A Little Ray Of Hope
~ 1 ~
His name was Phillip Winslow He lived in an area of Toronto called Rosedale. His family was extremely wealthy. In the low billions from the dozen businesses it owned. His father was one of three brothers who ran the empire under the corporate banner of Winslow Industries. It consisted mostly of industrial businesses that were recession-proof. Each brother ran a group of companies and once a year, around Christmas time, they all got together and divided up the profits.
Two years earlier, Phil had graduated from the University of Toronto. But Phil was a Winslow in name only. He wanted nothing to do with the family businesses, so he majored in English. All he had ever wanted was to be some kind of a writer.
He was a bit of a disappointment to the family, as he was the only child of Julia and Jarret Winslow, and was expected to carry on in the family business. Once his dad and his uncles realized he was not in the least bit interested, Phil was left pretty much to his own devices.
When he was younger there were always people around to look after him, and to drive him to school. But from about the age of sixteen, he was pretty much on his own. His preferred mode of transportation was a bicycle, which he rode on all but the worst weather days, when he would drive a beautiful Lexus.
Growing up rich, Phil noticed, gave him a strange attitude towards money. He knew from a very early age that he would not ever have to work to earn it. His trust fund took care of that. So with the pressure of having to earn money removed, he focused on what he would do with his life. So for two years after receiving his BA in English he essentially just kicked around the city, writing down ideas and bits and pieces of poetry in a notebook. He would go to movies in the afternoons. And he would ride down to the lake, and sit on a bench and write. He didn’t go to bars or drink at all, so that whole part of life was alien to him. No, Phillip was a writer, but he was taking his own sweet time coming to terms with what kind of writer he would be.
~ 2 ~
It was early May and it was a nice warm day. Phil was sitting at a Starbucks on Yonge Street just north of Summerhill Avenue, with a large latte, scribbling away in his notebook. It was a busy day at that particular Starbucks and he was sitting at an outdoor table by himself. He was trying to write a poem or a lyric or something, anything that made sense. He knew there was no pressure on him to make any sort of career choice but there would always be questions like there were on the rare evenings when he and both his parents were together for dinner.
As he was thinking about all this he heard a voice. “Excuse me.” the voice said. “Do you mind if I sit here?”
He looked up to see her. She was about five foot six with long flowing blonde hair. Her body was lithe, thin but shapely. She was wearing tight jeans and a white peasant blouse. Her face looked angelic to Phil. “Ummm, certainly, please sit.” he said.
“Thank you,” she said, and sat down opposite him, and took a sip of her latte.
Phillip found that he couldn’t take his eyes off her. “Phil Winslow.” he said.
The girl smiled at him and held out her hand. “Jenny Stone.”
They shook hands lightly. Phillip noticed that she had also laid down a book beside her latte. “Nice to meet you, Jenny.” He gestured to the book. “What are you reading?”
“John Sandford.” He writes cop fiction. I like his characters. And what about you? What are you writing?”
“Oh this.” He closed the notebook. “It’s kind of a journal. Trying to figure out what do do with my life.”
“Yeah.” she said. “That’s the big question, isn’t it?”
Phillip laughed. “So what’s your answer to that, Jenny Stone?”
Jenny looked at him for a moment. “I’m,…uhhh…I’m a singer.”
“A singer? Like a recording artist singer?”
“No. Well not yet anyway. I do advertising work. Jingles mostly. Sometimes solos, other times as part of a chorus or background for an album project.”
“Can you make a living doing that?”
“You can, but it takes some time. I’m just getting started. But the jingle work is a good way to get to know the engineers and producers, and you get to spend time in studios.”
“So you must be a pretty good singer.”
“So far it’s been working out quite well. I’m just on my way to see a talent agent to see if they will sign me to voice work as well. Then I can get my ACTRA card, which is what you really need.”
When she said that, Phil realized that he was so taken with her looks that he hadn’t noticed that she did have a very interesting voice.
“So that’s my story, what’s yours, Phillip?”
“Well…I grew up about four blocks from here, in Rosedale. Private public schools then a BA in English at U of T. For the last couple of years, I’ve been playing around with a lot of different kinds of writing. I’ve been writing poetry ever since I can remember.”
“I take it you don’t need a job of any kind.”
“No. I have a trust fund that takes care of all my expenses and I still live at home sort of. Our house has a coach house which is where I live.”
“If you have money, why not publish your own work? Market it on the Internet?”
“I’ll be honest with you. I have been so busy trying to turn this damn writing into something that I haven’t really thought about what happens next.” He lifted up the notebook. “I have about twenty of these and they’re all full of stuff.”
“Well, you never really know till you try.” Jenny looked at her watch. “ Oooo, I have to go. Give me your phone, I’ll give you my number. We can get together again.”
Phillip handed Jenny his phone and she punched in her number. Her phone rang and she shut it off. he then got to her feet.
Jenny got to her feet. “Call me.” she said and then she dashed away.
~ 3 ~
Phil sat there for quite some time. His brain was churning. He finally finished his latte and got on his bike and rode home. He parked his bike in the coach house garage below his apartment and headed up the stairs.
His apartment had a large open space with some furniture and a gigantic flat screen TV that sat on a low bench. Underneath the bench was his album collection, at least 500 in all. Lots of Dylan, Eagles, Jackson Browne, Bob Seger and other good American rock bands. He was a big believer in vinyl, and he gravitated very strongly to the songwriters. Beside the TV was an amp and turntable and at either end of the bench were a pair of fairly large speakers.
On the other side of the open space was a small kitchen and a dining table. Off to one side was the bedroom and bathroom. Behind the dining area was a small office with a desk, his computer and a large floor-to-ceiling bookcase that held all kinds of things. Piles of papers, files, a couple hundred paperbacks, some textbooks and his notebook collection.
He went into the kitchen and got a bottle of water. Then he sat down at his desk and opened his computer. He opened a Pages file and grabbed a couple of his notebooks. He started leafing through them. Typing out anything that looked interesting or that he could turn into something interesting. He was determined to turn his scribbles into something coherent. His reason was simple. He wanted to be able to show this girl he just met that there was really something to him. Pretty lame, he thought to himself, but what the hell.
Five or six hours later he was exhausted. But he had managed to fill almost 60 pages with his thoughts. All the while he was thinking about Jenny Stone. Even though their meeting was brief, she had made a real impression on him. He took his water bottle out the back door to a small deck that overlooked the valley. He sat down on one of the two chairs there and stared out into the night. The forest behind his house made strange noises at night. They were a weird kind of music.
He closed his eyes and tried to capture the thought that had been dancing around in his head all day, ever since he met Jenny. As he was writing out the bits and pieces of his poetry, he realized that he could easily develop a lot of them into structured lyrics. Hell, he had majored in English. Studied all the great poets. Surely there was some way to apply that knowledge to his own work.
As he sat out on the deck and stared into the dark forest he slowly realized that what was happening was that he was finally waking up. He had, in essence, created a study course and the subject was Phil Winslow.
Up until that day, he would never have given a thought to taking this stuff as far as he could. He would have just written it off to youthful exuberance and gone out and found some sort of job or bought into some business.
After brushing his teeth and flopping down on his bed, the last thought that entered his head was that, maybe, he was finally figuring his life out. As he lay there in the dark, he picked up his phone and looked at the number that Jenny had put in. He stared at it for a long time then finally nodded off.
The following morning he went over to the big house for breakfast. He brought his laptop with him and while he pounded down some Cheerios he started to play with his poetry. He decided to impose some discipline on himself and only deal with one idea at a time. The first one he tackled was something he titled, Someone I Once Knew. There was only what could be a verse, so he messed around with it for about an hour and a half, in a highly focused way and ended up with a piece he thought was not too bad. He also realized that he was writing this from the female perspective, which was something new to him.
Someone I once knew
One day said to me
That I could never give my heart away
Or let love set me free
That I’d be doomed to live my life
As a solitary soul
Never sharing, never caring
Never feeling whole
Someone I once knew
Told me this would be my fate
And like a fool I never believed him
Until it was way too late
And now I live to regret
Ever having let him go
And I try to forget all the things that I
Was never supposed to know
Someone I once knew
Only a memory
Of all I could have had
Of all that love could be
And now I know that I
Didn’t have to end up alone and blue
If only I had opened up my heart
To someone I once knew
They say it’s a lonely soul
Who never sees the signs
Who never lets their heart depart
From the path their head defines
There was a time so long ago
When I didn’t believe that was true
But that was before I broke the heart
Of someone I once knew
He sat and stared at the lyric. It all made perfect sense to him. It didn’t feel at all awkward when he sang it to himself. And then he thought, ‘Man, it can’t all be this easy, can it?”
He cleaned up his breakfast dishes and went back to the coach house. He was invigorated and it was a strange feeling. Kind of like he’d been asking himself the same questions for a couple of years, and suddenly the answers were right there.
A little later that morning he decided, after much consternation, to call Jenny and invite her to dinner. He was a little bit leery about doing that because they had just met and it felt like he was being a bit forward. Finally, he remembered something an old school chum told him when they talking about what they would do after graduation. His friend told him he was planning to go into advertising. Phil pointed out to his friend that he knew nothing about advertising, to which his friend replied. “My dear boy, sometimes you just gotta say ‘What the fuck’ and forge ahead.”
So Phil Winslow picked up his phone, said ‘What the fuck’ and called Jenny Stone.
~ 4 ~
Jenny lived in an older apartment building on one of the streets just south of St Clair Avenue. She was waiting for him on a bench in front of the building when he pulled up. He was driving his black Lexus. She was dressed in a short denim skirt and a long sleeved striped shirt that would have looked like a disaster on someone who was not constructed like she was. He got out and, ran around and opened the passenger side door for her. She smiled and climbed in. They took off and headed south.
“I have to admit I was surprised to hear from you.” Jenny said.
For some reason that made Phil laugh. “You obviously have no idea how memorable you are.” he said.
“I suppose not.” she replied. “But I’m glad you did call.”
They drove on for a moment in silence. “The building where you live. Do you have your own apartment, or do you have roommates?”
“I share it with two other girls. It’s really the only way we can afford to do it. They’re both just starting out like me.”
“By the way. How did that go with the talent agent?”
“Oh. It went very well. I’m officially on the roster.”
“Well, congratulations. So this can be a bit of a celebration. Do you like Greek food?”
“I love Greek food.”
“OK, great. There’s a really good place on the Danforth called Astoria.”
“I’ve seen that place. Never been though.”
They drove down to Danforth Avenue, but everybody just called it the Danforth, and parked in a lot a couple blocks away from the restaurant. The Danforth was busy with tourists and locals alike. And it was a perfect night. Phillip had made reservations and so they were shown to a booth in the rear where it was a lot quieter than the rest of the restaurant. They ordered their drinks and their dinner.
“This is one of my favourite areas of the city. When you grow up in Rosedale, you spend more time on this side of the Parkway than you do downtown. I’ve been coming over here since I was a kid.”
“You never told me what your family does.” Jenny said.
“They own a bunch of stuff. Businesses, mostly manufacturing and transportation. My father has two brothers and between the three of them they manage probably a dozen different businesses.”
“And you’re not interested in following in their footsteps?”
“No. I’m not really built for that kind of work. I’d much rather do something creative. Try a novel. Maybe write some lyrics and see if I can’t find a partner to work with creating some songs.”
“That sounds like it would be great fun.”
Yeah, well, I’m still trying to figure things out. I’ve always been interested in the music business. Just don’t know a lot about how it all works.”
“Oh, I know all about that.” Jenny said.
“You do?”
“Oh sure. I have an older brother, Jamie, who’s in a band called the Fables. They’re a lot like, you know Foreigner or one of those California rock bands. The other three guys in the band are from LA. I even travelled with them for a while one summer when I was in high school.”
“I remember the Fables. They were pretty big when I was in high school too. You’re right they did remind me of Foreigner.”
“Jamie’s the lead singer in the band. They all write songs together. They’re pretty cool. Have a great crew and good management.”
“What happened to them?”
“Nothing. They’re still out there. They don’t get to Canada very often. They do mostly clubs around the US. Not a lot of big shows.”
The food arrived a few minutes later and while they were eating Jenny told Phil just about everything she knew about the music business.
When they were finished their meal they went for a long walk on the Danforth and talked about all kinds of stuff.
Phil asked Jenny if she had any aspirations to perform and record her own albums. She just smiled and kind of shook her head. “It’s a long hard road.” she said. “You need a lot of money and a lot of fortitude.”
After that Phil started thinking. A lot of money was no problem. He just wondered if he had the fortitude.
At dinner, Jenny had started asking him questions about where he lived. So when they were done, they got in the car and drove to his house. They drove up the long driveway and parked. His parents, as usual were out of town so the big house was empty. He showed her around and got the feeling that she thought it was all a bit over the top. Phil had grown up in this house and to him it was nothing unusual.
They then walked across the drive to the coachhouse and up the stairs. Jenny walked around looking at everything. She looked out all the windows and then opened the door to the back deck.
“This is amazing. It’s like you’re out in the wilderness here.”
“Yeah, this used to be the servant’s quarters. They were a married couple. He took care of the grounds and she was our cook. They left after I finished high school and my folks started travelling more. So I decided to move in here for some privacy.”
Phil opened a bottle of wine and poured two glasses. They went back outside and sat down in the dark.
“I like listening to the sounds out here. We have owls and all kinds of other critters roaming around.” Phil said.
They sat quietly for a few minutes and Jenny said. “Yeah. I can hear them.”
‘By the way, I didn’t tell you earlier, But I have started to go though my notebooks and add some structure to some of the pieces I have been scribbling. This morning I came up with one whole piece that I think is a lyric.
“I’d love to see it.” Jenny said. “But only when you’re ready to show it to anyone.”
“Really?”
“Sure.”
Phil got up and dashed inside. A few moments later he came out with the lyric on a sheet of paper. He switched on the deck light so Jenny could see it clearly. She stared at it for quite a while. Then she started to hum a bit.
“This is very good.” Jenny said. “It’s something I’d love to sing.”
“It’s just the words. I need to find someone to write some music to it.” Phil said.
“That should be pretty easy to do. Because the lyric is really tight.”
“Tight? What does that mean?”
“It means that the metre is solid. It tracks very well when you read it which means it can be done in a couple of different ways depending on where you want to put the emphasis.”
Phil wasn’t quite sure how to respond to that. “You seem to know a lot about song structure.”
“I grew up in a musical family. I learned how to play guitar when I was about twelve. Jamie and I used to jam together, you know, before he joined the Fables. He taught me a bunch of chords and I practiced them religiously. After he joined the Fables and started making money, he built a little demo studio in the basement of our house. That’s where I started teaching myself singing and playing. The first song I ever learned was Peggy Sue by Buddy Holly. Then my mom got me some singing lessons and I learned a lot about voice control. I sang at high school concerts and stuff.”
“Did you ever write any of your own songs?”
“No. I was never any good at writing lyrics. But I worshipped people like Joan Baez and Joni Mitchell.”
Phil just sat there totally mesmerized. “So what would you do with this?”
Jenny looked at him for a moment then picked up the lyric sheet, and started to sing. It was nothing like what Phil heard in his head when he tried to sing the lyrics to himself. It was much better. Jenny’s voice was angelic and edgy at the same time.
When she finished, Phil just smiled. “That was wonderful.”
“It was a little rough. I’d have to figure out the chords that would work best and that might change it a little more. But like I said, it’s really tight. I can hear a number of different people singing this.”
“What about you?” Could you hear yourself recording this?”
Jenny took a deep breath. “That’s a whole other world, Phil. And the price of entry is really high. I’d love to give it a try. But I have to be practical about it.”
“So it’s about the money?”
“Yeah. I mean there’s a whole lot involved in putting something like this together.”
“But suppose money was no object. And suppose I hired you to be my songwriting partner.”
“We’re still talking about a lot of money. Additional players, studio time, an engineer, producer and then finding representation. And once that all happens there’s maybe financing a tour, and making CDs and promotion. It’s not just you and me writing songs.”
Phil looked Jenny in the eye. “There’s no way you would know this, because you have no idea how much I’m actually worth. But my trust fund currently sits at close to forty-four million dollars. Nothing you told me, except maybe the concert stuff, would even make much of a dent in that.”
Jenny was floored. “Oh my God? Really?”
“Yeah, and I have access to about half my money whenever I need it. The rest is tied up in various investments that my dad made for me.”
Jenny just stared at him. She had no idea what to say.
“Tell you what.” Phil said. “Let’s just do it one step at a time. Tell me what it costs you to live right now. And that will be what I pay you to write the songs with me. Anything else you make, you can just bank or buy clothes or whatever. Once we have enough material, we’ll figure out the next step.
“You’re not just messing with me are you?”
“Jenny, this is the first time in my life that I have been truly interested in anything. This is something that will challenge me, and I could really use that right now.”
Jenny got to her feet and moved to the railing. “I’m really flattered that you would make me this kind of offer, Phil. I really am. But…I think that the very first thing you should do is write some more lyrics. Just five or six and if they are as good as this, then we’ll know this is worth doing. The people who make it in this business are the ones who can go the distance.”
Phil didn’t say anything for quite a while. When he did respond, he simply said. “You’re right. I’ll get to work on it tomorrow.”
Jenny smiled. She had a good feeling about this but, she didn’t want to rush into anything. Another lesson from her big brother.
Phil drove Jenny home half an hour later. He kissed her goodnight, and Jenny went to bed that night thinking that the world was a really strange place.
~ 5 ~
Over the next two weeks, Phil got to work. He really wanted this to happen but he wanted to make sure it happened right. He spent three days transposing anything he believed had potential. When he was done he had more than a hundred and twenty pages of bits and pieces. He read them over, starting at the beginning and stopped when his head told him that he had found a good one. He then copied it into a file he labelled ‘Songbook’ and thought about the story it could tell.
This became his modus operandi. And within a couple of weeks, he had created another twelve workable lyrics. He then spent another two days going over and refining them. It was a lot of work, and he was exhausted. But at the end of it all, he realized that he had some pretty decent stuff to show Jenny.
He talked to Jenny on the phone periodically, just to see how she was doing. Evidently, she was doing fine. She had several singing gigs and her new voice agent had got her into their small studio and recorded a four-minute voice demo for her. But she told him it would be a while before anything really started happening, mainly because it was summertime and the advertising agencies were generally very slow with vacations and all. But she was assured that things would get cranked up in the fall.
Three weeks after her dinner with Phil, he called and told her that he had finished ten more lyrics that he thought would be worth demoing. Later that afternoon he picked her up and they drove down to an area called the Beaches.
When they got there and found a nice quiet place to sit, he handed her a small binder with the eleven lyrics in them. She sat silently reading them for a good fifteen minutes. And then she looked up at him. “And you wrote all of these in the last couple of weeks?”
“Yeah.”
“My God, Phil. It’s hard to reconcile what I know about you with what you have written here. It feels like you’re two different people.”
“Is that a good or a bad thing?” he asked.
“I could hear each one as I read it. I know exactly what they should sound like. That’s not good or bad. It’s just plain weird. It’s like you were reading my mind.”
“Well, I was thinking about you while I was putting these together. I also have figured out about fifteen more, but they’re still pretty rough.
“You’re not messing around are you?”
“No, Jenny. I’m dead serious. I felt so good putting these together. It was like…finally, I found something, you know, worthwhile.”
“Well, it certainly looks that way.”
“So…do you want to go forward with this?”
Jenny just smiled. “Oh yes. And I know just how to do it.”
Jenny’s family home was on the east side of the city close to Greenwood Avenue Her brother had built a demo studio in a corner of their basement. When he wasn’t on tour he would use it to demo any new song ideas, then send them to the other members of the band, or use it to figure out his parts from songs that other members of the band had written and sent to him.
It was a comfortable little room with foam baffles, 16 track board, digital recorder and a couple of mikes one for vocals and one for either guitar or the small electric keyboard he kept there. He had taught Jenny how to set up and record whatever she wanted. Jenny had mostly used the small room to practice her chords and learn a few songs to get comfortable at changing chords while she was singing. Since her brother was on the road for a good part of the year, the room was usually available.
Jenny had gone to a small local community college called George Brown College and continued to live at home until she decided to move into her own place. She studied music production and engineering.
The sound quality in the little basement room was as good as it got for demos and that’s where Jenny took Phil two days later. He introduced Phil to her mom and stepdad, Angela and Dave, and told them the whole story about meeting Phil and deciding to write some songs together. Phil charmed the hell out of Jenny’s folks over tea and then they went downstairs and got to work.
~ 6 ~
Between Jenny’s singing schedule downtown and the writing and recording at her house, It took about a month and a half to put the songs together. In the downtime, Phil applied himself diligently to creating a number of new lyrics from the pieces he had transposed from his notebooks and from other ideas that came to him along the way. He was amazed at how it got progressively easier as he moved through the process and he could more clearly hear Jenny’s voice. He worked very hard at keeping the lyrics as simple as possible, to give Jenny the most room to extend notes, and really sing them.
As time passed, Jenny worked her way through the initial lyrics that Phil had so lovingly crafted, and her financial burden was lifted from the $5,000 a month that Phil paid her, they grew closer and closer emotionally. Two months later they had completed sixteen songs and were deeply in love. Jenny’s confidence in her singing and playing grew in leaps and bounds. To her it felt magical.
Eventually, Jenny moved into the coach house with Phil. About two weeks before that Phil had hired a contractor who worked for one of his one of his dad’s companies to convert his office into a demo studio, which eliminated a great deal of travelling and turned part of the large bedroom into an extra closet. They then bought their own equipment and within a week they had a fully functioning home demo studio. Jenny bought a bike so that she could easily get to her gigs, most of which were downtown. She and Phil slowly but surely started building a life together. After two months they had demoed more than thirty songs. During the process, Jenny had developed a vocal style that was all her own and her singing was totally captivating to her audience of one.
One day, in mid-September Jenny’s brother Jamie came off the road and she invited him down to Rosedale to listen to her demos. Jamie showed up the next day and listened to the entire collection twice. At the end, he turned to Jenny and smiled. “This stuff is incredible, Jen. The question is what do you want to do with it. Don’t answer right away, because it’s a big question. There are a lot of options.”
“So what are the options?” Phil asked.
“Well, there’s performing of course.” Jamie said, “Either as an opening act for someone or just as a solo act around the area. But there’s publishing and selling these songs to other performers. Then there’s making your own albums and selling them online, if you don’t want to go on the road. The road isn’t for everyone. I’ve been out there for ten years now and I’ll tell you, it’s a grind.”
“So there really is a lot to think about.” Phil said.
“Yeah. But this is extremely good material. I’d love to produce it for you, Jen.”
“That would be great.” Jenny said.
The three of them headed over to the Danforth for dinner. Jamie regaled them with his road stories, and both Jenny and Phil could feel just how much he loved it.
“I was lucky to get hooked up with a group of guys who loved being out there.” Jamie said. “But they’re kind of all feeling the same way. They have side projects, like this one, and are always looking forward to sleeping in their own beds at night.”
That night lying in bed in the dark, they were both lost in thought.
“We can do this any way you want, Jenny, Phil said. “Whatever is going to make you the happiest.”
“I know. And I have to tell you, I’ve never been very good with decisions.”
“The good thing is that we don’t have to do anything right away. But it would be great to record all these songs for real, no matter what we choose to do with them.”
“Yeah, that would be cool.”
The next morning. Jenny and Phil called her brother and arranged to get the recording together. Jamie asked her to send along the ten songs they wanted to record and then they would discuss the kind of arrangements that would best suit each song. Jamie would then find the players he needed. Once he had that all figured out he would give them a budget.
They spent the day deciding on the ten songs that they would record and then burned a CD for Jamie. They met with him the next day at a studio downtown. Jamie was extremely helpful concerning arrangements. In the end, they agreed on a drummer, bass, guitarist, which would be Jamie, and a synth player. He knew that Jenny’s voice had enough range for her to do her own harmonies if they were necessary.
Two days later, Jamie had found and booked all the musicians and the studio at a place called Manta Sound. He also booked a small rehearsal space downtown as well, where each player, under Jamie’s guidance, could figure out their parts. He gave them all CDs to listen to and gave everybody a week to create their parts, or at least get close enough for comfort. The musicians he hired were used to working this way, and they all complimented Jenny and Phil on the basic quality of the songs.
The overall estimate for the recording was between $600,000 and $750,000. Phil had no idea about what these kinds of things cost, so Jamie carefully took him through the breakdown of the budget, after which it all made perfect sense and was some very good learning for him. Phil then wrote a cheque right on the spot for $750,000 and Jamie deposited it at the Royal Bank in a business account he had opened the week before.
While they were waiting for the musicians to figure out their parts, they talked a lot about what Jenny wanted to do. The demos were good enough for her to find an agent/manager who would book some gigs for them at local clubs if that was the way she wanted to go.
They decided not to approach any record companies because Jamie knew that that cost of promoting a new act from scratch would take a couple of years at least to produce any real revenue. The best way would be to use social media to promote the record and sell it directly online. Jamie knew of several artists who had gone that route and quite successfully. The whole idea was to create demand through word of mouth, and then, when the album was mixed and pressed, to have a launch event and, depending on its success, it could turn into quite a profitable business.
Jamie knew the Toronto club scene very well and told them about a club on The Esplanade called Botticell, which is where the Fables did a three-night series of concerts on their last trip to Toronto. It was perfect for Jenny because, as a smaller concert venue, it would easily hold three hundred people. It was owned by three brothers, one of whom, Angelo Botticelli, was the founder of a successful local band called Eldorado. The younger of the three brothers, Lou was an Internet wizard who had managed to put Eldorado on the map after they had reformed and Angelo and his older brother Harry had bought the club with an inheritance they received after their father’s death. They had put the club’s machinery together along with another Italian guy named Rino Scarletti, who managed almost every aspect of the club’s business.
Jamie really liked the Botticelli brothers. They were straight-up guys, unlike a lot of the club owners the band had to deal with who were mostly just crooks or greedy bastards.
~ 7 ~
Jenny, Phil and Jamie arrived at Botticell at around three in the afternoon. They were greeted by Angelo, who showed them around the facility. There was a good-sized stage and the open area could either be arranged in a club or a small concert setting. Angelo got up on the stage with his guitar and played some chords and sang a bit of a song so they could hear the quality of the sound system.
Then they went up to the second floor, where they met the youngest brother, Lou, who took them through part of the process of getting the word out there and managing online sales. Lou was currently working for four different groups including his brother’s band, Eldorado.
Finally, Rino sat down with them and took them through the options for a single night performance. Phil had moved two million into his current account to cover whatever costs might be required to get Jenny’s singing career off to a good start. He wasn’t looking for any return on his investment, because, for him, at least, this was a labour of love. Not to mention a hell of a thrill to have his lyrics performed by a great singer like Jenny.
At the end of the conversation with Rino, he was looking at another hundred and forty thousand, which included the initial promotion and six months of follow-up promo and sales management by Lou, the hall for a night, two rehearsal days and the use of the Eldorados as a backup band.
Once this was done, and if it was successful, and Jenny wanted to do gigs around Toronto, Lou would find them a promoter and that’s when things could become profitable.
On the way out, they stopped into his older brother Harry’s office. Angelo introduced them, and told Phil that Harry was the lyricist for his band. Harry worked with the drummer in the band, Tony Taglia, who was an ex-Metro Homicide cop. They ran a small private investigation business. Harry told them that his younger brother Lou was actually an Internet genius and would help them sell a ton of albums. He had already done this for Eldorado and three other local artists who were now touring the country. Harry handed Phil a business card, which he slipped into his pocket.
It had been a hell of an afternoon and when they got into the car, Jenny could barely contain herself.
“These guys are the real deal, Jen.” Jamie said. They’ll take really good care of you.”
That evening Jenny and Phil went for a walk around Rosedale.
“Everything seems to be coming together.” Phil said “Are you ready for it all?”
“I don’t know.” Jenny replied. “Feels like a whole lot of stuff happening at once.”
“Yeah, but I think you’re in good hands.” Phil said, as he reached around and hugged Jenny.
“I guess we’ll find out soon enough.” Jenny said. It was obvious that she was nervous about all of this. Phil was too, but he wasn’t the one who had to get up there and sing the songs. Big difference. For him, it was only money, and from what he had heard so far, it would be money well spent.
Two weeks later, the musicians were ready, so Jamie booked the studio time. He and Jenny spent a few days laying down the base and rhythm tracks that they would use to guide Jenny’s vocals. Jenny played the songs with her acoustic guitar, but her voice was not miked. Once she had the guitar tracks in her earphones, she sang each song again the way she had sung it previously and it was recorded. This all went very smoothly, mainly because Jenny had sung the songs so many times already that she knew them by heart. She also knew the rises and falls that she wanted to include.
These tracks would guide the musicians as they added their parts, and then when everything was done, they would decide whether to do the vocals again and if they wanted to do any doubling or tripling of her voice in any places.
Over the next week, Jamie took over and the musicians laid down all the tracks. After that, it was a question of mixing. Jamie told Jenny that he would do the rough mixes with the engineer because he needed her to be objective when she heard them. He told them it would take the better part of a week and a half.
Phil suggested that they head out of town for while and drive around up north for a few days. Then when they got back they could go shopping for a wardrobe for Jenny.
Jenny had realized that her commitment to the music had become a full-time thing, and had explained it to Abby White, her agent at The Talent Group. But Jenny also told her she still had not decided on whether to perform or not, or just sell her music online. If that was the case, she would be available to do voice and music work. If she did decide to perform, well that would be another issue. Abby understood, especially when Jenny played a couple of the demos for her. She also told Jenny that she was very good friends with a lady named Sheri Langford, who was an agent/manager in the music business. Sheri was very well connected in the club scene in the greater Toronto area and she would be happy to introduce them once Jenny’s album was finished. She also advised Jenny to work on another ten or fifteen songs so that she could have enough material for a whole live show. Jenny told her that was already in the works and that her partner and lyricist was extremely prolific.
Phil picked Jenny up on Queen Street after her meeting with Sheri. She flopped down in the front seat. It was plain to see that she was exhausted. She told Phil all about her meeting and they both realized that they were kind of living in a dream world.
The next day they took off and headed north into cottage country. They drove almost all the way to Ottawa, staying in the nicest motels they could find. They talked about the future. They had no idea of what would happen once everything came together. Phil told her that it really didn’t matter. That it was all about the journey and that instead of worrying about what could happen, they should just sit back and enjoy the ride. Jenny was still undecided about performing, but that was mostly because she had never done it. She had never felt the rush of having a live audience in front of her and the energy they would give her.
“You’re driving this car, Jen. I will support any decision you want to make about your career. And it’s not like it’s do or die. We’re fortunate in that regard. The absolute worst case scenario is that it crashes and burns and we get to figure out a new game. It’s nowhere near the end of the world. But I’ll tell you right now, I don’t think that’s gonna happen. I think your choices are good better or best. Just don’t know what that means specifically. But I don’t really see any downside here. The material is solid. Your voice is great. You’re beautiful and smart and you have a whole machine behind you. All you have to do is be yourself.”
Jenny reached out and touched Phil’s cheek. “I am so glad I asked to sit down with you that day at Starbucks. In retrospect, that was the smartest decision I have ever made in my life.”
Phil just smiled. Because he knew that it wasn't just her life that had changed for the better.
~ 8 ~
Dinner in the big house was a rare event. Mainly because Phil’s parents were hardly ever home at dinnertime. In fact, neither of them even knew the first thing about cooking. So it was up to Phil to supply the food. He picked it all up at the Nanking Palace.
He and Jenny walked in the back door and were surprised to see that Phil’s mom, Julia, had actually set the table in the dining room.
Phil introduced them to Jenny and then unloaded all the food he had brought onto the side table. Everyone got the food they wanted and they all sat down. Phil opened a bottle of cabernet and filled everyone’s glass. And they all toasted the future.
As they started to eat, Phil explained what was going on and the various timings involved.
Phil’s dad, Jarret was impressed with the story. He was a dyed-in-the-wool capitalist and had always told Phil that you had to spend money to make money.
Jenny was a little bit afraid that meeting Phil’s high-powered parents would be intimidating, but as it turned out, they were anything but. It was obvious that they were very happy for both of them and wished them all the luck in the world.
Jenny did her best to answer all their questions about her background and her growing up on the east side. They asked her about how she came to realize she could sing, and Jenny was quick to thank her brother for that. He had, before he joined the band he was currently in, been Jenny’s mentor. He taught her how to play the guitar and not so much how to sing, but how to use her natural singing voice in the most effective ways possible. Her brother had recorded her singing a lot of Joni Mitchell songs, because he considered Joni Mitchell to be one of the finest singers of the whole modern era. She had a great vocal range and her basic voice that was very similar to Jenny’s. So Joni became Jenny’s role model for vocals. She listened to all her records endlessly and learned how to take her voice to different places to create different vocal effects.
But it wasn’t until she met Phil and realized that he was writing the kind lyrics that would let her sing that way that she started to believe she could be something in the music business.
Jenny’s story was charming and captivating, and both Phil’s parents were overjoyed that Phil had finally found something that he could totally immerse himself in.
“I can’t say we weren’t concerned about what you would decide to do with your life, Phillip.” his mom said. “But it seems to me that you have found it. We’re happy as long as it makes you happy.”
“It’s not the kind of thing I would have imagined for myself, until I met Jenny and she encouraged it.” Phil said. “I’d still be scribbling little bits and pieces in my notebooks.”
The rest of the dinner consisted of Phil’s dad explaining the ins and outs of corporate management, some talk about movies which his parents both liked and, of all things, the Toronto Raptors’ NBA basketball team. Evidently, Phil’s dad had been invited to join a group that was putting in an offer to buy the team.
“Your mother and I went to some of the games at the end of last season. I was amazed at just how popular a sport it is.” Jarret said. “I’m definitely considering buying in.”
Jenny ate her food very quietly and listened to these people talk about money as if it grew on trees. It didn’t make her feel uncomfortable. But it certainly did feel like they lived in another world that was pretty much light years from the world she grew up in. She supposed she would get used to it after a time, but right now it just felt pretty weird.
Phil and Jenny cleaned up all the dishes and got the dishwasher going. Then they said goodnight to Phil’s folks and headed out the back door. They decided to go for a drive, maybe head over to the Dairy Queen over on Broadview. They got their cones and sat down at a picnic bench overlooking the Don Valley and the endless stream of traffic, mostly heading north, from the Blue Jays baseball game at Skydome.
“Do you think your dad will actually become a Raptors owner?” Jenny asked.
“If there’s money to be made he will. He’s probably having an investment analysis done. But, yeah, if it’s profitable, he’ll do it.”
“I just find it all really strange. You’re so rich.”
“I can see how you would find that strange. I never really thought about it all that much. I guess when you grow up with it, you simply come to accept it and just try and have a normal life.”
“I have news for you, my dear. Spending almost a million dollars on your girlfriend’s career is anything but normal.”
“Well, it’s all relative, isn’t it?”
Jenny thought about that for a while and then said. “Yeah, I guess it is.”
“If this had cost five or six million, I probably would have thought twice about it. But we’re both getting something out of it. I can’t tell you how exciting it is to see the stuff I have been doing all my life, more or less for fun, actually turn into something wonderful.”
Jenny smiled. “Well, we’ll see how wonderful it turns out to be in a little while.”
“Yes we will and I, for one, have a really good feeling about it.”
~ 9 ~
There was quite a crowd in the studio when Jenny and Phil arrived to listen to the mixes that Jamie and the engineer, J.C. had done. All the players were there and a couple of girlfriends. Angelo Botticelli was also there because, after hearing one of the Eldorado albums, Jenny that the band would back her on her on her performance night.
What they heard that afternoon was magical. Jenny and Phil sat on one of the couches together and held hands. When the songs were done Jamie spun around in his chair and looked straight at Jenny. “Well, what do you think, sis?”
Jenny didn’t know what to say. The songs were beautiful. The arrangements suited each song perfectly. The dead silence in the room indicated that everyone was blown away.
“Ummm. I don’t know what to say, Jamie. It’s wonderful.”
Once she said that everybody in the room applauded. It was Jenny’s first audience and she was a big hit with them. She was a little embarrassed by the applause, but at the same time, she knew it was coming from people who understood music and if they thought it was great, that was a huge boost. Phil hugged her and whispered “Best million dollars I’ve ever spent.”, which made Jenny laugh out loud.
After that several bottles of wine were opened and everybody had a drink and chatted. Jenny and Phil thanked everybody personally. Before he left, Angelo asked Jenny to send a CD of the final mix and told her to call Lou to arrange to get going on the website that would be the retail store for her songs and her album. He suggested that she and Phil write bios for themselves that could be used on the site.
After everyone had left and there was only Phil, Jenny, Jamie and JC the engineer, Jamie said. “I want you to take it home and listen to it. If there’s anything you want to change or re-do, we can deal with it, but it will have to be soon, because I’m heading out at the end of the week.”
JC burned them a CD and off they went. The drive back up to Rosedale was quiet. They drove around until they had heard the whole CD again on the excellent sound system in Jamie’s car, so they got a pretty good feel for how it would sound on the radio if they ever got there.
“I don’t know about you, Jen, but I think your brother did a hell of a job with this. It’s simple, clean and beautiful to listen to.”
“Yeah, it is, isn’t it?”
“I guess the next step is to get over to Botticell with Lou and figure out what we need to do next.” Phil said. “I’ll call him and set something up for tomorrow or the next day. Then we can write our bios and start getting the songs out there.”
Jenny was leaning back in her seat staring out the front window.
Phil looked over at her. “You look really pooped.” he said.
Jenny took a deep breath. “Yeah. I’m also kind of mystified by all this. It’s pretty much as far from where I thought I would be as you can get. It all feels kind of unreal, you know.”
“Yeah, I do know. But it’s not. And for the next while at least this is gonna be what our lives are all about.” Phil said as they pulled into the driveway.
“I’ll get used to it.” Jenny said.
“I know you will,” Phil replied. “Just remember no matter what happens from here on out, this was something we did together and it was a good thing. We have absolutely no control over what the world does to it. But right here, right now, it’s a good thing and it will always be that.”
~ 10 ~
That night, Phil had a crazy dream that something had happened to Jenny. It was one of those crazy abstract dreams, but when he woke up he remembered it. In the dream, he was searching for her. She had mysteriously disappeared. It was worrisome, because in the dream, at least as far as he could recall, he didn’t find her.
When Phil was at U of T, he became friends with a guy named Arthur Briggs. Arthur majored in communication business and he was a real techno junkie. After breakfast that morning he called Arthur just to see how he was doing. Arthur had stayed on at U of T and was working on his Ph.D. in communications. They talked for quite a while and Arthur was impressed that Phil had finally found something worthwhile to do. Phil confessed to being a little paranoid about anything happening to Jenny and asked Arthur if there was some kind of software that he could use to keep track of where Jenny was.
“That’s usually the kind of stuff that jealous husbands use to keep track of where their wives are and vice versa.” Arthur said.
“I’m not worried about Jenny cheating on me. It’s just that if this works out the way we think it will, she’s gonna be in the public eye. I just want to make sure I can find her if, you know, something happens.”
“Okay, well there is a very good tracking software that can reside on your phone. It’s called Zebruski. It’s a subscription site. But it’s only ten bucks a month or something like that. Once you’re signed up, you just download the software to your phone, then open it up and add her phone number to the directory list. It will then track her phone through a GPS and give you the geographic coordinates of its location.
“It’s that simple?”
“Yeah.”
“What about range?” Phil asked.
“It’s satellite-based, so like anywhere on planet Earth.”
They talked some more. Arthur told him that he didn’t feel suited to the real world so he was gonna stay on at U of T and work toward a professorship. Phil knew Arthur pretty well and figured that was probably his best option. After a few minutes they signed off agreeing to stay in touch and Phil thanked him for his advice.
Once he was off the phone, he immediately went to the Zebruski site and signed up, downloaded the app and registered his number and Jenny’s. Almost immediately, geographic coordinates came up. They were both the same because Jenny was sitting out of the deck and he was in the bedroom, where he had moved his desk and computer after they converted his office to a music room. He decided not to tell Jenny what he had just done because he wasn’t sure what her reaction would be and he didn’t want to risk making her think he was trying to control her in any way. If he was being honest with himself he was only doing it for his own peace of mind. If Jenny and her music ended up getting genuinely popular, there was always the risk of some looney toon showing up.
Two days later they drove down to Botticell and met with Lou Botticelli. They also dropped off a final disk to Angelo who would share it with his band. They were a pretty smart bunch and would catch on quickly to the way they should be backing her up.
Lou was not alone in his office There was a beautiful dark-haired younger girl there whom he introduced as his sister, Cat. Cat would design the website for them and any other promotional material that might be needed. They gave Lou a CD with the final mixes on them and a flash drive with their bios.
Cat took some pictures of them that looked pretty good and told them she would substitute any pictures they wanted later on. Lou also showed them the rough draft of a release that they would send out to all the newspapers, TV stations and local music sites, along with a free invite to the album performance, which would probably be in about three weeks.
Cat told them that she would have the site roughed out with samples of the songs and a paywall for downloads in about a week. Once the site was up, Lou would start promoting it on all the social media sites, and pitch the album to all the retail sites available. Lou told Phil to open a separate account and let him know the location, so he could direct sales there.
After the concert, Lou would set up a live interview booth where he would record reactions on the album performance night and then add them to the site and use them for promotion. The performance night admission would be free and Lou would promote that online until he had 250 requests. That would leave plenty of room for the press and anyone they would want to personally invite.
Both Phil and Jenny were impressed with the plans Lou and Cat had laid out for them. Jenny said she would be happy to review anything Cat was done as soon as it was ready.
~ 11 ~
One of Jenny’s former roommates was a girl named Cathy Sutter. She worked in a downtown bar called Crystal’s. Crystal’s was owned by a sleaze-bag named Terry Warren. Warren had been questioned for various crimes over the year, mostly breaking and entering, but had never been arrested so he had no record, which would have been an impediment to obtaining a liquor license. He and Cathy had been fuck buddies for a few months now. One night Cathy told Warren about her ex-roommate, Jenny Stone and how she had met this really rich guy from Rosedale and he had completely financed her music career, and that she had recently moved in with him.
Warren took this all in and his lizard brain wondered how much this rich boyfriend would pay if his girlfriend were to be abducted.
Warren let that rattle around in his head for a while and one night, while he was drinking with his pal Silas Jencks, he brought up the idea. Unlike Warren, Jencks was a true bad guy with a pretty substantial record, mostly breaking and entering. and auto theft. He had served more years in jails and prison than he had spent as a free man. He listened carefully to Warren, and thought about it for a couple of days on his own. He reckoned the guy would pay at least a couple million to get his lady back. Half of that would pretty much set him up for a good long time in the island paradise of his choice.
So two men got together and started to figure out just how to go about kidnapping the girl. Since Jencks wasn’t really employed, he staked out the coach house and got a feeling for their routine. One of the things he noticed was that the girl like to run in the mornings.
One day he followed her and watched her cross the Glen Road bridge, then turn off on a side street which took her to a path that led down into the valley. The other thing he noticed was that she always did this in the mid-morning when there was no one else around. Jencks then went down to Crystals and he and Warren figured out a plan.
The abduction took place three days later on Monday morning. They parked along the street that Jenny ran down to get into the valley and onto the running path. They wore ski masks and jumped out of the car just as Jenny was approaching. She saw them, but was too close to turn and run the other way. Jencks grabbed her and Warren held her arms while Jencks put a cloth soaked in ether over her mouth which quickly knocked her out. They put a bag over her head, then locked her in the trunk of Warren’s car. The whole abduction took less than thirty seconds.
They drove the car to Jencks’ house, in a downtown area called Cabbagetown and carried Jenny down into the basement room and locked her in. The room had a pot in the corner, several bottles of water and a cot. They chained Jenny’s wrist to a shackle that was attached to the concrete wall. The chain was just long enough for her to reach the far side of the room. They then laid her down on the bed and removed the bag from her head. She was just starting to regain her consciousness. They took her phone from her jacket pocket and locked her in the room.
They went upstairs and used Jenny’s phone to call Phil. The call was short and to the point. “We have your girlfriend. You can have her back for two million in cash, small bills, and no cops. The proof that we have her is that we’re using her phone. This offer expires at 8 PM tonight. Call us back on this when you have the money and we will arrange an exchange.”
Phil was in shock for a few minutes. He thought through the situation. His first reaction was to play along. He was afraid to call the police. He thought about it and tried to calm himself down. Then he got an idea. He got out the card that Harry Botticelli had given him and called him.
Harry answered the phone.
“Harry, this is Phillip Winslow. We met a while ago when I came to the club with Jenny and Jamie Stone.”
“Oh sure, I remember. What can I do for you, Mr. Winslow?”
“Jenny has been abducted. I was just contacted by the kidnappers and they’re demanding two million dollars for her release.”
“Jesus. How did they contact you?”
“By phone. I know they have her because it was Jenny’s phone that they used to call me. She went out running this morning and she always takes it with her. Of course, they insisted I don’t call the police. So I thought of you.”
“Yeah, well I can see how the last thing you’d want is for this to go public.”
Right. But here’s the thing. I have a tracker and know exactly where her phone is located.”
“Well, that makes it a whole different ball game.”
“I’d like to hire you to go and get her back.”
“We can do that. But what would you want us to do about the kidnappers.”
“I don’t know. I haven’t really thought it through to that extent.”
“Let me talk to my partner. He’s an ex-cop. He may have some ideas. I understand the need to keep it quiet.”
Harry disconnected and turned to his partner, Tony Taglia who was an ex homicide detective and the drummer in Angelo’s band. Harry explained the situation to Tony who just kind of shrugged. “You say he knows the location where she’s being held. Get the location and we’ll see who’s there. Hopefully it’s just some typical lowlife we can scare the shit out of.”
Harry checked his computer. The coordinates were in a text from Phil. They translated them and found the street address. “The house belongs to a Silas Jencks.” Harry said.
Tony chuckled. “Hell, Harry. Everybody knows him. He’s been in and out of the clink for years. Kidnapping is a real step up for him, though. Probably scared shitless. Call the client back and tell him we’ll take care of it.”
Harry did that and he and Tony took off and headed up to the Cabbagetown address of Silas Jencks.
Silas was sitting in the kitchen drinking coffee when Tony and Harry kicked in his back door. Silas got to his feet and tried to make it out the front door but he wasn’t fast enough. Tony grabbed him by the collar and smashed his face into the wall, breaking his nose. He then shoved him down onto one of his kitchen chairs.
“Silas, you’re a fucking idiot.” Tony said.
Harry grabbed a filthy tea towel and tossed it at Jencks, who used it to staunch the nosebleed.
“Where is she Silas?” Tony said and slapped him reasonably hard across the cheek.
Harry picked up the phone that was sitting on the table next to Jencks’ coffee cup. He opened the phone to a picture of Jenny. He stuck it in front of Jencks’ face. “Her, Silas.”
Jencks reached into his pocket and pulled out a set of keys. “She’s downstairs.”
He handed the keys to Harry who went down into the basement. A few minutes later he came back with Jenny, none the worse for wear, who glared at Silas.
“Jenny,” This scumbag here is Silas Jencks, the guy who took you.”
“There were two of them.” Jenny said.
Tony turned to Jencks. “Well Silas, who was your partner on this? And don't make me smack you again. I’ll break your fucking jaw ”
“Warren. Terry Warren. He owns Crystal’s downtown.” Jencks said
“How did you find me so quickly?” Jenny asked
“Apparently through a tracker on Phil’s phone.”
“Phil put a tracker on my phone?”
“I don’t know. He just seemed to know where your phone was.”
“Why did he contact you instead of the police?”
“He told me you might not want to have to deal with all the legal shit involved with something like this.”
Jenny took the phone from Harry. She called Phil. “Hi hun. I’m OK. The guys you hired have one of the assholes sitting in front of me, with what looks like a broken nose. I’d really like to scratch his fucking eyes out.” She listened for a bit then said. “OK. I’ll see you soon.”
After she disconnected she said. “Phil says we should get this asshole to confess and record him. Then we’ll leave it with our lawyer. One of my former roommates works at Crystal’s. That’s probably how they found out about Phil and me. I don’t imagine she would have had anything to do with this.”
Silas Jencks was an idiot but he was smart enough to know when he had caught a break. So Jenny pulled up a chair and recorded his confession implicating Warren and himself in her abduction.”
“I’ll send you guys a copy so you can you can go and have a chat with Warren.”
A few minutes later, Phil arrived. He hugged Jenny and then thanked Harry and Tony for their quick response. He handed them his personal card. “Bill me whatever you think is fair.” he said. He glared at Jencks. “And you, you scumbag, consider yourself lucky.”
He and Jenny left by the front door. When Jenny got into the car she broke down. They sat there for quite a while holding each other. It was really all they could do.
“We can go to the police. Have these guys put away for a long time.” Phil said. “I just didn’t think you would want that right now. That’s why I thought about Harry.”
“No. I want to forget about this whole thing. If we have to go to court, it will take forever and it’ll be on our minds every day. I am a little miffed that you didn’t tell me you had a tracker on my phone, thothoughugh.”
Phil told her about the crazy dream. “I honestly didn’t think I would ever need it.”
“Well, it sure as hell came in handy this time.”
Phil started the car and they drove home.
~ 12 ~
Jenny went to bed early and slept till about two in the afternoon. When she got up, Phil was sitting at the computer. He was looking at houses. Jenny sat down beside him and asked him what he was doing.
“I’ve been thinking about having my own house for a while now.” Phil said. “And I just found a beautiful place down in the Beaches. It’s got a porch that looks out over the lake, and you can run on the boardwalk. It would probably be a lot safer than the damn valley.
Jenny looked at the house. It was quite beautiful. Nicely decorated and the view was fabulous.
“Are you sure you’re not overreacting?”
“Maybe just a little. But I’ve always liked it down there.”
“Okay, well let’s go check it out.”
Two days later they had put in a cash offer for $2.2 million and it was accepted immediately. The house was empty and had been professionally cleaned and tastefully repainted so they could move in anytime. They hired a mover who came the next day and moved all their stuff. Then for the next three days they went furniture shopping.
A week later the house was deemed to be liveable. Instead of building a recording room in the basement, they bought some eight-foot by four-foot fabric covered insulated office dividers and created their own recording space. After they tested it, they realized that the sound quality was just as good as a corked room. The house had four bedrooms, two of which they used for their offices, the third was a guest bedroom and they slept in the master at the front of the house. Later on, if they decided to have kids, well there were bedrooms enough for a family of four.
A few days later they drove down to Botticell and looked at the website that Cat had designed. Lou took them through the PR program he and Cat had created. All that was left to do was set a date for the concert and unleash Jenny on the city.
Angelo and Jenny decided on two days of rehearsal and set up a schedule to do that. This gave them a concert night date and allowed Lou to start sending the invitations and the free seat offers out through a number of local entertainment sites.
Three days later, Lou called Jenny and told her that he was getting great response from the press and the public seats were all filled. So she could do her rehearsals with the band anytime over the next five days. Day six would be the live concert.
That night they lay in bed together. Jenny was as nervous as Phil had ever seen her. He did what he could to try and calm her down but, in the end, he just let her burn herself out and finally fall asleep.
Phil got up and walked over to the window. The days had gotten cooler and the skies were grey. He thought about buying a snow blower and a shovel. He’d never had to deal with snow before. Whenever it snowed in Rosedale their driveway and their street were cleared lickety split. He thought about Jenny too, and the stress she must be feeling right about now. But he had faith in abundance. She would be just fine. They would be just fine. Everything would be just fine.
When the rehearsals started Phil dropped Jenny off at Botticell, and went back home. He wanted this to be between her and the band. Later that afternoon, he came to pick her up and she was flying. “These guys are so good, Phil. They got me. They got me in spades.”
Jenny went to the washroom and Phil walked over to Angelo who was sitting at the bar. “So what do you think?” Phil asked.
Angelo laughed. She’s a killer. Know exactly what she wants and makes it easy for us to give it to her. She’s really somethin’. It’s gonna be a hell of a show.”
Phil just smiled and slapped Angelo on the shoulder. “Thanks, man.” he said and caught up with Jenny as she headed for the door.
“What did Angelo say?”
“It’s all good, hon. It’s gonna be killer.”
~ 13 ~
They were sitting in a restaurant the locals called the Goof. Phil was having the liver and onions. Jenny was munching on a grilled cheese and fries. Tonight was the biggest night of Jenny’s life. Yet she wasn’t nervous. She had bonded with the guys in the Eldorado band and was confident that this would be a great night.
“You know what tonight is?” Jenny asked.
“No, other than a big night for you.”
“It’s exactly six months since we first met.”
“No kidding.”
“Yeah. My life is totally different as a result of meeting you.” Jenny said.
“I can pretty much say the same thing.”
“No matter what happens tonight I’m still gonna consider myself the luckiest girl in the world.
Phil just smiled. “Eat your grilled cheese, you’ll need your energy.”
~ Epilogue ~
The concert was a huge success. The songs were very well received. The word of mouth was excellent as were the reviews, and that helped kickstart the album’s sales. Lou goosed the SEO on the website, where he had placed three samplers of 30 seconds each, and album sales from all over North America began to come in.
Five weeks later, Jenny did another live performance with the elDorado band, only this time they filmed it and time released, one at a time, performance videos of each song. This was picked up by every major music site and music TV station and sales kept climbing. In the meantime, Jenny and Phil started demoing a new collection of songs, which they did five months later at Manta with the Eldorado band and Angelo producing.
Angelo took over as the manager of the project. His main job was turning down record companies. After the second album was launched Jenny and Phil signed with a major music publishing company, which created a whole new revenue stream.
Phil worked with Angelo to manage the business end of the project. After a year and a half, they had recouped the equivalent of four times his entire investment. They also turned down a number of offers from other artists to write songs for them, opting only to publish the songs that were written for Jenny.
It wasn’t like they needed the money.
The success that Jenny and Phil had achieved helped Botticell attract several artists in other areas of music. Lou developed variations on the marketing methodology he had been using all along and things kept on rolling.
From Jenny’s point of view, she liked the idea of just being able to hang around the house and work on songs with Phil, go for walks and runs on the boardwalk and basically just have a nice life, doing something she really loved.
Phil felt the same way, and realized that not for one minute did he have any regrets about the choices he made in his life. This was because he always kept a thought in the back of his mind. It was something that he read somewhere with Bob Dylan’s name attached to it.
“What’s money? A man is a success
if he gets up in the morning and
goes to bed at night and in between
does what he wants to do.”
FIN
The lyrics to Jenny and Phil’s first album, A Little Ray of Hope
A LITTLE RAY OF HOPE
There are times when I can feel you
Like an echo in my soul’s despair
Other times when I look hard for you
I can’t find anybody there
I’ve been chasing the ghost of lost love
For as long as I can recall
You’d think that would leave me with something
But there just ain’t nothin’ at all
We all make mistakes in this life
We all cross over that line
Sometimes they can be remedied
Other times they don’t work out so fine
I know I’m one of a million lost souls
Floating on a sea of regret
Searchin’ for a little ray of hope
But I ain’t found nothin’ yet
I don’t know where to look for you
Don’t even how to begin
It’s not like if I came knockin’
You’d even bother to let me in
They say confession is good for the soul
And I could use a little goodness right now
I’m not askin’ for a second chance.
Just a way to move forward somehow
We all make mistakes in this life
We all cross over that line
We lug around our weaknesses
You just happen to be mine
I know I’m one of a million lost souls
Drowning in a sea of regret
Prayin’ for a little ray of hope
But I ain’t found nothin’ yet
TRY A LITTLE LOVE INSTEAD
When the endless parade of insanity
Starts to eat away at your soul
When all the bad news makes you feel
You're staring down a deep dark hole
When the atmosphere is crowded
With the restless spirits of the dead
Then maybe you will find it's time
To try a little love instead
When your brain is tired of thinking
And your heart feels very small
When the world that you are living in
Doesn't feel like any world at all
When you're too close to believing
All the dark thoughts in your head
Then maybe you will find it's time
To try a little love instead
There are so many roads to happiness
So much pain that needs to be shed
And all you have to do is choose
To try a little love instead
No darkness lasts forever
No night more than twelve hours long
And the fever that's consuming you
Will only make you strong
Because you know life is worth living
And you're better than all you dread
If only you will find the time
To try a little love instead
GOINʼ DOWN SLOW
Goinʼ down slow
When the lights are low
It’s tellinʼ me way more
Than I need to know
But youʼre givinʼ me your love
Like you never loved before
Goinʼ down slow
When the lights are low
Rock me gently
Into the heart of the night
And even if youʼre lyinʼ to me
It makes me feel alright
So baby, donʼt stop lyinʼ
Till the morning light
Just rock me gently
Into the heart of the night
Goin’ down slow
When the lights are low…
You know when Iʼm dreaminʼ
Iʼm dreaminʼ dreams of you
Wakinʼ up beside you
Is like a dream come true
Baby, youʼre a surefire cure
For all my nighttime blues
So Iʼll just keep dreaminʼ
Dreaminʼ dreams of you
Goinʼ down slow
When the lights are …
I want to ride with you
To the end of the line
Cause baby when we’re together
You make me feel so fine
I tell you I could live like this
For two or three lifetimes
I want to ride with you
To the end of the line
IN THE NIGHT
In the night
You come runnin’ to me
A refugee from the neon rain
And you beg me
To make it right for you
To let my love smother your pain
In the night
You softly whisper my name
And the whisper turns into a scream
It’s not right
That you should do this to me
But I’m still the same fool I’ve always been
And the moon is glowing
Like some gold medallion
And the wind blows reckless and wild
As you climb into me
And take all that you see
And love is no longer
Something meek and mild...in the night
In the night
You give yourself to the world
And ask for nothing in return
And in your flight
I’m your refuge from the storm
The only fire that still burns
In the night
You softly whisper my name
And the whisper turns into a scream
It’s not right
That you should do this to me
But I’m still the same fool I’ve always been
And the black clouds roll
And the thunder sounds
And night creatures howl at my door
As you climb into me
And take all that you see
If I could I would give you more...in the night
SO MANY RULES IN THIS GAME
The story never seems to change
Like it was cast in stone
A different lover most every day
But you still live your life all alone
Your main obsession is just to be
The master of your own fate
Nothing will ever tame your heart
No love could be that great
But soon the night will come closin’ in
Like a thousand nights before
And the siren song that haunts your soul
Won’t be silent anymore
Cause life comes with no guarantees
That everything will work out right
The choices you make are the chances you take
And you take a new one every night
So many spirits in disarray
So many reasons to give up the fight
So many lies they smother you
So many shadows crowd out the light
So many words left unspoken
So many lovers in so much pain
So many promises broken in the dust
So many rules in this game
Love is just an illusion
A trick life likes to play
You'll be back on that runaway road
Long before the break of day
Chasin’ down your restless heart
A slave to the bell that tolls
Denyin’ yourself any chance at all
For love to make you whole
IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT
In the heat of the night
Love calls my name
Like a siren’s cry
Luring me to the flame
I don’t know what’s wrong anymore
I don’t care what’s right
Love’s a dream to me now
In the heat of the night
In the heat of the night
Love and hate are as one
They can haunt like the moon
They can burn like the sun
As the temperature rises
And you drift out of sight
I seek mercy from the darkness
In the heat of the night
In the heat of the night
Where no candles burn
No friends and no lovers
Wait for your return
And the lies you tell yourself
No longer make everything alright
I’ll be dreaming of lost love
In the heat of the night
In the heat of the night
Shadow memories fade
Embers turn to ashes
Just like the plans we made
And my only regret
Was never learning to love you right
It could have been a beautiful fire
In the heat of the night
SO MUCH OF ME IS YOU
I’m not sure
Of where it is I’m going
I’m not sure
Of very much in this life
And I’m not sure
There’s a lot of things
Worth knowing anymore
When all it brings
Is so much pain and strife
I’m not sure
If I’m doin’ the right thing
Tryin’ to live my life
By my own rules
But I admire
The way you stand beside me
Through all the storms
In spite of all the fools
And if there’s one thing
In my life that I’m sure of
One thing I can trust
To always see me through
It’s the love you give to me
The love you give unselfishly
Darlin’ it’s true
So much of me is you
I’m not sure
If you’ll love me tomorrow
I’ve learned that life
Can never be second-guessed
So we should make the most
Of all the time we have here
And take our share
Of all this happiness
I’m not sure
If I’m doin’ the right thing
Tryin’ to live my life
By my own rules
But I admire
The way you stand beside me
Through all the storms
In spite of all the fools
THE LOVERS WE USED TO BE
There’s a little bit of truth inside
Every little white lie
There’s a little bit of stay with me inside
Every last goodbye
There’s a little bit of I’m sorry inside
The words you scream at me
Cause there’s still a little love inside
The lovers we used to be
There’s a little bit of pleasure inside
All the heartache and the pain
There’s a little bit of sunshine hangin’ on
After all the rain
And try as I might I don’t believe
I can ever get free
‘Cause there’s still a little love inside
The lovers we used to be
Yeah, there’s still a little love inside
Some things cannot be denied
You can run but you cannot hide
From this reality
‘Cause there’s still a little love inside
Still a little love inside
Still a little love inside
The lovers we used to be
There’s still a lot of good reasons
For us to carry on
There’s still a whole lot of romance left
Between the darkness and the dawn
Between the warm heart and the heartache
There’s a lifetime of memories
And there’s still a little love inside
The lovers we used to be
TWO WRONGS
DON’T MAKE ANYTHING RIGHT
Well you were wrong
To say my love wasn’t enough
And you were wrong
To pull out when the goin’ got tough
And now I got nothing
But empty days and lonely nights
Cause two wrongs, baby
Don’t make anything right
You were wrong
Not to try as hard as you could
And you were wrong
To think that what we had was no good
Cause I loved you
Loved you with all my might
But two wrongs, baby
Don’t make anything right
Two wrongs
Don’t make anything right
All it makes is two sad hearts
Sleepin’ alone at night
I was sure we had a love
That burned so hot and bright
But two wrongs, baby
Don’t make anything right
I was wrong
For bein’ such lovesick fool
And I was wrong
For tryin’ too hard to love you
And now I know
But it’s 20/20 hindsight
That two wrongs, baby
Never make anything right
SOMEONE I ONCE KNEW
Someone I once knew
One day said to me
That I could never give my heart away
Or let love set me free
That I’d be doomed to live my life
As a solitary soul
Never sharing, never caring
Never feeling whole
Someone I once knew
Told me this would be my fate
And like a fool I never believed him
Until it was way too late
And now I live to regret
Ever having let him go
And I try to forget all the things that I
Was never supposed to know
Someone I once knew
Only a memory
Of all I could have had
Of all that love could be
And I know that I
Didn’t have to end up alone and blue
If only I had opened up my heart
To someone I once knew
They say it’s a lonely soul
Who never sees the signs
Who never lets their heart depart
From the path their head defines
There was a time so long ago
When I didn’t believe that was true
But that was before I broke the heart
Of someone I once knew
A story about the Botticelli Brothers is available here
https://jimmurraysstories.blogspot.com/2023/07/the-brothers-botticelli.html
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