sixty people, all somewhere around forty, all dressed for a nice evening in 1994, all delighted to be there.

I mentioned it to Rae. She said, "Reunion."

I said, "Right."

Things I catalogued between load-in and downbeat, in order:

The trophy case by the west doors had a district championship plaque in it with next year's date on it. Not a typo — engraved, seated in the felt, dust on the top edge.

The clock above the scoreboard did not work, which was fine, except that the scoreboard did, and it was counting down, and it had been counting down since we got there, and at no point did I see it reach zero or reset.

The bathroom mirrors had been taken out. Not covered. Removed, and the drywall patched and painted, some time ago, well.

Nobody was drinking the punch. The punch bowl was full at seven and it was full at eleven.

None of these things is illegal.

We played two sets.

The first set was the best room we have had in two years. I want that in the report, because it complicates everything after it. They listened. They didn't talk over the quiet parts. When Rae broke a stick during the third song, somebody in the front row had one ready, held up, before she had even turned around to look at the case.

At the break a woman came up and told me her daughter listens to us. She said it the way people do — warm, a little embarrassed, holding her purse with both hands. I said thank you. I meant it.

She said, "She's going to be so jealous."

I said, "How old is she?"

The woman thought about it.

She thought about it for a long time.

Then she said, "Oh, you know," and laughed, and went back to her table.

Cass wanted to leave at the break. For the record, she was right, and I want that in the report too.

We stayed because the second set was another four hundred dollars and because Rae had already retuned.

Second set, sixth song, I stepped back to give Cass the solo and there were four microphones on that stage.

We carry three.

It was set up stage left, about where you'd want it, on one of our stands, cabled into our board, and when I looked at Rae she was already looking at it.

The channel was live. I could see the meter moving.

Nobody was standing at it.

We finished the song. We finished the set. We played the two we always play at the end, and the room stood up, and sixty people applauded for a long time, and the scoreboard kept counting down.

Tear-down took twenty-five minutes. The man in the maroon windbreaker held the door again.

The money came in a bank envelope, counted out in front of us by a woman with a clipboard who called Rae by her full name, which is not on our website, our socials, or anything we have ever printed.

Eight hundred, plus two hundred more.

I said, "This is over."

She said, "That's for the extra mic."

We did not sell merch, because the table was set up, the box was open, and not one person out of sixty came over. They stood ten feet away and looked at it. Several of them pointed things out to each other. Nobody bought anything and nobody came closer than ten feet.

I don't know what that means and I'm not going to guess.

Loaded out by 11:40. Ate the brisket in the parking lot off paper plates, which was, and I say this without qualification, the best food we have been fed at a gig this year.

Rae asked if anybody wanted to talk about the fourth mic.

Cass said no.

I said, "It wasn't as bad as the field."

Everybody agreed it wasn't as bad as the field.

Woman with the clipboard came out to the van while we were eating. Asked if we'd come back.

Same night next year, she said. Same rate.

We said yeah.

We took the money