by Leah Johnson
Well, I refuse to be silent anymore. I refuse to let someone make me feel guilty for wanting to be treated with respect.
I didn’t do it for Imani, obviously, but hearing her say that feels good. Great, even.
I hold out my pinky and go with the most sacred promise there is. “Friends forever?”
She looks at my hand between our faces for a second, and I’m worried she might not take my promise for what it is after how many I’ve managed to break lately. When she smiles and links her pinky with mine, it feels like I’m lit up from the inside out.
“Deal,” she says. She kisses her thumb and I kiss mine, and I know that no matter what, this is a relationship I’m never going to stop working for.
“Ladies!” Peter jogs up and immediately cuts our heartfelt moment short as he stops to put his hands on his knees. He’s out of breath like he ran all the way here from the Core. “I’m glad you’re both here.”
“You asked us to be, Peter,” Imani responds, unimpressed as ever.
“Good point.” He straightens up then and presses his lips together in a thin line. Peter is solemn as he paces in front of us. His usual backward Oakland A’s cap is in his hands, and he twists it around nervously. This is such a far cry from his usual look that I’m a little scared by what he might say next.
“Imani, I owe you an apology,” he says seriously. It’s the first time I’ve seen that expression on his face all weekend, and it throws me just a bit.
Imani slaps her hand over her face and groans. “Peter, we. Weren’t. Together. You don’t owe me anything. You can kiss whoever you want.”
“No, no, that’s not what I mean.” He shakes his head. “And we didn’t kiss! But. Okay, never mind. That’s not the point. The point is, I snapped at you last night, and I shouldn’t have. I wanted you to be into me like I was into you just because you were, like, nice to me, and then lashed out when you weren’t. It was a dick thing to do.”
For a second, her lips hang open and no words come out. I think she might need a system reboot.
“Imani?” I nudge her slightly.
“Yeah.” She shakes her head. “Sorry, um. Thank you. For, um, saying that. I’m not used to … This is a lot of apologies today. So. Thank you. It’s okay.”
Peter beams and immediately throws his arms open for a hug. “Permission to approach the bench, you honor?”
Imani rolls her eyes but quirks up the corner of one of her lips. “Permission granted, you overgrown child.”
Peter envelops her in a huge hug and lifts her off the ground. Imani’s face goes a little red at all the affection, but she pats him on the back before he sets her back down on the ground.
“Now, look. I need both of you to come with me immediately. There is some very serious business that needs attending to, and your collective presence is required.”
He pulls his hat on backward and does a two-finger point in our direction. Imani trudges after him, looking like someone is pulling her by the teeth. I laugh, and she shoots me a dirty look that quickly morphs into a smile of her own. It’s not open arms, but it’s something. I’ll take it for now.
I realize that as much as I like Toni, as much as I wish things between us could work out, I don’t have to be with her. I don’t need to be on the receiving end of her attention to feel whole. Not anymore. From now on, I’m going to fight to be Olivia Brooks, in all her flawed glory, and have that be enough. I have a long way to go, and I have a lot of repairs to make, but right here is a good place to start.
SUNDAY NIGHT
I am big enough to admit that I would’ve used just about any excuse to text Olivia, but telling her we won the Golden Apple is a pretty good one. She doesn’t respond for a full two hours, and when she does, my heart sinks. The message is so short and clinical, it reads like a goodbye.
It was always your show anyway. You’ll be great. Good luck.
I try not to think too much about it or let it dissuade me. It’s a little succinct in a way Olivia rarely is, but that doesn’t mean there’s no hope of this plan working out. That doesn’t mean everything that happened before my misguided breakup maneuver this morning triggered the worst possible course of events. Now all I can do is hope things go off as planned.
When Peter takes off to meet Olivia and Imani, I head to the main stage for a brief rehearsal and sound check. When I arrive backstage for rehearsal a few hours before the set, Teela is the first one to greet me.
“You must be Toni!” She smiles, and if I could melt into my boots right here, I would. I’m reminded that all the rumors are true: She’s just as gorgeous in person as she is on TV. She’s shaved her usual jet-black hair down to a buzz and dyed it blond and she’s wearing a faux-leather go-go dress. Olivia would love it. “I’m looking forward to playing with you for real tonight.”
I mumble a thank-you, but I’m interrupted by a tech guy who runs out a beautiful gold Epiphone Les Paul Standard. Teela smiles at him kindly, eyes crinkling at the corners, and explains that she needs the Epiphone Les Paul Special instead.
“We’re down a guitar tech right now, so things are a little wonky,” she explains when he rushes away, apologizing all the while. “And people keep believing this ridiculous rumor that I’m pregnant and we’re going on hiatus, so finding a replacement has been a mess.” She shakes her head and adjusts her in-ear. Her eye catches on my battered case on the ground next to me. I’m almost self-conscious about how worn and bruised it looks until she says, “I had a friend with a case just like that. He had this thing about remembering every show and every city. ”
Her eyes go kind of soft and sad, and I make the connection for her.
“This was my dad’s guitar case,” I say. I try to keep my voice steady. “Jackson Foster.”
Her mouth drops open, and I can see as she pieces the puzzle of everything together.
“Toni … You’re Jackson’s Toni.” She presses both hands against her cheeks and shakes her head. “Davey’s gonna get a kick out of this.”
My mom isn’t going to believe the odds, that somehow both me and my dad ended up in this same incredible, impossible position nearly two decades apart, both on the precipice of the rest of our lives. It feels like a sign. My mom found what she loved, made a career of it, and never once left me to wonder how much I meant to her. Maybe I could be more than a collection plate full of my parents’ anxieties. Maybe I could find a way to love wholly, and fiercely, without having to settle for one or the other.
“If you guys are looking for a guitar tech,” I say as the kick drum sounds loud and brash on stage behind us. It feels like it matches the way my heart is beating. “I have some experience.” I shrug. “It’s practically in my blood.”
She purses her lips, and waves over a woman nearby. She marches toward us with a headset on, face flushed and skin dewy from the humidity. Her hair is falling out of its low ponytail, and her all-black outfit is sweat-stained around her neck and under her arms. I know immediately that this is the woman who runs things around here.
“Toni, this is Meredith, our production manager.” She gestures to me. “Mere, Toni is a whiz with guitars. Jackson’s daughter. You think we have room for her on the European leg?”
The conversation is rushed, but clear. Meredith tells me to call her the next morning, and instructs me to find my passport.
“Teela,” I say, after Meredith leaves to chase down their sound tech. Teela smiles encouragingly and I try to swallow down my nerves. This is a big ask, and definitely a risk, but I have to do it. “Would you mind if we didn’t play a Kittredge song together tonight? There’s something really … important to me I really want to try.”
She puts her hands on her hips and shakes her head, but she never loses the smile.
“One of those Truths, huh?” she asks, repeating my dad’s words like it’s the most natural thing in the world. “You’re a lot like your dad, you know.”
And for once, the thought of being like my dad isn’t terrifying. It
feels like a compliment.
“I’d be honored,” she adds.
There’s so much still up in the air, more things left to figure out than I can count. But this moment is something. Taking this chance? Might just be everything.
Whatever plan I was looking for this weekend, I think I finally found it.
The rehearsal feels like it ends before I even realize what we’ve done, everything is so surreal. We play through the song a few times, another crew person walks me through my cues, and before I know it, it’s time for the show to begin. The normally huge crowd at the last show of the weekend is a little smaller than usual, but still massive. I watch as people file in until the grass seems to be covered in Farmers for miles. When the show starts, the sheer volume of their shouts alone fills the entire place like there are closer to a million people than tens of thousands.
The stand-in guitar tech from earlier accidentally bumps into me on his way to run Davey’s black-and-white left-handed Strat out to him on stage, and whispers an apology as he goes. The crew is busy making sure the show runs smoothly, the scale of the production bigger than anyone expected now that there are so many artists and bands to consider. I look to my left and see Bonnie Harrison leaning against a support beam and sipping a bottle of water and I think I might throw up a little. How often do you get to stand next to your idols? Perform on the same stage as them? The thought of it gives me such a head rush I wonder if anyone would notice me lying down just for a second as I collected myself.
In front of me, I watch Davey command the audience like he was born to do it. His long red hair flies around his face as he speaks between songs. The set only started fifteen minutes ago, but it already feels like they’ve been out there for hours.
Kittredge was barely through their first song, “More Than Ruins,” before two people in VIP were crowd-surfing to the metal barrier at the front of the stage. There are so many homemade signs and totems that you can barely see through to the back of the crowd. People with tapestries hastily painted with FARMLAND IS FOREVER and THIS IS STILL OUR HOME on them wave their offerings high above their heads, a message they refuse to allow anyone to miss.
But it’s the cacophony that never quite stops—while they sing, in between songs—that makes this different from any Farmland set I’ve ever been to. The constant roar of the mass of people in the audience shakes the ground and makes the hairs on my arm stand up. It’s boisterous and unapologetic and unafraid. It’s the most beautiful sound I’ve ever heard.
“You know”—Davey grips the mic with one hand and wraps the other around the neck of the guitar he’s just pulled on—“there are a lot of people who don’t think we should be here tonight.” His voice booms out over the crowd, amplified even more than usual to overcome the sound of the rain now pouring down around us. “People who think that Farmland can be derailed by fear.”
Everyone in the crowd erupts at that. The sound is thunderous, immovable. These people refuse to be scared into submission. I understand the Farmers who took off earlier this afternoon, who figured they should be better safe than sorry, but there’s something about the audience in front of the stage that makes even the threat of nightmare worth this corner of the dream.
Sonny Blue is coming out to join them for a few songs later since their set the night before was canceled, and after that, the lead singer from Odd Ones is doing a cover of a Queen song with Davey, and then Pop Top is doing a brand-new single from her upcoming album, and even DJ Louddoc will be involved to put a house music spin on some of Kittredge’s folksier songs. All of the biggest acts of the weekend are rallying together tonight in the spirit of Farmland.
“There are people who think we will be silent and scared,” he continues, each line met with more cheers. “But those people don’t know Farmland like I know Farmland. Those people don’t understand the Farmer Code.”
His voices cracks with emotion and it ripples through all of us like a flood. This Farmland may have scared us in a way none has before, but this place, what it means, can’t be stolen from us.
“Out here, we look out for one another. This is a family.”
This place has never been without its problems, but despite it all, it’s always been a home to me. These people are my people. Farmland has always changed my priorities. On the grounds, I’ve been able to lower my defenses and allow myself to feel all the things I’m too afraid to feel otherwise.
It’s that openness that made space for Olivia, and I’ll never stop being grateful for it.
Davey explains that on the screens next to the stage there is a number that people can text to donate money to the Newtown Action Alliance, the charity founded in the wake of the Sandy Hook shooting. The entire time I was working on my song in the bus earlier, this is what the band was working out, and to see it set in motion is incredible.
I’m filled with a whole different set of nerves. I can still feel the sticky dampness that accompanies humidity and rain even after you’ve dried off, but I warm at the thought of what’s to come. Even if Olivia doesn’t want me back after this or doesn’t want to give us a real shot, at least I’ll have tried. I can live with the heartbreak if she doesn’t want to give it one more go. Hell, maybe she won’t be in the audience at all. But I have to do this.
For the first time in my life, I’m going to place my heart in someone else’s hands and trust them to hold it with care. And if she’s willing, I’m going to do the same in return.
“Miss Jackson?” One of the crew guys taps me on my shoulder and smiles. He holds up a pair of in-ears and gestures to my waistband before I give him a smile as a go-ahead.
He’s a little jittery, his shaggy dishwater-blond hair disheveled as he reaches out to help me attach my wireless receiver to the back of my jeans, and I can tell he’s new to the team. If my dad were here, I know he would’ve gone out of his way to make this kid feel seen.
When my in-ears are in and I’ve pulled the strap of my guitar securely over my head, careful not to dislodge my hat, I do some quick stretches. Nothing dramatic, since it’s not like I’ll be playing an entire show, jumping off the drummer’s raised platform and doing standing backflips like Davey sometimes does, but enough to get my blood pumping.
“You’re on next, Miss Jackson,” the guy says, ducking in close so I can hear him over the calamity on stage. Teela is belting the chorus of one of their oldest songs, “If I Ever Leave This Place,” a song about mortality and fate and fighting for what you believe in, and the band is gearing up for the breakdown. It’s loud and chaotic and somehow perfectly contained. It’s one of Kittredge’s statement pieces. It hits different tonight.
I turn to the guy. “What’s your name?”
“Deacon!” he shouts back. “This is my first time out with the band. I just came over from Megan Thee Stallion’s tour. This is … different.”
I laugh. I bet it is.
“I’m Toni.” I hold my hand out and he shakes it quickly.
I pause for a second to think about how I want to introduce myself to him. Tonight, I’m on stage with the band, but that’s not the role I expected to play. It’s not even the role I’m sure I want past tonight.
I’m waiting in the wings for this band that I’ve grown up both resenting for taking my dad from me for so much of the year and admiring for being so undeniably, obnoxiously good. The truth is, I’ve been waiting in the wings for a long time.
In a week, I could be crewing for Kittredge halfway across the world, doing this, feeling this every night. Or I could be sitting in a classroom in Bloomington, going over syllabi for classes I don’t care about and wondering why my roommate’s socks make our dorm smell like expired pimento loaf. The question has never been Where do I want to be? so much as it is What do I want my life to look like?
I know now that I didn’t need to perform on this stage to find the clarity my dad found here. In six months, a year, five years, what’s going to matter to me is feeling as connected to another person, a mass of peop
le, the way I have this weekend.
I remember my dad telling me once where they got the name Farmland Music and Arts Festival from. The whole lot used to be pure North Georgian farmland. To look at it now, the way it’s covered entirely in metal stages and rental RVs and big neon lights, you wouldn’t assume that it was at one point the south’s leading purveyor of organic apple trees and GMO-free honey. You can become so good at being one thing, and then, by miracle or magic or capitalism, become something else entirely. Something no one would have expected.
Olivia was right: The answer was right there, at the tip of my fingertips, waiting for me all along. Wanting to pursue music in some way doesn’t make me as inconsistent as my father any more than going to IU would make me stable like my mother. There is a middle ground, one that I didn’t even think to explore, and that middle ground is me.
“I think I’ll be with you guys for the next leg of the tour.” His eyes widen in question. I add, “Backline.”
Deacon nods and says he’ll see me in Leeds before disappearing farther into the backstage area. Teela sings the final note of the song, and the crowd goes wild. It’s like the band isn’t holding anything back tonight. It’s hard to recognize a historical moment when you’re in the middle of one, but I can feel it now. This is a show that’s going to be remembered. A show that will one day go down as a Truth about the power of live music to guide us through whatever comes our way.
When it finally gets quiet enough for Davey to step back up to the mic, he’s breathless and sweat-soaked. This is it. I’m doing this. I’m going to do this. Oh my God, I can’t believe I’m doing this.
“We have a lot of special guests with us tonight. I hope you guys don’t mind,” Davey says, prompting another round of screams from the audience. They don’t even know who I am yet, but it doesn’t matter. It’s one of those nights. Everything is laced with electricity. “Right now, I want to introduce a talented new musician.” Suddenly I want to cry. Not in sadness, but relief. I made it, finally, to the place I’m supposed to be. “The incredible Toni Jackson!”
