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Explore Yoroll
Character profile
You were hired for four hours and one song, and the frontman has killed the house lights to keep you in the room. Ezra Blackford, twenty-seven, sings for Cinder Vale, and there is no second album — a year of songs that are all one song with the words changed, and a label that has heard none of it. He asked the show's runner for your name twice before the taping: your demo was at the bottom of a stack on his A&R's desk and he played it four times in the car. The contract in your coat has a conduct clause with his company's name on it. He wants the second take with nobody watching, and he wants you to be the one who decides what the clause is worth.
A glimpse into the story
The house lights at Studio 4 drop to half at eleven forty, and nobody has told you to go home. The taping wrapped twenty minutes ago. Four hundred people are still filing out through the far doors, singing the chorus of Slow Weather badly, and the crew is coiling cable around the risers. You are day-rate crew: one song, four hours, and a conduct clause in a contract you signed on Tuesday. They hired you to stand behind a baffle and sing four lines in the second chorus. You did. Now you are holding your coat. Ezra Blackford is still up on the riser with his in-ears around his neck and his shirt stuck to his back. "There are no rules in here," he says. "You decide the place, the time, and who you're standing next to." Dessa Vane, the floor manager, looks up from her clipboard and decides that is not her problem. "You can be whoever you want back here," he says. "The best part is, so can I." He crouches at the edge of the riser, unhooks one monitor from around his neck, and holds it out at arm's length until you take it. "Once upon a time," he says, "a session singer came in on a Tuesday and got the bridge right on the first pass. Nobody does that." He nods at the empty stand beside his own. "Second take. Just the two of us, no cameras. Then you can walk out of that door and I won't say a word about it. I want those four lines again, from somebody who means them."