They are among family.
After the chili there is a general sprawl in the living room with the female youth disappearing into Lynie’s room and the males walking to the Williams’s house to play video games.
However, the wives do not segregate themselves from their husbands.
Simms queues up the concert video of the show the Roadmasters performed for the Scott-Wright Legal Services Center in August of 2001.
The concert album, and video, are still available for purchase with all proceeds going to the Center.
To date, the concert, the video, the ensuing concerts held in varying places across the United States every other year that are organized by Williams, McCade, Mancosa and all the Roadmasters have made over thirteen million dollars for a number of legal aid organizations since 2001.
I have watched this video at least twenty times.
It is a rare privilege to sit with the band and view any of their performances.
Especially this particular one.
To hear them razz each other for dropped chords or coming in an octave too low (when they did not).
To listen in as they debate a setlist, the perfection of which has been carved into rock history.
The opening of the Roadmasters’ set, which is the finale of this festival-style concert, is legend.
Played in downtown Baton Rouge, where the Blues Festival is located, with no fanfare and no one introducing them, McCade and the Roadmasters wander onto the stage.
They strap on or sit at their instruments, as the case may be, and move to their mics as the crowd comes to realize they’re onstage.
Before a din can erupt, or even the entirety of the audience knows the players have taken the stage, the band explodes with the opening chords of Thin Lizzy’s “The Boys Are Back in Town.”
With McCade singing lead.
Needless to say, the crowd went berserk.
The Roadmasters’ set lasted two hours and thirty-seven minutes and the crowd demanded three encores.
They played their hits.
They played their B sides.
They played covers, including “Life in the Fast Lane,” “Maybe I’m Amazed,” “Lovesong,” launched into an epic, ten-minute version of Steppenwolf’s “Magic Carpet Ride,” and added more recent (for that time) artists including the Gin Blossoms’ “Follow You Down” and “Wonderwall” by Oasis.
They played minimal tracks from their new album.
They did not perform “Give Then Take.”
As the concert video is coming to its end, Lynie McCade wanders into the room, going directly to her father. She settles herself on the arm of the double-wide chair he and her mother are sitting in, winding herself around her dad’s shoulders.
Her mother is sitting so close to McCade, she’s almost in his lap.
Perhaps he’s been called, perhaps there’s a familial sixth sense of what is about to happen, and an understanding it isn’t to be missed, therefore Jesse McCade also returns to the larger group.
He moves to sit on the floor at his father’s feet and does not hesitate to rest back against his dad’s leg.
In fact, all the younger generation eventually filters back into the living room to watch the final songs of the concert.
The penultimate being “Your Eyes” from the Follow Your Star album, an up-tempo love song that nevertheless has melancholy lyrics that detail a searching man’s lonely journey to understanding, and the only thing that keeps him sane along the way is “Waking up and going to sleep seeing your eyes.”
This would be the first single released from that album.
It would reach number eight on the charts.
And go on to win four awards.
There is no ribbing and no speaking as the Roadmasters perform this song on the television while the Roadmasters and their loved ones in that living room watch.
The next song will bring tears.
The concert ends on a cover which is arguably, but not curiously—and if the feel of that room was appropriately assessed, this does not offend the band—what Preacher McCade and the Roadmasters are known for the most.
Their seven-minute rendition of a two minute and forty-four second song that was played with massive energy and almost palpable electricity, even on video, at the end of a balls-to-the-wall concert.
It was understood deeply by their fans and served to launch the band to a new generation of the same.
It was introduced by Preacher McCade with the words:
“In my life, five people asked this of me.
The first were Loretta and Oscar Williams.
The next was Minnie Simms.
The next, Jesse Simms.
The last, my Lyla.
I can finally answer.
Yes.”
And then they played Pete Townshend’s “Let My Love Open the Door.”
The End
We hope you enjoyed the show.
Goodnight.
KRISTEN ASHLEY IS the New York Times bestselling author of over sixty romance novels including the Rock Chick, Colorado Mountain, Dream Man, Chaos, Unfinished Heroes, The ’Burg, Magdalene, Fantasyland, The Three, Ghost and Reincarnation, Moonlight and Motor Oil and Honey series along with several standalone novels. She’s a hybrid author, publishing titles both independently and traditionally, her books have been translated in fourteen languages and she’s sold over three million books.
Kristen’s novel, Law Man, won the RT Book Reviews Reviewer’s Choice Award for best Romantic Suspense. Her independently published title Hold On was nominated for RT Book Reviews best Independent Contemporary Romance and her traditionally published title Breathe was nominated for best Contemporary Romance. Kristen’s titles Motorcycle Man, The Will, Ride Steady (which won the Reader’s Choice award from Romance Reviews) and The Hookup all made the final rounds for Goodreads Choice Awards in the Romance category.
Kristen, born in Gary and raised in Brownsburg, Indiana, was a fourth-generation graduate of Purdue University. Since, she has lived in Denver, the West Country of England, and now she resides in Phoenix. She worked as a charity executive for eighteen years prior to beginning her independent publishing career. She currently writes full-time.
Although romance is her genre, the prevailing themes running through all of Kristen’s novels are friendship, family and a strong sisterhood. To this end, and as a way to thank her readers for their support, Kristen has created the Rock Chick Nation, a series of programs that are designed to give back to her readers and promote a strong female community.
The mission of the Rock Chick Nation is to live your best life, be true to your true self, recognize your beauty and take your sister’s back whether they’re friends and family or if they’re thousands of miles away and you don’t know who they are. The programs of the RC Nation include: Rock Chick Rendezvous, weekends Kristen organizes full of parties and get-togethers to bring the sisterhood together; Rock Chick Recharges, evenings Kristen arranges for women who have been nominated to receive a special night; and Rock Chick Rewards, an ongoing program that raises funds for nonprofit women’s organizations Kristen’s readers nominate. Kristen’s Rock Chick Rewards have donated nearly $130,000 to charity and this number continues to rise.