Pete Castellan's Story

"Your manager, would that be that guy Lance back at the hall?" Pete queried, thinking back to the fraught looking man he'd seen talking to Rodger. The first clue obviously was that he'd been American, he'd had the appearance of being someone who had too much to deal with, but strangely Pete couldn't help but imagine he could see a vague family resemblance.

"Hmm, I can imagine that'd a two-sided coin." Pete nodded empathetically. All sorts of images about huge American families fighting over the TV and sitting down for opulent turkey dinners came to mind (something akin to National Lampoon's Christmas vacation), but he tried not to suppose that that's what it was like for Tabbi and her folks. "I'm not originally from around here, my wider family all live the other side of England in Essex. It's a healthy distance."

"From here?" Pete grinned, seeing how she was struggling to concieve the entirely different scale of land-mass in England compared to the US. "It'd take about three and a half hours in good traffic."

"Not really," Pete said, shaking his head, "I went on holiday to Toronto once, and it involved a transfer in...actually it was Chicago come to think of it!"

He played back what he'd just said and grimaced slightly at how it sounded. "Sorry....saying I stepped on America on my way to Canada...that's worse than saying I've never been at all right?"

"Actually I never left the airport." Pete said, blushing slightly. "But for what it's worth I did hear some very nice jazz piped over the departure lounge."

Pete smiled and laughed to himself. It was interesting talking to Tabbi about her home and her family. Even if she'd been the kind of artist who you saw in the magazines and on TV all the time, those were things you didn't really ever hear musicians talk about openly. No matter who you were, you had to have an image, an act, a facade that suited your music and pleased your fans. He knew Tabbi had one too; he'd seen the pictures on her site of her on stage and posing for marketing pictures, usually with a quixotic smile, eyes tilted to the sides, or else in a classic pose with a guitar digging into the strings, pouting slightly with her head turned away and lit from behind so you couldn't really see her features. All pretty standard stuff that he knew she'd probably had very little say in.

Happily, on this occassion, the real person behind all that was starting to seem rather more interesting and likeable than the poster image.

The assistant turned up with the two pasties, set them down and left. Pete identified which one was Tabbi's; which was also the larger of the two by some considerable measure.

"OK well, I hope it's good." he said, picking up his cutlery and cutting his open to let it cool a bit. "What's it like working with family then? You find it's easier to get things moving?"

"No not at all!" Pete intervened, "I just meant...well, family are usually easier to get hold of. You know how they work, they know how you work, hopefully you get along. And at least you know they actually care about your interests. Right?"

"Yeah, I hear that I suppose. What about when you're on the road though, that must be a chance to get away? And especially here when you're in another country right?"

"You don't say." Pete snorted in amusement at Tabbi's description of her big brother. "That must be hard. I have a little sister myself...I like to think I don't weigh down on her too much. We get on, but she's like fifteen, and it's a difficult age group for me to be around. Happily she doesn't take too much interest in my music, but she's super excited about coming to see the show tonight."

He took a bite then realised that warranted a further explanation.

"Oh yeah," he added, "the production company gave me a few free tickets for the first night, so I gave 'em to my sister to invite some of her friends. She might come looking for us after the show's finished."

Talking about sibling suddenly humanised Tabbi a whole lot. He realised that up until that point he's kind of seen her as some mythologised legend from the internet. Now, sitting across from him and without a guitar in her hands, she wasn't Tabbi the internet guitar hero, she was just Tabbi, someone's little sister and someone he was having a pleasant lunch with.