Xo (Kathryn Dance 3)

THE DAY OF the show.

The band had arrived from Nashville at nine a.m. and come straight here, the convention center, where Kayleigh and the crew were waiting. They got right to work.

After a couple of hours Kayleigh had called a break. Backstage she had a tea and called Suellyn, then spoke to Mary-Gordon; she was going to take the girl shopping that afternoon for a new dress to wear to the concert.

After she disconnected she picked up her old Martin again and practiced a bit more with the picks that Edwin had given her.

She liked them a lot. Top flat-pickers, like Doc Watson, Norman Blake, Tony Rice and Bishop Towne, would never use big flexible triangles; the real virtuosos used small, hard picks like these. Kayleigh was more a strummer, but she still liked the control that--

A voice startled her. "How's the action?" Tye Slocum asked, appearing silently from nowhere, despite his size. His eyes were on the instrument.

Kayleigh smiled. The guitar tech was referring to the height of the strings above the fret board. Some guitars had a bolt or nut that could be turned to easily alter the action. Martins didn't; to make that adjustment required more effort and skill.

"Little low. I was getting some buzz on the D."

"I've got a saddle I can swap," he said. "I just found some bone ones. Real old. They're pretty sweet." The saddle, vital to a guitar's tone, was the white bar on the bridge that transmitted the sound from the strings to the body. Acoustically the best material was hard ivory, from forest elephant tusks; soft ivory was the next best--from large African elephants. Bone was the third best material. Both types of ivory were available--some legally and some not--but Kayleigh refused to use ivory and wouldn't let anyone in her band do so either. Tye, though, had good sources for vintage bone, which produced a sound nearly as good.

A pause. "Just wondering: Is he going to be mixing tonight?" A glance toward the control platform in the back, where Barry Zeigler sat with hard-shell earphones on, hands dancing over the console.

"Yeah."

Tye grunted. "Okay. Sure. He's good."

Bobby Prescott had not only been the chief roadie but handled the demanding job of sound mixing, his father's profession, at the live shows. Anyone on the crew could do a decent job on the massive, complex Midas XL8 mixing console--Tye was pretty good himself--but she had decided to ask Zeigler, as long as he happened to be in town. Her producer had started in the business as a board man when his own dreams of being a rock star hadn't come to pass. Nobody was better than Barry at getting right both the FOH--front of house--audio, along with the foldback: the sound the band heard through their monitors.

Slocum wandered off to his workstation of tuners, strings, amps and tools. Kayleigh walked out onstage and the rehearsal resumed.

Her band was made up of artists whose whole professional lives had been devoted to music. There are a lot of talented people out there, of course, but Kayleigh had worked hard to assemble folks who understood her and her songs and the tone she strived for. Folks who could work silkenly together; oh, that was important, vital. There are few professions as intimate as making ensemble music, and without complete synchronicity among the performers the best songs in the world and the most talented front person will be wasted.

Kevin Peebles was the lead guitarist, a lean, laid-back man in his thirties whose mahogany scalp glistened with sweat under the lights. He'd been a rocker for a few years before turning to his real love--country, a genre in which his race had not been traditionally well represented.

Bass player and backup singer Emma Sue Granger was one of the most beautiful women Kayleigh'd ever seen. With shoulder-length raven-black hair, decked out with occasional microbraids and a flower or two, Granger wore tight sweaters she knitted herself and leather pants. Kayleigh's audience was 60 percent female, but for the sake of the other forty, Emma Sue got a lot of front-stage time.

In a battered straw cowboy hat, brims rolled into a near tube, plaid shirt and ancient blue jeans, Buddy Delmore manned the band's pedal steel guitar, the smooth, seductive instrument that Kayleigh, for all her talent, had never been able to play. She thought anybody who could master one well was a genius. He also would play the distinctive-sounding Dobro and National steel guitars, with their pie-plate resonators. The sixty-five-year-old was from West Virginia and played music to support his true love: chicken farming. He had eight children, the youngest of whom was two.

The drummer was new to the group. Alonzo Santiago had come out of the barrio in Bakersfield and could make rhythm with anything he could pick up or touch. This too was magical to Kayleigh, who could perfectly follow a beat but relied on others to create and sustain it. Santiago was one of those crazy parents who'd actually given his young children drum sets, only to be disappointed to learn his daughter dreamed of being a NASCAR driver and his son a comic book artist.

The other band member, a sturdy, round-faced redhead in her forties, was the "orchestra." Sharon Bascowitz was one of those people who could pick up an instrument, even one she'd never seen, and play it like a virtuoso. Sousaphone, cello, harpsichord, marimba, Native American flute ... anything. Sharon could get it to sing. Always decked out in three or four colorful layers of tie-dye and lace, and dangling with glittering fake jewels, the woman was as brash as Emma Sue was shy.

The rehearsal was informal; they'd performed most of the material so often, it probably wasn't even necessary, but there was a new song order and Kayleigh had added Patsy Cline and Alison Krauss/Robert Plant covers and had written two new songs, which she'd faxed to the band last night. One was dedicated to Bobby; Alicia would not be mentioned, Kayleigh had decided.

They finished the raucous and fun "I'm in the Mood (for Rock 'n' Roll)" and she looked toward Barry at the mixing board. He gave her a thumbs-up. He was satisfied. She was satisfied. Kayleigh announced to the band and crew, "Okay, I think that's it for now; reconvene at six for the final sound check."

According to the God of Performances, Bishop Towne, you could never rehearse too frequently but you could rehearse too much. They needed a break now, to let the new ideas bake.

She handed off her Martin to Tye Slocum to fit with the new saddle, slugged down another iced tea and picked up her phone. Debating a moment, then a moment longer. Finally she did something she couldn't have imagined until today.

Kayleigh Towne called Edwin Sharp.

"Hello?" He still sounded a bit groggy.

"Hey, it's Kayleigh."

"Well, hi."

"Are you in the hospital still?"

He laughed. "Didn't think I'd really hear from you. No. I got sprung."