It's Only Rock N' Roll

“OmiGod! Shut your God damned gabbers, you fucking knobheads!” I wailed. We were in the middle of band rehearsal when the house phone began going off. We all shared an apartment; me, Jayce, Lexus, and Matt. It made us feel closer and gave us an opportunity to immediately play with any idea anybody had in a single moment, like the way our idols in Aerosmith did in the early 70s.

“I ain’t shutting nothing!” Lexus snickered, taking a hit from a whisky bottle.

“You’ll shut yer bloody mouth if I make you”, I laughed, reaching for the phone. The house phone never rang, not unless is a was a bill collector but we had all their numbers ID’ed so we’d know when to not pick up. This number wasn’t programmed. “Axel Durham, can I help you?” I asked.

“Axel Durham? I’m Kevin Puig, tour manager for Pierce the Veil. We’ve had a small falling out and need a band to fill our bill. Would Open Water Open Season consider joining the Cold Constellations Tour?”

I nearly dropped the phone. “Excuse me?” I questioned. “This ain’t a joke, is it?”

“No, we’d like to hire you on. We were introduced to your Dead Zodiac album-”

“It’s not a record.”

“Well, we have a live bootleg from your show that a kid sent to us. Since Sleeping With Sirens has quit the tour, we need someone to fill their spot but also perform King For a Day with Pierce the Veil. The boys have all agreed that vocalist should be you.” I put the phone on speaker as Kevin explained some more aspects of this before finishing with a simple offer. “If you’d like to join us, we would love to have you come down to Mackey’s Pub and fill out some of the final paperwork so we can get you on tour.”

“Tour?!” Matt wailed, jumping up to take the phone. “Sure! Who the Hell are we touring with?!”

“Pierce the Veil, Bring Me the Horizon, and Breathe Carolina”, answered Kevin’s mechanical voice.

“Yes! Yes, we will most definitely be there! When do we need to be at Mackey’s?!”

“Tonight would work-”

“We’ll be down there in ten minutes!” Jayce called from the other side of the room. Kevin thanked us and hung up the phone as Matt slammed the device back into the wall. “Axel, Lex, get your shit together. We have to go meet them-”

“Why are they even inviting us?” Lexus wondered.

“Because we’re bloody awesome”, Matt grinned.

“He said something about Sleeping With Sirens quitting”, I corrected. “And needing to fill up a space.”

Lexus smiled. “I know what happened”, he chuckled. “That Kellin Quinn dude claimed all the credit for King For a Day and it pissed off that Angry Mexican Guy in Pierce the Veil. There’s been fighting for months now.”

“How do you know that?” Jayce asked.

“I read AP unlike you guys.”

While Jayce made an offhand remark about Lexus being a tabloid whore, I grabbed a leather jacket and some cowboy boots. “Whatever, let’s just go sign this stuff.”

“What if we lose the apartment?” Matt gasped.

“We’ll make enough money to get a new one”, Jayce smirked. “C’mon, we said ten minutes. We need to get down there.” I waited for the guys to grab shoes and car keys before piling into our crap van, a sketchy hippie piece of scrap metal we got from Lexus’s older cousin that was our pseudo tour bus. Lexus drove us down to Mackey’s, a locally owned tavern that had its own brewed whisky we were all super fond of. A big guy in a plaid shirt with a complimentary beard greeted us.

“Hey, I’m Kevin!” he announced. “You’re Open Water, right?”

“No, we’re Led Zeppelin”, Matt laughed. “So where’s the paperwork?”

Kevin took a small step back like he was unsure how to reply. “We’re doing the paperwork inside”, he informed. “Figured a few pints wouldn’t hurt before faxing the agreements and contracts, right?”

I clapped an arm around his shoulder. “Of course, man. Let’s go inside!” I suggested. We followed Kevin into Mackey’s where he took us to a round booth and introduced us to a few dark haired guys.

“These are the guys, Jaime, Mike, Tony, and Vic. Boys, this is Open Water”, Kevin explained.

“I’m Jayce”, my guitarist informed, sliding into this booth first. “I play guitar. This is Lexus, our guitarist. Matt, our drummer. And Axel, our front-chick.”

“Of course the girl sings”, Vic scoffed. “What else can she do?”

“Axel can play a wicked oboe!” Matt wailed.

“We’re very excited to be working with you”, said Mike, a guy with facial piercings and more body ink than hair.

“Sorry we called you on such short notice”, added Tony, a rounder looking version of Mike. “But we’re glad you came.”

“Yeah, yeah”, Lexus chuckled. “Where’s the stuff we gotta sign?” Kevin pulled out a file and walked us through the story while Pierce the Veil made jokes with us. Vic, who we kept calling AMG, kept glaring at us. I couldn’t fathom what the Hell we’d done to this guy but it was completely unnecessary. Let it roll, Ax I reminded myself. Let it roll.

“You’ll be opening”, Kevin stated. “The lineup is going to be you, Breathe Carolina, Pierce the Veil; and it’s during this set that Axel comes out to do King For a Day with them. Then Bring Me the Horizon finishes.”

“We were thinking merch!” Mike added eagerly.

“Yeah, Tony’s got some cool sketches we can slap on some spare shirts real quick”, Jaime chimed in.

Tony turned pink and smiled. “It’s nothing great”, he giggled bashfully. “But it’s something to help you guys build off of this.”

“What matters is that you look better than the Sirens”, Vic murmured coolly. He hadn’t spoken much all night so his sudden comment surprised me.

“Shouldn’t be that hard”, Jaime joked. “I mean, you guys have that old school rock thing so it should sell super easy!”

I raised my hand slightly. “I don’t know if you lads have ever heard of the Darkness”, I quipped.

“You’re better than that”, Mike snorted.

“Anyway, the flight to America is going out next week from Heathrow. We’ll get you tickets for the transfer flight to London, then to America”, Kevin interrupted. “We’ll primarily be using planes, rented limos, and hotels as far as transportation and lodging goes. Conveniently, we don’t have to make room for you there as the Sirens are gone but had already booked their-”

“They didn’t cancel their reservations?” I inquired.

Kevin tilted his head like he was thinking. “They were going to but those of us at management offered to pay them back for the lost money so we could keep them for the band we’d be hiring on instead. You guys!”

“You just have this all taken care of, huh?” Jayce wondered.

“Perks of planning something and having a dinner guest suddenly call out”, Tony mumbled.

Kevin held up the finished contracts and smiled. “Well, I think this has been a good night. I’ll fax these over tonight and everything should be set then. I think we’ll be seeing you guys in a week?”

“Oh, are we leaving now?” Lexus asked. “But this is only my third pint.”

“You guys can stay”, Jaime shrugged. “But we gotta go. Tony’s gotta fax those sketches anyway.”

“Well, give us your number and send us some pics so we can pick the one we want on the shirts!” I gasped. Tony chuckled before scribbling his phone number on a napkin. We watched the band and their manager leave before filling out the booth and ordering another round of shots.

“Here’s to the Scottish Invasion!” Jayce proclaimed, raising a glass in the air.

“To Open Water Open Season!” Lexus added.

“To groupies!” cried Matt.

“And may God forever bless America, the Land of Dreams!” I finished. We clinked our glasses together and threw back our whisky in synch before laughing and gossipping about the adventures we were surely going to have.

Notes

So in case you didn't know, a while while while back I deleted ALL of my shit on here including French Kiss, In Reverse, Letters From a Lying Soul, The Parapsychologist, It's So Easy and Other Lies, blah blah blah. This is one of those deleted stoires, just hopefully better than it was initally :D