Double Dealing

Chapter 1





Jordan




I could feel sweat drip down my back as the hot stage lights glared down on me. I was focused, my left hand flying up and down the neck of my guitar as my right hand shredded out notes. I was trying as hard as I could, knowing the odds were stacked against me. Finally, with a last peel, I tweaked with my tremolo bar, carrying out the final note until it faded away.

"Thank you Jordan," the band manager called out, and in his voice I could hear two things. First, he was impressed by what he'd heard. Women in rock and roll are pretty rare, although those who could break through the image tended to be pretty famous. I mean, growing up, Joan Jet, Heart, and Lita Ford had been my idols, and they were all women who rocked.

But rock was in a slump, especially in the Los Angeles area, and getting a gig was damned hard. When you combined that with the fact that my original background wasn't in rock but in classical music, the difficulty doubled. Band managers and record company talent scouts didn't have a lot of room for a girl who grew up in the suburbs of St. Louis to a middle-class family and played the violin as well as piano. They wanted either rich girls who they could market as Paris Hilton wannabes, or blue collar types they could cast in the classic rock n' roll image. Hell, they wanted the next coming of the Bangles really. More style than substance, and if you looked great in a tight dress, all the better.

That led to the second thing I heard in the manager's voice, that of rejection. There was no way I was going to be on stage soon with Shadows and Dust — the name of the band. Still, he was polite about it. "That was some of the best playing I've heard all year," the band manager, a guy named Rick who looked more like a tax accountant than a band manager, said. "I'll forward the video of your performance up, but I'm going to be honest, I don't know if the company is going to go for it. Last time I said the band needed a new guitarist, they just did in-house session guys for the entire tour."

"I understand," I said, unslinging my guitar and flexing my cramped fingers. I'd been jamming nonstop for fifteen minutes, starting with GNR's "Sweet Child O' Mine" before before ending with a personal childhood favorite, Heart's "Alone" and then just a minute or two of straight jamming out. After all of that, my hands were aching, and I needed to stretch them out. There's a reason that a good band will mix up the complexity of their songs in a set. You have to give all of your members a chance to hang back once in a while and relax. Nobody can jam hard for an hour long stretch. Guitar and piano players cramp up, guys on the horns or sax will lose their breath, and even lead singers will go hoarse if you can't give everyone a chance to rise and fall with a set. A good band will make sure to script out their sets that way, or else they don't make it that long.

Sighing, I glued a hopeful expression on my face, half appreciative for his compliment while at the same time making it clear that I needed the work. "Maybe if you could, see if there is a spot for a session player at the label? I'm not really in a position to bitch about getting credit on the sleeve of the CD or not."

The manager nodded in understanding. Like I said, he looked like a decent guy, not mixed up in drugs or anything like that, and he had probably seen a dozen guitarists like me trying to make it on their skills in the city. "I'll see what I can do. Listen, if it were up to me I'd have you shredding tomorrow night, you have talent, and I started with a classical background too, so I know you know the ins and outs of music theory. But you know how the industry is right now. Unless your name's Taylor Swift or Katy Perry, you better be a lot raunchier than you come off as."

I wasn't sure if I should take his comment as a compliment or an insult. I knew I wasn't built like the girls mentioned by the manager, but I wasn't exactly making Courtney Love look like Marilyn Monroe either. Five eight, decent figure, I could still wear leather pants or tight jeans and not feel like an overinflated balloon. I've been complimented on my eyes and especially my hair, which is kind of a slightly reddish brown, darker than auburn but not quite chocolate. I decided to play the polite role and let it slide off my back. "Just trying to make it on my skills first, then tart it up later if I need to. Okay well, thanks for the audition, and I hope I can hear from you."

On the way out of the venue, I sighed miserably. It was a rare rainy day in Los Angeles, and I didn't have enough money to pay for gas for my car. Glad that I at least hadn't hawked my guitar case on Craigslist, I walked through the rain for a block and got to the bus stop. While I waited, I thought about my life, wondering if I was making the right decision still trying to make it as a professional musician. In an era where autotune and electronic backing was standard, was there still room for someone like me? It wasn't like I could wait forever for rock to have another resurgence, either. At twenty-five, I was reaching the age for female singers where either you made it, or you never did. The music industry, since the rise of MTV, was based as much on looks as it was talent, more so for female musicians. If you weren't popular by the time the high school guys stopped hitting on you in public because they thought you might be in their age range, you were pretty much out of luck.