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“I want to thank ya’ll for coming out tonight, Austin. You know we love you.” The crowd roars.
We play our last song, our newest number one hit. I can barely hear my own voice as a hundred thousand people sing along with me. It’s a crazy feeling, having this many souls touched by your words and so fully invested, singing their goddamn hearts out. They know every note. They’ve lived their lives to these lyrics. They’ve loved, cried and laughed to these tunes. They’re filling up the night with their emotion, swaying to the slow rhythm. The lights of their phones shine like a galaxy of stars.
And when we hit that final chord, the thundering cheer of the crowd is deafening. Vaughn climbs down from his drums and the three of us stand there together on stage for a few seconds, taking it all in. The applause of a hundred thousand people is something you don’t ever really get used to. The adrenaline rush is just as pure as it was the very first time.
We take a final bow and exit the stage, where a swarm of security surrounds us and ushers us through a bullet-proof corridor towards our tour bus. I can still hear them chanting my name. But we’ve done our encores after playing for three and a half hours. We’re getting close to the end of our 48-show, 38-city tour and I’m feeling it. The highs and lows and the creeping exhaustion that sets in after giving it everything you’ve got for months on end. We have two final shows left, both at home in Nashville. It’s been by far our biggest tour yet.
I feel lit by the crowd, the music, the whiskey and the wine, the satisfaction of pouring my heart and soul into something real. Something that touches people and connects them. Every single show has been sold out. Our record is number one. Four of our songs are in the top ten. And the momentum just keeps on building.
We get to the bus and it’s crowded, with groupies and people from the band and hangers-on. Our opening act, Jackson Cole, and his entourage are here, like they always seem to be. The fame and the women are new to him. He's overdosing and finding his feet, maybe. Riding our wave, to a certain extent, but whatever.
Vaughn pours three shots. Roxie gives Kade a hug, then me. She’s relieved. Turns out our little sister is a genius at managing us. This tour has been bigger than we ever imagined. Now we can play our last two home shows and finally take a much-needed break before we start another 12-show West Coast tour next month.
I collapse onto one of the plush chairs. I tip back the whiskey Vaughn hands me. One of the groupies puts her hand on my arm and leans close to me. “Travis, you were amazing tonight. You’re so good.”
Do I know her? I don’t think so. She might be a new one. It all starts to blur at the edges after a while. They all start looking the same. I’m no saint but I also need to feel something before I’ll act on the constant stream of attention and adoration I happen to get. Right now I’m not feeling much of anything.
Kade hands me a beer.
“Hell,” he says, sitting in the chair next to mine and clinking his bottle against mine. “Texas always has insane crowds. I could hardly even hear us.” As usual, Kade’s new-ish girlfriend Carmen is hovering around him. Roxie’s not a fan. Come to think of it, neither am I. I don’t usually care much who my brothers hang out with, but this girl seems to have an effect on Kade that’s messing with his head. He’s more moody when she’s around. Jackson joked that she’s our Yoko, waiting in the wings, whispering in his ear all the time about running away together so he can work on his solo album. I don’t think that’s his plan. Not now, anyway. We’re on too much of a roll. And I can’t worry about it tonight.
Vaughn laughs and cranks up the music, chugging from the bottle of Jack he’s holding. He’s got a fat joint in his other hand. A groupie with a lot of piercings and a ridiculously short skirt puts a pink pill on his tongue. Another girl is unbuttoning his shirt. His black hair is unkempt and long. His eyes are bloodshot, which makes them look even more blue than usual.
Roxie pulls one of the girls away from him. “What did you give him?” She pries Vaughn’s mouth open but he grins at her, sort of guiltily.
“Too late,” he says.
“Vaughn,” Roxie scolds him. “Booze and weed is one thing. You said no drugs.”
“Come on, Rox, I’m celebrating. Give me one night.”
“One night? You’ve had three whole months of nights.”
“I’ll go cold turkey after the tour,” Vaughn tells her. “I’ll take a break.”
We’ve all heard that one before. My brother is out of control, is what it boils down to. And he’s only getting worse.
Vaughn has always walked a fine line. Like our father did, until it killed him. Kade and I can easily keep up with our younger brother when it comes to the whiskey—and usually do—most of the time. The difference is, we have downtimes. We lay off when we’re not touring. We clean up when we feel like it.
Cleaning up isn’t something Vaughn’s done in a while. I’m not sure he’s even capable of it at this point. Kade and Roxie and I have talked about it. We decided to finish the tour, then we’ll sit him down and talk it through with him. Get him some help or check him in somewhere if need be.
None of which is happening tonight.
We’re driving all night tonight so we can get back to Nashville in the morning. There’s no doubt this party will still be going when we get there.
This bus has been the hub of our non-stop bender all the way through. We all got into a groove of it for the first month or two, but after a while you find yourself getting more and more strung out from the total lack of sleep and peace and quiet. Even before we left, we were hounded like this. We have a loft warehouse we’ve converted into apartments, a recording studio and an office headquarters in downtown Nashville. We tried to keep the location under wraps but our fans found out about it, like they always do.
“That show was mayhem,” says Vaughn. Not that he minds. Mayhem might as well be Vaughn’s middle name. As if to confirm this, he blows a couple of smoke rings at me.
Tonight I’m not in the mood to fight my way through crowds of people just so I can go to bed.
What I need is some real sleep. Uninterrupted by banging and knocking and people trying to get in.
I need a quiet place to hang out for a while, I decide. A secret getaway. An old house out in the country somewhere, far from the city and the rabid fans and the never-ending parade of groupies, where there’s space and fresh air and days with nothing to do except write. I can’t remember the last time I was alone for more than a few hours at a time.
I’ll find myself someplace off the beaten track, where no one even knows I’m there. I’ll sleep and daydream and clear my head. Maybe Vaughn can spend some time there too, and dry out. And Kade, without the girlfriend. All three of us. We’ll work on our next record. We’ll write our masterpiece, uninterrupted.
I send a message to a real estate agent I sometimes use when I buy new properties. I have three houses: an apartment in Nashville that’s part of our headquarters, my own house in Franklin outside Nashville that I need to get a lot more security for because people have set up fucking camps around the peripheral fences, and a condo in L.A. None of them will be either empty or quiet. I have a lot of friends and an open-door policy for the most part, which I'm now starting to severely regret. All my houses have become magnets for hangers-on and their non-stop parties.