Strung Tight (The Road To Rocktoberfest #1) - Ann Lister Page 0,27
sale. That was partly due to the headlining act, Jupiter Rising, who were performing after us, but we didn’t mind being backup to any band in a club as famous as the Apex. All the big headlining bands got their start in LA’s Apex Theater.
It had the same notoriety as the Whiskey a Go Go on Sunset Boulevard back in the day. In my late teens, some friends and I would do our best to sneak into the Viper Room with our fake IDs to hear the latest up-and-coming bands perform. One summer, I also washed dishes at the Rainbow Bar and Grill to see if I might spot someone famous eating there just so I could leave a demo tape with them and be discovered. It was a rite of passage for us to do shit like that. It was our way of networking with the younger musicians who were trying to hook up with a band or get their band launched. Every piece of the rise to fame helped us get closer to the ultimate prize.
Up until this show at the Apex, we’d only performed at shithole clubs that had a legal fire-code head count of maybe a few dozen and came with almost non-existent stage areas, but we still felt like total rock stars when we played those dives. We were living our dream—or so I thought, because right now truly felt like we were achieving something enormous after our years of sacrifice, blood, and tears.
I’d had so many part-time jobs that I’d lost count of them. Everything from pumping gas to delivering pizza and everything in between. Most of them I worked during the summer until I graduated high school. My decision to go to college was an impossible dream since I didn’t have the grades to support a scholarship and my parents didn’t have the money to pay for tuition; so instead of heading off to party at a dorm, I went to work full time at a factory making red plastic cups that the frat houses probably used every weekend for their beer pong games and binge drinking. Kind of ironic when I thought about it, but I’d clean Porta-Potties if it meant I could also play music rather than attend college. I had completely different aspirations for my life, and a college degree wasn’t part of that plan.
There might have been a few times that I momentarily questioned my career path, but right now, as I paced the dressing room backstage at the Apex, this was not one of those times. As out-of-my-mind nervous as I felt, this was exactly where I wanted to be in my life. I just needed to figure out a way to keep myself from passing out and I’d be golden. Odd that I would choose playing in a band when my anxiety stemmed from being in front of a huge crowd. It was bad enough when we’d played dive bars, but in my mind, performing at the Apex would be a hundred times more intense than anything we’d yet experienced, and the upcoming show at Rocktoberfest would be even bigger.
“Dude, you’re looking green again.” Mike teased. “Come take a hit off this joint. You’ll feel better.”
“Yeah, that’s just want I need,” I grumbled and continued to pace the small room. Around me, the guys laughed and partied with each other and a few of our friends who we’d put on our guest list. I nodded at them, but that’s all I could manage.
Dixon stepped in my path, and I was so deep in thought that I bumped into him. “I know better than to give you a beer, so take the water bottle … please,” he said. “Your pacing is beginning to worry me.”
“I’ll be fine,” I lied. I had no real idea if that was even remotely true. “I’m just going over the setlist.”
“We got this,” Potter said and patted the back of my shoulder.
Easy for him to say. He wasn’t lead on guitars … or vocals. “I’ll be fine once we get through the first song.”
“‘Burn It’ is one of our easiest songs,” Potter affirmed. “It has the right sound to kick off our set and to let people know who we are.”
“Then we immediately slide into ‘Aces Wild,’” I said while rubbing at my temples.
“Yeah, and we need to watch our timing on ‘Aces,’” Mike commented from where he sat on the couch tapping his drumsticks on whatever flat surface he could reach. “We