Strung Tight
Chapter One
My bandmates and I knew we had Dagger Drummond, the lead singer of Black Ice, to thank for the launch of Chaos, but believe me, we also worked our skinny asses to the bone to earn our ticket to perform at the legendary rock festival, Rocktoberfest. In other words, we weren't handed this opportunity without having to sweat for it—not even with Dagger backing us. There were no strings pulled or favors called in that added us to the multi-band lineup. We auditioned and won one of the slots for the “up-and-coming” acts that would be taking the stage early on before any of the headlining bands. I’d have been stoked just to score a ticket for the cheap seats at the back of the fenced-in viewing area, so to perform at the festival was a dream come true. Never in a million years did I think I'd share a stage with some of the biggest names in the rock world.
Sure, I had the drive and commitment to make it, and my skills were top-notch, too, always evolving and improving every day. My downfall, though, was a secret I kept hidden from everyone around me to a large extent: a severe fear of performing in front of large crowds. It hadn’t been a problem until now because all of our audiences had been small, with maybe fifty to a hundred people at most in the dive bars we played. The Rocktoberfest event would change everything, and I wasn’t sure I’d be able to get through the performance with a crowd of roughly sixty thousand or more. I could very well get out on that stage, freeze up, and then face plant after passing out from sheer terror. Just the thought of it made me edgy and my skin itch.
Rocktoberfest was a turning point for us. It was beyond big and had the potential to change our lives forever. Dagger might not have given us a golden ticket to this event, but he’d given us something just as valuable: a boatload of his first-hand knowledge as part of his mentoring. He was also allowing us to use his band's killer rehearsal studio, and he’d purchased some new equipment for us, too, which I fully intended to pay him back once we started making some serious money. We owed him a lot for taking us on the way he did, but I also knew it was our skills as musicians that paved the way to this famous show and that both excited and scared the shit out of me. But if Dagger Drummond believed in us, then we needed to believe in us too. He was a great teacher, and he was strict as fuck, continually pushing the core of basic skills and fundamental techniques on us. In some ways, it was like starting from scratch, but his methods worked.
The most important takeaway from working with Dagger was that we maintained our band’s identifying sound. Chaos didn’t want to become a spin-off of Black Ice because Dagger was grooming us. We’d always be a work in progress; every artist was—at least the good ones who wanted to grow and cultivate their talent.
No one told us the price of fame was cheap though. We expected to pay a few road tolls along the highway to get to the top, and we all agreed that our best shot to reach that ultimate peak was working with Dagger, and it was why we were willing to do anything he asked of us. If he wanted us to play while standing on one foot, we knew there’d be a reason behind it, something to learn and progress to the next level. We never once questioned anything he suggested, and instead, we played the role of attentive students and soaked up every nugget of knowledge he offered.
He’d been living this dream for a long-ass time, and we valued his opinion. He stressed the importance of warm-up scales and repetitive playing for hours on end that had my fingers growing new calluses on top of the old ones. He'd listen carefully during our rehearsals and then tell us to play it again and again. It was an endless cycle, but after a few months of “Dagger Boot Camp,” we were sounding more and more like a polished band capable of doing a full set of music for a large crowd. The man had an ear for pitch like no other musician I'd ever met; he was always spot-on, too, which was as helpful as it was annoying.
Chaos was in the final weeks of rehearsals in LA before the trailers would be packed with our gear and driven out to the Nevada desert where the concert was taking place. Our set needed every last bug worked out by the time we hit the road. The day before the actual show, we’d get a brief warmup on stage, which would allow us to familiarize ourselves with the setup. But the day of the event, there’d be no real time for more rehearsal as a plugged-in band beyond some finger and vocal exercises we could manage in a dressing room behind the stage area. After that, all we could do was play our asses off and hope for the best.
To say we were nervous about performing for an audience of this size was a gross understatement, especially for me. Odd choice of a career for someone with performance anxiety, but I was learning to cope. A lot was riding on this event. If we fucked up our set, it would be like disappointing Dagger and spitting on everything he'd done for our band along with the opportunities he'd provided for our exposure. Besides the fact, bombing on the same stage we’d be sharing with so many rock stars we’d idolized for such a long damn time would be a nightmare. I couldn't allow that to happen, and no one in Chaos wanted that either.
I was close with my guys before Dagger and his musical influence had entered our lives, but now we were even tighter than most families because we were together by choice. Chaos started as a trio of friends who’d known each other since we were kids: Jeff Dixon played bass guitar, Mike Emory, drums and percussion, and myself, Harrison Fletcher, aka Fletch, played various guitars and sang vocals. Then after a few years of working as three, we decided to add to our sound and invited Randy Potter, our rhythm guitarist, to join the fray. Our musical family grew a little, but for a band with just four musicians, we had a rich, solid sound, and I knew it was only a matter of getting the right ears to hear our music for us to make it big. Dagger had told us that there'd be several representatives from various record labels, agents, and managers in the audience at Rocktoberfest, so my band was going into this project with high hopes that one of them might want to sign us. Dreams did come true. I've seen it happen to others, so why not us?
Mike, our drummer, was convinced we were going to make it. I felt the same, all the way to my bones, and we believed this show was our long-awaited big break. All we had to do was hit that stage and show everyone what Chaos had in our bag of tricks and send them home , wanting to hear more. That was our main objective—leave them wanting more.
I was too anxious and couldn’t stop pacing around the rehearsal studio like a caged panther. The rest of the band was playing together in some kind of semblance, but I couldn't focus enough to join them. I needed a break and was about to tell the guys I'd be back in a few minutes when my phone rang. I looked at the screen and saw it was Dagger. After all the times I'd talked with him over the phone or in person, my heart still thumped a little harder inside my chest every damn time he called.
“Dagger's on the phone,” I hollered. “I gotta take this.”
I hurried to the door and answered the call as I jogged. “Hey, Dagger.” I started walking down the hallway.
“How's everyone doing?” he asked me in that rich, deep voice.
“I guess okay,” I said.
“That doesn't sound very convincing,” Dagger said. “It’s too early for everyone to be freaking out, so what’s going on?”
“I think it’s just me who’s freaking.”