Chapter 74: Smart Girls Keep A Journal

A/N Special thanks to @mlaw16 who gave me a wonderful tutorial on copyright and contract law last night in regards to Soundrush's dispute with Sid Stoltz. I found it so fascinating I expounded upon it in this chapter. I know so many of you like the "realism" of the industry stuff, so I think you will enjoy it too. Any errors in interpretation are entirely my own, and should not be interpreted as actual legal advice from  of our new cameo character "Jen Proctor"  or her real-life alter ago....wink!

This is a BIG chapter for Trace. Like the biggest chapter he's had in a while. I know we sometimes don't love his behavior but people in pain lash out, and our favorite boy has had a lot to deal with in his tender young life, too. Bodie has been through his stuff but we have to remember Bodie had a  safe home. All his trauma was external...outside those four walls. Trace lived in anxiety and occasional  fear inside his home as a child....

So here we go...big time jump, year in review as seen through Doc Gorgeous' eyes,  and this chapter relates a big turning point for Trace....

Marley, Fifteen months later (December)

So much has happened.

In the midst of the disastrous Soundcrush-Sid Stoltz Sessions, as they came to be known, I starting keeping a journal. I detailed all of Soundcrush's professional happenings. In case Trace, or maybe Bodie, or anyone in the band really, ever wants to write a memoir. I'll gladly redact a copy of my journal for them, because there are personal entries, too.

Some days, Doc Gorgeous looks back on the highlights, trying to figure out what parts of the last year will be important in Soundcrush's legacy. Some days, I look at it through Jasmine's eyes, and wonder if the damage Soundcrush has weathered is but a precursor to the full force of the private storm still raging in my personal life with Bodie.

Today I feel like I'm wearing bifocals, trying to piece it all together, and see where we go from here.

Maybe the trouble really got going with the name of the album. Leed made up fake and funny stories about the name Fuck Charon in the press, but not one band member ever thought it was funny, and there was no joy in them when they promoted it. The name was bitter on their tongues and it showed on their faces.

Maybe the blame for that really does lie with Sid Stoltz. Maybe he delivered a grievous wound and even now, none of us are really sure if Soundcrush is going to survive.

It's hard to say if Sid's influence on band morale was most impactful during their weeks of studio time, or how much his toxic influence eventually effected the resulting album. The one that eventually rose from the ashes of his firestorm of threatened litigation, I mean.

Trace and Riley spent a couple of tense days in LA talking things over with Colossal's legal team. There was a lot of back and forth about whether the issue was a copyright or a contract issue, and whether or not Sid could win the case.

Moran brought Trace to the table with Jen Proctor—a young ambitious attorney on Colossal's copyright team...whom Trace had never met before, because he doesn't like to use Colossal's counsel for negotiating any contracts that don't specifically have fall under our distribution agreements with them. He thinks it gives them too much power to act as proxy in any of our band business.

Jen was a lovely and ambitious associate who efficiently, but good-naturedly explained to Trace—more than once—that Sid's contract language did not stipulate whether his monetary rights to the songs were derived from the arrangements or the specific recordings that he would produce. And without that specificity the position could be argued—and would be argued by Sid's attorneys if the suit went to court— that he was in fact a creative collaborator and that his contract entitled him royalty rights as such. And that was the point that could easily land this case in court.

There was evidence for Soundcrush's position of course. Even putting pen to paper to record the compositions in the Soundcrush Bible as Mac always did provided a protection of of the bands works, because a copyright does not have to be applied for to exist and provide rights to the owner of the intellectual property. But Sid's people wouldn't be arguing a copyright case. They would be arguing a contract dispute as to how those rights were supposed to be portioned. Colossal was less concerned with whether or not Sid could win the suit, but how much it would cost to litigate.

Moran wanted Trace to give Stoltz the credit so everyone could make money. But there was no way in hell Trace was going to back down. And the entire band was behind him.

Except for Bodie.

Over dinner at the band house one night, Bodie told Trace, "I'm with you philosophically, okay? No question, Sid's a dick and contributed nothing to your body of work with Mac on this album. The only thing he inspired in you was a fuck ton of self-doubt and a few hangovers.

"But the truth is, we don't always get to stand on our fucking pride. Sometimes you have to shit you absolutely do not want to fucking do, to get the result you have to have.

He tapped the Soundcrush Bible, the binder that once was carelessly handled but now seemed to be the most precious possession of all five bandmembers.

"We need this catalog of songs on our third album to get the effect you want. We've been working on these songs for two years. We had a shitty contract with a shitty guy. Take the lesson, take the lumps. It's business. Don't want this to happen again? We need a publishing agent and Colossal's legal team...that Jen Proctor... writing our contracts, not the DIY way we've been going about our business just because you hate giving over leverage to the man."

But despite what Bodie said...the vote went 4-1, Trace's way. Another point of contention that stressed Bodie and Trace's relationship. The band agreed to write all new music, with one exception.

Priestess had been performed live several times. Not a lot because Trace didn't want to expose it too much before official release, but on occasion. There were several pirated videos from concerts out on the Internet, and they all pre-dated Sid ever becoming involved with Soundcrush.

So Moran agreed to support Priestess on the new album. When Moran himself ran into Sid at some event or another, he showed Sid one of the videos and said, "This song will be a number one hit for Soundcrush. And Soundcrush only. You wanna sue over Priestess? Go right the fuck ahead. I don't give a shit how much it costs Colossal, because I can afford the litigation and you can't afford to fight over one song's royalties. And you will lose much more than that suit. You will never work with another Colossal artist again. Not while I steer the ship."

Sid never made any more noise about Priestess, but the first, and maybe the fatal blow, to Fuck Charon had already been delivered by Soundcrush's involvement with him.

Or maybe it was the other, more personal reason for the Fuck Charon title.

Sid Stoltz wasn't the only Charon Soundcrush was required to grapple with. He cost them the soul of their originally planned third album, but on Decemeber, Soundcrush saw another more precious soul ushered out of this world too soon. Two months after Sid's exit and Soundcrush's decision to write a new album, the new songwriting sessions were interrupted again. This time by Mac's second trimester miscarriage.

Unlike Row's pregnancy, Mac's pregnancy was specifically planned. Not only to deliver a sibling close in age to Lennon, but also timed around Soundcrush's third album and subsequent tour plans. Sadly, like Row's pregnancy, Mac's also ended in loss—though at a more advance and devastating stage.

Like Row, Mac threw herself into her work recreating a new catalog for the album, but in the place that both she and Trace were during that time...the songs they crafted were vastly different than anything that had come before. Mac's walk through grief doubled down on Trace's darkness. They created songs that were dark and edgy and full of introspection, both musically and lyrically. They were magnificent.

Leed did incredible work with the vocals. His soul bled all over those tracks.

Soundcrush was immensely proud of the album. Bodie was extremely proud creatively, too, but he had a new perspective on the music business. Sorting through Evangeline's songs, pairing her with different songwriters, delving into market research for her branding, had taught him a lot.

Although he kept all his reservations about the Fuck Charon final product confined to our pillow talk, he already knew what the rest of the band, caught up in the very personal meaning of the album, couldn't see.

Fuck Charon was not going to be what the Soundcrush fanbase and the growing alt-revival market was expecting. Or wanting.

Priestess was a number one Billboard hit. Colossal threw a big party, as is custom in the industry, but even at the party, the axe of doom was hanging because market testing for the next single had already been returned...and it was not good. Priestess would be the only single that even charted, and it did not carry the album into the digital sales numbers Colossal was expecting.

Reviews played a part. They were also largely negative—mostly accusing that Soundcrush's departure into artistic darkness was contrived. Some asshole said Soundcrush had forgotten they were trying to build on the backs of bands like Nirvana and were instead trying to imitate the personal life and death of Kurt Cobain.

In a surprise that shocked even industry insiders and music critics—and Soundcrush at that point—Fuck Charon won Album of the Year at the Grammy's. But even the most prestigious Grammy award could not turn around the bottom line on the album.

The most anticipated album of the year—and Soundcrush's effort that was supposed to solidify their early reputation, justify their emerging iconic status, and return alt rock to the mainstream—was a commercial and critical failure. Even after the Grammy's, critics dismissed the award by saying the Academy got it wrong and voted for the del Marco name and not the merit of the album.

And that's how fickle the media can be. What was once their favorite fairy tale had now become their favorite way to blow holes in Soundcrush's legitimacy.

In a fit of dejection after making the fatal mistake of reading his own press, Trace showed up drunk at Matt's house shortly after the Grammy's and tried to give the statue to Marianne to put in Matt's case.

He got belligerent when Marianne refused.

The next day in session, Trace told me how Matt reacted to Trace's drunken argument with his bonus mom as he backed her across the trophy room, trying to push the statue into her hands.

He asked me to tape his recollection, so he could play it back, and keep the memory fresh. Later, I also recorded it faithfully in my journal, in case he should ever lose the digital recorder. I know it borders on a breach of ethics, but I will never share Soundcrush's story, so I don't think he will mind.

This is what happened:

Matt pulled Trace away from Marianne, out the back door and threw his drunk ass in the shallow end of the pool. Then he threw Soundcrush's Grammy statue in the deep end. Matt waded in the water, pulled Trace up by his drunken, sopping lapels, and said:

"You are drunk and agitated so I will speak slowly and calmly and you will listen.

"I will not, and Marianne will not, relieve you of that Grammy Award.

"The voting members of the Academy gave you that honor. Not the people who talk about music, or make the money off it, and not even the nostalgic fans-the people that are attached to one particular memory of one particular song of yours.

"Your peers—the people who live music, who breath it, who write it, play it, produce it professionally—think your band made the best fucking album of the year.

"But forget about that for a minute. The del Marco legacy that's trippin' your head? You are not Street. You are not Row. You are not Bridge. You did not have to grow up under that burden. Now, you definitely had your own shit to deal with but you got an easy slide into being my son, so I'm not gonna put up with that del Marco pity party from you.

"I am also not going to apologize for being your father who loves you. So it's about fucking time I act like a father and not your best friend. It's time I set you straight:

"You had a shitty childhood. Guess what? So did I. But you have to let all that resentment and fear go now, and you have to be brave and grow the fuck up. Because now? You will fucking ruin your life if you don't embrace it like a man.

"You are a del Marco. My name is not a burden--it's proof of my love for you, proof of my pride in you, and a big fucking umbrella for you if it should really start to pour down on you.

"But you are also your own man. Even before we met, your life was already golden. You have the satisfaction of knowing you made the big time all on your own. You got rich and famous doing what you love. Doesn't matter that this record isn't performing to expectation. Doesn't matter if you play to a sellout arena crowd or in a bar. Doesn't matter if Colossal keeps you for thirty years or you have to pay for your own records on an indie label.

"None of that matters. What matters is you are not a scared kid but a man in charge of his own life now. What matters is you chose music and it saved you. What matters is no one can take it from you."

"So if you'll take my advice, you'll dive down deep and you'll retrieve your Grammy from the bottom of my pool and when you break the surface, you'll sober up and stop fucking whining about album sales and reviews and being my son. And you'll stop feeding your fears and your hurts about being Ross's son, too, and you'll go play your Grammy winning album on tour, and then you'll know—it's your calling to make music and no one can kill your passion for it but you."

He let go, dropping Trace back into the water, shocked and sinking.

In one act of tough love—the only time to my knowledge that Matt had ever gotten in Trace's face—he did what I hadn't been able to do for Trace in a year of counseling.

He shook the man loose from the angry child.

Trace did what Matt said. And when he climbed out of that pool with that statue, he was different. He was...proud.

So much of his edge, his tendency to be self-critical in ways that turned outward, his obsessive need to control, finally began to wither and die. He still had a lot of emotional maturing to do, but he stopped fighting it and started embracing it.

Trace met the huge professional disappointment of Fuck Charon's commercial performance with composure and he got right back to work, doing what he loved. Playing live music.

It didn't stop the feeding frenzy in the press. The media had tasted blood and they were determined to take every drop from Soundcrush. The darlings became the sacrifice.

Nearly eighteen months later, I can tell you much was said in the press about the poor fan performance of Fuck Charon.

It was said that Soundcrush peaked too soon.

It was said that Bodie's dabbles in a vanity label and Adam's emerging producer career detracted from their contributions.

Of course, much continued to be made of the burden of the del Marco legacy that sabotaged Trace's confidence. Even Madam's marriage and their songwriting for Arabella's smash hit album was fingered as a culprit for Soundcrush's lackluster effort.

Many reviews said Mac and Adam's partnership— as spouses and pop songwriting partners—disrupted the original balance in the band and took an axe to Trace and Mac's creative partnership.

Leed alone was held blameless above the finger-pointing. He was given an A for effort in trying to bail a sinking ship. But even there, the media made their cuts, speculating that Leed would cut his losses and opt for a solo career. Or maybe turn to movies, or Broadway, because he was clearly the star far beyond a fading band.

From that moment in Matt's pool, Trace began to relax about the negative press. Our entire year on tour, he never lost his cool with a journalist or talk show host. He shrugged it off. His worst fears—of losing control of his career, of things spiraling—they happened. And he survived. And so did Soundcrush.

The album was a commercial  failure but Little Sister and Circus and December Dawn and Priestess and the promise of Madam's pop duet were still driving the ticket sales to fill arenas.

Soundcrush extended their tour plans, adding front dates and back dates now that Mac's pregnancy was sadly no longer a work-around issue.

They've spent the entire year on tour, making enough fortune for another lifetime in the process, but most of the proceeds were split between the tour promoters and the label to compensate for the album's poor performance. Some fans did what fans always do when a band is "past its prime." They got on their feet and screamed for the nostalgic top forty hits and about half would hit the beer lines during the new material.

Soundcrush didn't care. They played on to the half that stayed. Hearing the new music live touched fans and Fuck Charon's sales steadily increased to a respectable number for the year.

Now the tour is over, and Fuck Charon's legacy will perhaps be revised with the upcoming documentary project that is slated to commence next year. Perhaps Soundcrush will finally get to tell the stories that motivated the songs fans are only beginning to wrap their minds around. Only time will tell.

But press coverage and reception of Fuck Charon and Trace's growth moment is not the only struggle I've written about in my journal.

Over and over, I've written the same kinds of entries about me and Bodie.

They can be summed up in two words: nothing changes.

Bodie is still everything to everyone. He's still a frantic magician. He's still stuck spinning plates and he can't walk away or they will all come crashing down.

Bodie spent a full third of the year away from the tour, away from me, and away from our son.

Darius himself spent the year on the road with Soundcrush with a tutor, a voice coach, a drop-in dance instructor, a girlfriend whose indulgent uncle flew her all over the country for weekend shows twice a month, and monthly writing workshops with various songwriters. That's a whole different story in itself.

But Bodie's year? A mad dash and a long haul all at once.

Sometimes Bodie's absence was for legitimate business—promoting Arabella and Evangeline, who both had smashing debut albums. Sometimes it was thug business, but of course, Soundcrush never knew that. They never knew that all of Bodie's business was born from only one true motivation—to keep me and Darius safe.

All Soundcrush saw was Bodie drifting further away after the fight that he and Trace never fully recovered from.

During the Great Tour, as Soundcrush unofficially named it, there was more press speculation about Bodie's frequent absences than there was review of their performances.

Many of his early absences were filled by a drummer named Orry Maine, but when Strut finished up their wildly successful tour and Chili basically became Bodie's full-time sub during their short hiatus, no one ever recalled that Orry had been there for the first half of the tour dates where Bodie was absent. They only remembered the effervescent and very attractive female drummer in her fishnets.

Ironically, Bodie and Chili's, one-time hook-up, their professional admiration of each other's skill and their frequent exchange of courtesies was not the vibe that was picked up and exaggerated in the press. It was his friendship with Row that became a moneymaker for gossip columns. Bodie and Row were photographed numerous time together over the course of last year, and their genuine affection and ease with one another translated into chemistry in front of the camera.

Gossip sights speculated on their relationship. The true trash tabloids made up outrageous and completely unverified stories— "Rowdie is engaged," "Rowdie is secretly married" "Soundcrush Drummer cheats on new Bride Row del Marco with ex flame Arabella Burns." "Arabella and Row Hate Each Other."

(That last tagline was the only one that was true, of course.)

Bodie and Row never confirmed or denied via their publicists, because neither actually want to draw attention to their true partners, for completely different reasons.

Eventually a kernel of truth in the Row/Bodie story was uncovered and exploited. Two months a couple of grainy amateur photos of Row in an ER cubicle crying, and Bodie sitting beside her, head bowed, a hand on her leg, were circulated. They are touted as current photos not year old images.

The trash tabloids reported that Row was pregnant with Bodie's baby but had a miscarriage. Marcy does deny this rumor, but it becomes so reported on gossip sights, and the look on Row's face when paparazzi blindsided her with questions about it, have made the public believe it's true.

It hasn't been quite the ordeal that Bodie's false relationship with Arabella was. Perhaps because I know Bodie and Row's friendship is genuine and borne of an intense moment that bonded them, but has always been completely platonic. Or maybe I'm just more accepting how this game is played. Or perhaps I'm actually growing as a person like Trace and shedding one of my own issues—jealousy where it comes to Bodie and the beautiful women in his life.

No, the tabloids insisting Rowdie is real doesn't bother me. What bothers me is the quicksand we are stuck in. Looking over this journal of the last eighteen months, I feel the frustration of repetition.

The anxiety of every time Bodie has traveled to mule drugs. My empathy when he returns rattled and restless. The resurrection—over and over—of Cain's ghost. The exhaustion in his eyes after his debriefings with Varrick. The empathy I feel when I see him shoulder the burden of false bravado, whether it's for me and Darius or for his band or thirty thousand fans.

His burden grows with every week, every trip abroad, every argument he has with Daemon about Sixmob's continued expansion into Atlanta's number one drug syndicate, every argument he has with Avery Thompson about Dharma's continued expansion into B-side, every argument he has with Riley and Trace about his seemingly indefinite and ever increasing commitments that have pulled him from the tour.

He's struggling to keep it all straight—his webs. Last month, I found him frantically pacing our tour suite in the middle of the night.

"I lost a burner phone, somewhere on the last trip." he says. "But I didn't lose it. I couldn't have lost it. I guard those things with my fucking life. So I lost it, but I didn't lose it, you see?"

He sounded manic. It scared me. My mind began racing to diagnosis. Sleep deprivation induced paranoia? Exhaustion? Depression and it's flip side—anxiety? Or something worse?

Is he using again? Or even worse than that. Is it some underlying neurosis that's always there but I didn't want to see because I love him?

"It doesn't matter, it's just a burner," I soothed.

"Of course it matters. If I didn't lose it, it fucking matters..." he mumbled and kept pacing. "Go back to bed, baby, I can't sleep I'm going for a run...and try to remember the last time I had it..."

It was three am and snowing in Chicago. But the next day, he was tired but cheerful like always. I've watched him carefully for weeks now and decided I was wrong. Bodie isn't using again and he isn't bipolar. He's just got more on him than any man should have to bear in two lifetimes.

He's actually incredibly sane, considering.

Sane, but stuck.

That is what I write today, in my journal. Just the three words.

Sane but stuck.

It's actually a sad entry, considering the day.

Today is supposed to be a happy day.

The year long tour is finally over. We are finally home in Atlanta. Christmas is coming soon and the band will all celebrate in Atlanta...except for Madam who will be with the Heartleys for Lennon's second Christmas. But Mac and Adam are here in Atlanta today, because today is not Christmas.

Not just yet.

I look up at my gown, steamed and pressed, and Bodie's tuxedo. I smile. It's a smile tinged with the color of some other emotion I would rather not dwell on, but a smile nevertheless.

Today is a day to celebrate love and triumph and second chances.

Today is a wedding day.

WHA!?!?!? WHOSE WEDDING DAY!?!?! GUESSES!?!?!?!