sold my soul to the open road

2009

“I swear to GOD Lawson if you make us late I’ll gut you in your sleep!”

My eye almost started twitching as I stared at the clock, watching the hands tick-tick-tick dangerously close to Officially Running Late. My luggage sat next to me at my place by the front door, packed and ready to go. If only I could say the same thing for my older brother.

“Oh yeah? And what’s gonna happen to the band when you murder the lead guitarist?” Lawson’s comeback echoed around the house from his bedroom, where he was desperately trying to finish some last minute packing.

“Blink-182 has been around for 17 years without a second guitarist. I think we’d be fine. Who knows, it might even be an improvement.”

Lawson popped out of his room a second later, luggage and guitar case in tow. “Low blow, Shay,” he said, eyes narrowed as he walked over to meet me by the door. “Besides, I’d hardly put you in the same category as Tom Delonge.”

I narrowed my eyes back, shouldering my duffle bag. “I’m officially offended, big brother,” I replied, but smiled nevertheless. “Got everything?”

“Yep. You?”

“Yep,” I repeated. “C’mon, the guys are waiting.”

Despite the early hour (in order to get to the first venue on time for check-in we had to leave at 5 am. We were all really excited about it.), both of us were nearly bouncing with anticipation as we left the house. We always got excited for tour, but this one was different. Besides the fact that we were just finishing up with a nearly two month break from touring and were itching to get back on stage, Warped Tour was a whole new kind of environment.

This wasn’t Hand Grenade Heart’s first time out on Warped, but this year we had managed to clench a spot on main stage, which meant we’d be playing to crowds that were more than twice the size that we had seen before on the Journey’s stage. We all knew what this meant for the band, and we were all ready to bring our A game. We had been working our asses off for an opportunity like this since we came together almost four years ago.

Lawson was the one who started Hand Grenade Heart. He’d wanted to be in a band ever since he was ten years old and heard She by Green Day for the first time. He had a few bands throughout middle school and high school, but they were never anything serious-- just cover bands. It wasn’t until his junior year at Boston College, my freshman year at the same school, that he and his roommate Beckett, who ended up as our bassist, decided they were really serious about starting an actual band.

The two of them sent out word every way they could figure to find a vocalist (since neither of them could sing worth a damn), a rhythm guitarist, and a drummer, one of which could also write songs. A decent amount of people were interested and after lots of auditions, they landed on one Graham Rhodes to be the drummer, although they still hadn’t come across a vocalist or a guitarist that they were happy with.

My brother had come to me to ask if I would be interested in joining pretty much as soon as he and Beck officially started the band. He knew that I could sing and play, and that I wrote, although he had never heard any of my original stuff. To be fair, though, no one had. But because of my heavy course load and, more importantly, a horrible case of stage fright, I declined. He didn’t push me, but after they had gone through nearly two weeks of auditions and couldn’t find anything, he started nudging.

Eventually he wore me down enough to at least come in for an audition. I played a couple originals for them and did a cover or two with the full band. As soon as we played together, I think we all felt a connection. We all got along really well and the guys really liked my original stuff. I was still a bit hesitant, but with a bit of persuasion from Lawson, I decided, fuck it, why not?

We started out slow, playing at friends’ parties and open mic nights around the city, just to start getting our name out there. But then, after a couple months, we started booking real gigs. Nothing huge, just opening for some bigger local bands and things like that. But still, it was progress.

And yeah, we had definitely been making progress. After figuring out a practice schedule that accommodated all of our classes, we started practicing nearly every day. Not to toot our own horn or anything, but we had sounded pretty good from the start, but after practicing together, getting used to each other’s rhythms and styles of instrumentation, and after the other guys learned my songs and made their own unique improvements on them, we were sounding pretty damn good.

As for live shows, we were all a bit awkward at the first few gigs we played, trying to get used to playing in front of other people and feeling out how it was we wanted to act on stage. But after eight or nine shows, it started to come a lot more naturally to us. And over time, my stage fright became less and less of a problem, until one day it just wasn’t there anymore.

After we had been playing together for about six months, we entered a local Battle of the Bands competition. We didn’t think a whole lot of it; we saw it just as a way to further get our name out to the punk scene in Boston, as well as maybe get to know some other bands. Little did we know that the panel of judges included a representative from Epitaph Records.

Hand Grenade Heart left the club that night, not only winners of the Battle of the Bands, but also with an offer to sign with Epitaph.

Within two months after that night, we’d officially inked our first record deal, and were posed with the offer of going on our first real tour. Initially, we were all eager to jump at the chance to start touring, but there was a huge elephant in the room that we still weren’t sure how to deal with: college. We had all been keeping up with our course work over the past few months. Lawson and Beck had just finished their junior year, while Graham and I were done with our freshman year.

When all of this had started, I don’t think any of us knew what to expect. All we knew was that we loved playing music, and the band was our way of doing that. I don’t know if any of us expected it to get so serious, at least not so fast, so we had never considered, beyond the obvious time commitment that came from practicing, how the band could possibly conflict with school. The one thing we all did know for sure, though, was that this was a once in a lifetime opportunity, and we wanted to follow that as far as it would go. And at that point, school was only holding us back.

After coming to that realization, it didn’t take long for us to decide to drop out. But of course, since we were only 18 or 19 years old at the time, we had to check with our parents first. Beckett’s parents were 100% supportive, nothing but proud of their son for being on the road to achieving his dream. Graham’s parents took a bit more convincing, but eventually were persuaded as well. But Lawson’s and my mother, on the other hand, was a whole other beast of its own.

Our mother had always put a lot of pressure on us growing up, particularly in our endeavors in the realm of academia. For a while, our father, far more temperate than our mother, was there to balance her out. But when he died during my senior year of high school, maybe from grief or maybe because there was no longer a buffer there to calm her down, she got so much worse.

She would accept nothing but the best from her children, nothing less than her own lofty accomplishments, having earned her law degree from Columbia, no less. So, as you can imagine, when we came home for the summer to announce that we wanted to drop out of college to tour with the other half of our punk rock band-- well, let’s just say that “aneurysm” wouldn’t be a total overstatement. She was totally, completely, 100% against it.

Of course, that didn’t stop us from arguing the point, adamantly. We pushed where she pulled, and poked where she prodded, but eventually, after nearly four hours of fighting, it became clear that none of us were going to budge on the subject. The argument eventually blew up; Lawson and I stormed off and hid in his room to figure out our next move.

After a lot of back and forth, we decided that the band was too important to us to quit, and if our mother couldn’t understand that, then maybe she didn’t care about our happiness as much as she claimed to. So, the next day, Lawson and I packed up all of the things we hadn’t taken with us to college, as we didn’t even bother unpacking what we had taken, loaded it all into the car we shared in high school, and left our childhood home for good.

Neither of us have seen our mother since.

Anyway, when we got back to Boston and I moved in with Lawson and Beckett, the apartment turned into HGH headquarters. Graham was over nearly every day, and we spent the summer rehearsing and prepping so that, by the time we left for our first tour, we were more than ready.
And we haven’t stopped touring since.

When Lawson and I filed out of the front door, we were met with our drummer leaning against the front of our tour bus.

“Nice of you guys to show up,” Graham remarked sarcastically.

My hand immediately shot up, shifting the blame to Lawson. “Don’t look at me. Pack-rat here was the one who couldn’t get his shit together.”

“Thanks for that, little sister,” he said as he locked the door.

“No surprise there,” said Beck, popping his white-haired head out of the bus door. “Honestly I’m surprised they’re not later than this.”

“Oh, eat me, Tucker,” Lawson retorted as we made our way onto the bus, Graham following in turn.

“Time and place, Walker,” Beck quipped back, stepping back into the front lounge so Lawson and I could come in.

As my brother continued to mumble to himself about how it wasn’t his fault that his alarm didn’t go off, I chose to greet my two best friends who I hadn’t seen in over a month far more enthusiastically. “I missed you guys!” I said, turning to face my two grinning bandmates.
Beckett captured me in a hug as soon as I dropped my bags. “Missed you too, kid,” he said, lifting me off the ground for a moment.

“Yeah, I missed my favorite Mortal Kombat opponent,” said Graham, who hugged me after Beckett put me down.

“You mean you missed having your ass handed to you?” I said, smirking at him when we broke apart.

“Oh, just wait until you see how better I got over the break, Walker, then we’ll talk about who’s handing who an ass,” he retorted.

Beckett scoffed. “I wouldn’t call going from lasting 30 seconds to 45 seconds ‘getting better.’”

“Maybe I was just saving my real skill for tour, ever think about that?”

I grinned widely as I watched the two of them continue to bicker sarcastically. Fuck, did I miss this.

I made my way to the bunk alley and hoisted my bags into my usual bunk, middle on the left. I smiled a bit, looking at the pictures I’d stuck up during previous tours, pictures of the guys and me, pictures of just me and my brother, pictures with our crew, and even some with fans. Some were more recent, from the last couple tours, and there were some that were older, like from our very first tour.

I loved tour. In my opinion, it was the best part of what we did. I loved writing and recording, too, don’t get me wrong. Some of my favorite memories with my bandmates happened in recording studios. But for me, there was nothing quite like being on stage. Nothing compares to the feeling of hearing hundreds of people screaming the lyrics of your songs along with you. The high that I get from playing a show was one that I couldn’t get from any drug; it was exhilarating.

Not to mention, the times I spent with Lawson, Graham, and Beckett were the times I was happiest. And while living with three men for months at a time with very limited space was frustrating, I loved my bandmates like brothers (I mean, one of them was actually my brother, but still) and I knew, even when I wanted to take all three of their heads and clunk them together, that I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.

I heard the noise of the engine starting, and a moment later the bus lurched the slightest bit before it began moving, starting the arduous drive from Boston to Dallas. There was a chorus of cheering from the guys, and while I stayed quiet, my inner excitement matched theirs.

I ventured back out to the front of the bus, grabbing a water bottle from the newly stocked fridge, and joined the guys on the couch, plopping down next to Beckett and tossing my legs over his lap.

“So where’s Blake?” asked Lawson.

“She decided to fly out to Dallas instead,” answered Graham. “She said she’ll meet us at check-in.”

“Probably didn’t want to be stuck on a bus with us any longer than she has to,” commented Beck, making us all chuckle in agreement.

Blake was a friend of ours from college who we hired as our tour manager, but we tended to refer to her as our tour mom. She was the same age as Beckett, but she had an innate ability to not only handle the business side of the band flawlessly, but also managed to limit Graham’s, Beckett’s, Lawson’s, and my unchecked insanity to controlled chaos. She loved her job, we all knew that, but that didn’t mean that we weren’t hard to handle. And like any real mom, her patience with us tended to be on the thin side. The four of us did our best to make her job as easy as possible, but sometimes, when our inner teenagers were too hard to control, we were capable of making her job very, very difficult. So naturally, we could all understand why she would want to avoid the 26 hour drive from Boston to Dallas, especially when you consider that we were all going to be hyped up on adrenaline and excitement for tour.

“Oh, hey, did you guys see that email from Lyman yesterday?” Graham asked.

“Oh yeah, I did. I’m so fucking excited,” said Beckett.

I, notorious for neglecting my inbox, was confused. I looked at Lawson for some clarification, but he was as out of the loop as I was. So I turned to Graham instead. “What did it say?”

“Apparently 3OH!3 dropped out of the tour last week, and everyone was freaking out cause they were worried that no band would be willing to take their place at such short notice. But guess who did.”

“Who?” I asked, taking a long pull from my water.

“All Time Low.”

I choked, causing me to go off on a coughing fit, as much of the water spilled down my chin and onto my shirt. I exchanged glances with Lawson, who looked as shocked as I felt. I felt Beckett’s and Graham’s eyes on me, but I wasn’t so concerned about the strange looks they were giving me.

“Are you serious?” asked Lawson, who did a much better job of keeping the shock out of his voice than I was doing with my face.

“Hell yeah I am. Can you believe we’re gonna be playing the same stage as them?” said Graham excitedly, drumming his hands against his knees.

“I can’t wait to meet Alex,” said Beckett, his enthusiasm just as high. “I’ve heard he’s like, the nicest dude ever.”

I felt nauseated as the weight of the situation began to sink in. I was about to spend the summer on the same tour as the one person I’d been trying to forget for the last four years. My pulse went from zero to sixty in half a second as anxiety took the wheel, and then went on to careen off an overpass.

“You alright there, kid?” asked Beckett, eyebrows knitted together. “You don’t look excited.”
I had never told Graham or Beckett about what happened between me and Alex. I’d never even told them that I knew him, or any of the other members of All Time Low, for that matter. Like I said, all I wanted to do was forget about him, so talking about it was not something I enjoyed, or did at all.

Before I could trip over my words and try to think of a reason to give them for my less than excited demeanor, my brother saved me, saying, “She’s never really been into their music.”

“What?! You’re kidding,” said Graham in disbelief. “How can you not like them?”

“Dunno,” I said, keeping my voice light. “Just never could get into it, I guess.”

I waited until the attention shifted away from me and excused myself to the bathroom. As soon as I slid the door closed behind me, my composure disappeared. I braced myself against the tiny sink as my breathing sped up, my knuckles white against the fake marble tile and This can’t be happening ran on a loop in my head.

I, along with Lawson, had done everything in my power over the last three and a half years to make sure that Hand Grenade Heart and All Time Low never interacted. And considering the fact that we both existed in the same scene of music, it was harder than I thought it would be, however I’d always managed to pull it off.

But now, I could see that all I was doing was avoiding the inevitable.

Especially now that HGH was gaining some real momentum, it was bound to happen sooner or later. I guess I’d just been counting on later.

The worst thing about the whole thing, though, was the fact that in the past few months I had been doing so much better. The process of getting over Alex was a long one, which, considering how deeply I felt for him, how long I had felt that way, and just the magnitude of what he did to me, was not unexpected. My progress had been far from linear, and I’d definitely had my fair share of backslides, but, for the most part, since the beginning of 2009 it had all been uphill. I hardly thought about Alex anymore, and the few times I did I didn’t harp on it like I used to. I really thought that I had finally put that part of my life behind me.

Not to mention the fact that tour was gonna be a lot less enjoyable now that I would have to be constantly looking over my shoulder, making sure that I didn’t run into Alex. Seeing him again was not something I could handle. Up until now I didn’t think I’d ever have to see him again. I didn’t want to ever see him again.

His betrayal was something that, for while, I thought I’d never be able to bounce back from. It wasn’t just about him, my boyfriend, cheating on me. It was also, in fact even more so, about him, my best friend of seven years, lying to me, manipulating me, and using me. I had always thought of Alex as one of the people in my life who would never hurt me. So when he did, it didn’t just hurt, it messed my whole world up. How are you supposed to make sense of something you thought was impossible?

And it wasn’t just Alex, it was Jack, and Rian and Zack and Flyzik; it was every single one of my friends. When I left, in my mind I was just leaving Alex. I didn’t think about just how many people I was going to lose. I didn’t regret leaving Alex, but fuck, did I regret leaving the rest of them. How was I supposed to face them now?

I started when there was a knock on the door, accompanied by Beckett yelling, “Everything okay in there?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. I’ll be out in a sec,” I called back.

Get a grip, Walker, I thought, shaking my head as if I was shaking off the whole situation. I told myself that I was just making a big deal out of nothing. Why did seeing Alex again have to be scary for me? He was the one who hurt me. He was the one in the wrong. He should be the one who was scared.

This was my opportunity to finally get some closure. I never got to yell at him. I never go to fight with him, never got to show him just how much he hurt me by doing what he did. But now, I had four years of pent up anger inside of me, and I was going to let all of it lose on Alex.

Notes

short-ish chapter, just to introduce and give some context to the band and stuff. I fell kind of eh about it but the next one should be better. a lot more excitement to come.

please leave a comment and let me know what you think! I always love getting feedback