“I thought you were suffering from a hangover,” I say, walking up to her.
“Oh, no, I took your advice. I’ve taken enough aspirin to not feel anything. I don’t even remember driving here.” She laughs as I make a face at her. “I’m kidding. I decided to come here early because I had an idea, but I don’t think it will work now.”
“What was the idea?”
She fiddles with the strap of the bag hanging on her shoulder. “We could send out a message to all 2Resonance users in the area that have listened to Shadow Tradition or similar music and tell them to come out here for a free Shadow Tradition concert. We’d film them all enjoying the concert and have some text that states that they all gathered here because of the app. We could get them all to sign contracts before or after to consent to being taped.”
I grab her by the arm, my grip sliding down to her wrist. “That’s brilliant. Why do you think it wouldn’t work?”
She shrugs. “It’s a lot of moving parts. We’d have to be certain nobody was flipping off the camera—"
I let go of her arm. “That can be dealt with during editing.”
“Most of the students are on summer vacation still. Only a small percent are around here—"
“That will be more than enough to make a crowd. And they don’t all need to be students.”
“We’d have to get Shadow Tradition’s consent and they’d have to be ready to play—”
“They’re bringing their instruments and it’s not a big deal for us to get anything else we need. I wouldn’t be surprised if they have everything here on campus. I highly doubt getting them to agree to this is going to be a big deal. Their goal seems to be to get as much publicity before their second album as possible. It’s a good idea, Z. We should run with it.”
“Did you just call me Z?” she asks.
“If I called you Zan, it sounds like a drug,” I say. “It’s applicable, but not professional.”
She raises her eyebrow before turning her head. “Your film crew is here.”
The film crew is still setting up when the four members of Shadow Tradition join us. In the bright summer background, their dark clothes and pale skin create an ugly contrast, but it’s too late to make those changes now. They happily greet each of us. The drummer, Cal Hubbard, stands on the left side of the members, but the way they look at him whenever I say anything indicates that he is their mouthpiece.
“We’re so happy that you called us,” Cal says. “We love 2Resonance. It’s a great service and you compensate artists a lot better than Tunest. Our first album debuted at #9 on the Billboard charts, but they barely gave us anything for how often our album was streamed. I can’t imagine how much other artists suffer.”
“We’re always happy to collaborate with artists on a mutually beneficial deal,” I say. “Did your publicist tell you everything we’d discussed? Are you okay with filming here?”
“I love that we’re filming here,” Cal says. “It’s a beautiful campus. I have so many memories around here. Granted, most of them weren’t in the library, but I have a few of those.”
“Did Marie tell you what you’re going to be talking about?” I ask.
“She said that you wanted us to include stories about meeting our friends and how 2Resonance could have helped us meet more people—which is completely true. If I’d had 2Resonance while I was here, I’d likely have had two more bands. It’s always an amazing experience to meet someone who has similar musical tastes as I do.”
“It would be great if you mentioned all of that,” I say. “A lot of people have dreams of forming a band, so offering that as an option that 2Resonance could help them with would be great.”
“So, it’s not scripted?” Cal asks. “You want us to talk off the cuff?”
Zandra pulls her bag off her shoulder and takes out a thin stack of paper. “I actually wrote a few things down, in case you weren’t certain what you wanted to say,” she says, handing Cal the papers. “But it would be better if we just filmed you spontaneously. It comes off as more genuine. We don’t want it to sound like you’re being forced or encouraged to say anything.”
He gazes at her, a second too long, but before the irritation can burrow under my skin too far, he turns to his bandmates. “We can do improv, can’t we?” he asks. Two of the members nod while the other one gives his mumbled consent.
“Um, we’d also be grateful—extremely grateful—if you’d be willing to do an impromptu concert here this afternoon,” Zandra says. Cal turns back to us and his eyebrows shoot up. “It would be part of the ad. We’d compensate you, but it would be a free concert to encourage people to come.”
“We’d love to do a concert here,” he says. “But we just brought our instruments. We’re missing a lot of gear.”
“We can provide that for you.”
“Awesome. Just give us a few minutes while we figure out what we want to say,” Cal says.
“That’s not a problem,” I say. “We’ll need time to set up the cameras and we’ll need you to write a list of the gear that you need.”
I turn away from them, walking toward our cameramen. Zandra follows closely behind me. I indicate where one of the cameras should be moved while Zandra sends texts to Angela and Julietta to send out messages to send Shadow Tradition fans and potential fans to the campus.
