FAME and GLORY (10 page)

Brandee took the cloth off of her eyes and handed it to Jake. He knew without asking what she wanted.  He went into the hotel room's rest room and cooled the cloth again with cold rushing water.  He wrung the cloth out and came back with it to the bed, handing it to Brandee.

She smiled, “Thank you, honey,”  “I won't close the door on the idea.”

Jake smiled and sat down on the chair that was adjacent to the bed as Brandee closed her eyes.

***

Brandee
reconvened back at Arena Auditorium shortly before 5:30.  The promised mandarin oranges had arrived from Cheyenne, so all was in place for a good show for the students from the University as well as the residents of the city of Laramie who would show up for the performance.  The group felt that tonight was their night.  Brandee had been off her game in Elko, and the crowd had been standoffish in Utah.  From the sounds that they could already hear from the arriving crowd, they believed that this was going to be a large and enthusiastic gathering in Laramie.  They could hardly wait to get out there.

Indeed, the crowd was enthusiastic.  As luck would have it,
Brandee
was on stage the night after finals week had finished for spring term at the University.  The students were ready to blow off some steam.  Sales of the two groups' CDs were brisk, much more so than was usual before a concert even started.

The members of the group didn't know exactly what they were hearing, only that it was noisy out front.  At about 6:40, the crowd had started a chant.  Those seated on the right side of the main floor started by chanting “Nora!  Nora!”  Those on the left would answer “Denice! Denice!” making a communal noise that sounded like 5,000 people sneezing all at once.  The balcony on the right would answer with “Lizzie! Lizzie!”  Finally the balcony on the left would finish with “Brandee!  Brandee!” This continued at increasing volume for 20 minutes or more, with accompanying stomps and whistles.  It was mayhem at UW and the concert hadn't even started yet!  The Cowboys and Cowgirls were ready to rock.

Brandee Evans may have had her faults, but the inability to read a crowd wasn't one of them.  She knew as soon as she took the stage that this was not a night for crooning ballads.  She took one look at the crowd and stepped back toward the drum kit, bringing her group into a huddle.  Even at close range, she had to speak up to be heard over the din behind her.

“Let's rock the shit out of this place!”, she said to the enthusiastic faces around her.

Those eight words started the rockingest night of
Brandee's
career to date.  They opened with “Honky Tonk Broad”, the song that had garnered their first standing ovation months ago in Crescent City.  The Wyoming crowd was up for it, and on the long wail at the end of the chorus the crowd joined her, almost 16,000 voices strong, howling “Hooooonky Tonk Broad!” with her.  They stood at the end, cheering the group, cheering for themselves, cheering being young and finally being done with school.

Brandee didn't let them sit down before she rolled into “Your Ass is Mine”, a sassy fast number designed to get the crowd clapping along.  Again, they responded.  When Diane started it off by crossing her sticks over her head and clapping them together, the crowd was as one with her almost immediately.  Suzi switched from bass to electric axe for this one and stepped forward to join Brandee at the front of the stage for the chorus line.  No one knew whether it was because she was playing for two, or the roar of the crowd, but Suzi had never been better as her fingers flew over the strings.  Brandee stepped back to let her take some of the adulation of the crowd at the end.

Next was “12 Gauge”, the classic speedball that had been done by so many artists before.  Brandee's growl came into play now, and the crowd loved it.  Brandee was with the crowd now, feeding off their energy.  She came back to the stage and made a quick change in the set.

This was usually the time that she made love to the wind machine.  Tonight, she waved it off.  She wanted to keep on rocking!  She turned to her band mates and mouthed, “Bad Girl in Town”.  This was one that they had only used once before on stage and never yet on this tour.  It featured Bruce's best and fastest keyboard artistry, surrounded by the highest notes in Brandee's voice arsenal.  It was a risky choice, since they already had the crowd where they wanted them.  Brandee could have sung the yellow pages by now and the crowd would have roared their approval, but she wanted to give them something truly special of herself to take on summer break with them.

“Bad Girl in Town” started with some fairly simple syncopation with an underlying medium beat.  After about 12 bars, it picked up steam.  By the time Brandee got to “I'm the bad girl in town and you'd better give me plenty of rooooooom,” she was going to have to be in mezzo soprano range under a strong whip from Bruce's keyboard and Diane's drum.  Could she do it without cracking or giving up on the high A that she needed?

Damn straight, she could!  She had been born for this moment!  With a band behind her at the top of their talents and a roaring crowd in front of her, she never wanted another moment on stage that didn't feel like this, only bigger and better.  Hell, she thought.
 I don't want another moment in
life
that doesn't feel like this, only bigger and better.

Diane's drum solo was next.  It gave Jake a chance to step to the side of the stage and meet Brandee there with her water while the spotlight was on Diane.  He was so very proud of his wife.  She thanked him for the water and gave him a quick peck on the cheek, her face blazing hot against his.  Her eyes were agleam with what was going on, the shine from them glowing in the shadows at the side of the stage.

As she turned to go back to the center of the stage, Jake said, “It's all you baby!  It's all you.”

Brandee nodded to him and went back to the center of the stage.  After Diane's drum solo, Brandee did something that she hadn't done before on stage.  She pointed her microphone toward the drum kit and shouted, “Diane E. Hoover, ladies and gentlemen!”  The crowd roared its approval.  Next Brandee introduced, in turn, Suzi and Bruce to the crowd.  Suzi waved her axe over her head, acknowledging the crowd.  Bruce gave the crowd a smart salute.

The time that it took to introduce the rest of
Brandee
had given the lead singer a few extra moments to catch her breath.  She had laid it all on the stage tonight and wanted to have something left for her final two numbers.

Her second-to-last number was to be the only truly slow one of the night.  They brought the lights down for “My Eyes Adored You”. The classic 4 Seasons hit from so long ago brought out the richness and quality of Brandee's voice.  Jake listened to his wife sing it, and remembered that they had sung it together in the car on one of their first dates.

Brandee
closed the set with “Voracious Little Girl”.  It was another fast- paced song designed to get the crowd back on its feet after allowing them a breather during “My Eyes Adored You”.  Brandee skipped partway down the aisle and into the loving vocal embrace of the crowd during the second chorus of “Voracious Little Girl”.

The group left the stage knowing they would be called to return.  They were not disappointed.  The crowd chanted “Brandee! Brandee!” before the group came back on stage.  Their chants were punctuated by the crashing of feet on the wooden bleachers of Arena Auditorium.  The group beamed at each other backstage as they listened to the cacophonous sound.  They listened to
“Brand-ee!
Stomp Stomp!
Brand-ee!
Stomp Stomp!” for a good three minutes before returning to the scene of their triumph. Brandee had put a towel around her neck during the time in the wings and didn't take it off before their encore.

They lit up the stage with a reprise of “Honky Tonk Broad”.  If the crowd had been ready for this at the beginning, they were even more ready for it now. They howled like banshees when Brandee got to the chorus.  At the end of the encore, Brandee suddenly realized that she still had the towel from backstage around her neck.  Undaunted, she slid it off her neck and hurled it into the crowd.

Six rows deep in the crowd, a fan caught Brandee's towel.  She was so excited by this bonus item from the concert that she ran into the aisle swinging it around her head.  Some of Brandee's sweat flew off of the towel that had recently been around the neck of the fan's favorite singer.

Nora Denice and Lizzie were getting impatient.  They liked to have the opening act warm up the crowd, that was for sure.  There was nothing so discouraging as going on stage and have the crowd almost anesthetized by a boring opening act. This was ridiculous though.

“Who the fuck do they think they are?” Lizzie said while waiting.

Brandee
had been allotted 32 minutes on stage for their act.  Getting an encore was something that really good opening acts could expect and ND& L had heard that their opening act had been getting some of those accolades, so Nora Denice and Lizzie had factored into their planning that
Brandee
might be on stage for 35 minutes.  By the time Brandee came off stage for the last time, it had been almost an hour since they had emerged from the wings for the first time that night.

As the two bands passed each other backstage, Lizzie said, “It's about time.”

Brandee blew Lizzie a kiss and said, “Kiss my ass, honey girl.”

Suzi and Bruce guffawed at their lead-singers' exchange with Lizzie Higdon.  There wasn't anything that was going to bring them down tonight.  Already riding a high that no motorcycle could match from the new baby on the way, the happy couple was elated on this night. Elated and hungry.

***

Laramie's only 24-hour restaurant was Shari's Pie House, on the corner of University and Pine.  Shari's was part of a chain, known throughout the west for their average food.  Except, that is, for the pie.

Bruce used to brag that he had closed many a Shari's.  Since Shari's never closes, this always brought a questioning look from the people that he told.  What Bruce meant was that there was many nights when he was using that he didn't have anywhere to go, so he would sit at Shari's for as long as possible.  He could make a piece of their delicious pie last for hours if he needed a place to be in the wee hours.  His favorite was their peanut butter fudge swirl pie.  He hoped to get some of that after dinner tonight.  He hoped it tasted as good when he was straight as it did when he was high.

In fact, Bruce found out later in the hotel, it tasted better.  Bruce was finding that being straight, sober, and happy was doing wonders for his appetite, if not for his waistline.  When he had first joined
Brandee
(and subsequently met Suzi), he had weighed 166 pounds.  He had stepped on a set of scales at Walgreens Drug Store earlier that afternoon and saw the number 193 appear on the digital readout.  He vowed to do something about his weight, just as soon as he finished this piece of pie.  Or maybe after the next one.

The mercurial Brandee Evans was riding a high at the beginning of the group gathering at Shari's Pie House, having reveled in the touch of the crowd at Arena Auditorium.  Brimming again with the confidence that had been shaken earlier in the trip, she was the life of the party at Shari's.

“Did you hear them tonight?” she asked the group at large, referring to the crowd.  “What a place.  I love Wyoming!”

Jake laughed.  “I never thought I would hear that come out of your mouth, Vegas," he said, using a nickname that he had tagged Brandee with when they had first gotten together.  It was an apt moniker since Brandee had always fancied herself a city girl at heart.  When she was living with Charlene and attending Humboldt State, she had felt seriously out of her element.  Now, with the roar of the crowd still ringing in her ears, she was ready to pledge her allegiance to a state that was more prairie than people.

“Quiet, boy," she said, looking with mock sternness at her husband.  “I would look dead sexy in a ten gallon hat.

Jake allowed silently that this was probably true.  If Brandee was happy, she could wear anything, or nothing at all.  Jake shifted in the booth as that thought crossed his mind. He squeezed her knee under the table.

Brandee didn't notice the squeeze.  She was trying to talk about the show that evening and order food at the same time.  She decided on a New York Strip Steak, medium rare, and a Caesar Salad.  She let the male server know that she had just been on stage and was really hungry so could he “step on it, darlin'”.  The server turned red as he left the table.

Bruce's mind wasn't on Brandee and her appetite.  He had something more important on his mind. He turned to the singer and said, “You just said you love Wyoming.  That's interesting.  Did you know that's what we're going to call the baby?”

“WHAAAT?” came the outcry from everyone else at the table, not least of all Suzi.  She had been, at best, humoring Bruce that morning.  She had no intention of hanging the name Wyoming on her child.