The Juliette Portrait
A/N This is… by way of an experiment. Bringing a different angle to delve inside a key Nashville character. It is also a personal distraction, while the Rayna story I am working on meshes itself together properly. In what we must still consider as the real world, 'Boys and Buses' was written by Shane McAnally, Brandy Clark and Josh Osborne and is genuinely one of my favourite songs from the series. All characters here are as fictional as Hayden portraying Juliette, playing Patsy Cline in an Oscar nominated performance. Thanks for clicking through.
Shit, Tennessee was hot. The mercury not at stratospheric levels, but the airlessness clung to you. It didn't help that I was decked in utilitarian denim, never went out of fashion, never went into fashion and had been carrying a heavy kit bag for a couple of hours. No-one was going to get to smirk at my peppermint stick legs. Every building worth the name had air con racing, a size 10 carbon footprint across the city, and I mean UK size, you can add on a point or two over here. In my experience these units tended to turn the small zone around them into an icebox while the other side of the room sweltered. Which was why as I sat in the Highway 65 reception, I had goose bumps below my tee.
The leather couch crinkled below me, on the wall opposite a collection of gold and platinum discs, Jaymes, Lexington, Barnes, Exes, Scott, Jaymes Jnr. Follow the line left to right and it told a story. How the younger Jaymes quickly outpaced the elder, who's presentation discs all too soon only commemorated archived live performances and outtake collections. On the wall behind me hung a sumptuous painting of a red headed country star, smiling on the Opry stage. Rayna Jaymes literally cast a shadow over the business she had created. Checking the name plates of the other artists on the wall of fame, Lexington's name cropped up at regular intervals but there was a large gap in the presence of Barnes, between 'Thicker Than Water' and 'Telescope' her greatest hits cash in package. Hopefully that was about to change. Juliette Barnes was recording again, and somehow I'd got the gig to take the album cover shot.
Her manager had stumbled upon my work on line and when the first email landed I was certain it was a scam. It wasn't until I had the airline tickets (economy, the man wasn't that stupid) that I really believed he meant it when he had told me 'I want something different for the record. No preconceptions.' Tricky, everyone had preconceptions about Juliette Barnes, so being a muso at heart I plugged myself into her back catalogue, steadfastly ignoring the Twitter feed and Instagram noise. My plan of campaign was I felt, to unpeel my subject through her music.
I had drained my Coke when a door opened at one end of the lobby, Emily, the PA who had greeted me on arrival, half an hour ago re-emerged. "We're ready for you now." Barnes was slipping an iPhone back into her bag, Jet black long sleeved top, ¾ zipped, silver sparkles glinting all over, her hair cut shorter, and tight leather trou….pants decanting into cowgirl boots. Shit, she was hot.
"Good Morning. I'm here for the photoshoot"
"Hi. So love the accent, you really are a Limey," she laughed. "You do not want to know what happened the last time this this label took on a Brit to do publicity."
I 100% did, but there was no way she was going to spill.
The room given over to us was chic, plenty of wood and glass, more classy than I had expected, and it suited of my subject's outfit perfectly. Emily departed.
"So how do you want me?" Crouching down over my kit, I pushed the million and one glib responses to that one into the back of my brain. "Just be natural." I mumbled.
"Great, now I'm going to overthink every move I make."
I fired up the Cannon, flicked down an extra stop and cracked off 3 shoots of her head and torso, before she knew what hit her.
"Test pictures right? I mean don't you have to check for light and stuff?" Juliette asked as I examined my handiwork. It was my turn to smile.
"Nah, that's overrated." I replied, "There is a little gizmo inside the camera that works all that out for you. If I worry about exposure all the time I'm going miss the moment you flash that million dollar smile."
The look she gave me wasn't exactly a smile but almost as priceless, click.
"Ahgh, I hate Glenn sometimes. I knew you were not a proper fashion photographer, half of the pictures on your web site are outside stuff."
She had me there. "I will admit I prefer outdoor assignments."
"How come?"
"Because a landscape doesn't tend to ask stupid questions." Pout, click, yes, Parallel Lines eat your heart out.
"It doesn't have to listen to your garbage either."
"That's never stopped me talking to it though." I circled my pray, "look over your left shoulder for me." Click.
"Getting the shot out of my head and into the camera can be a long process," I continued, "I end up literally asking the wind to die down, or a shadow move a bit to the left. In the end I either get what I want or what the scenery will let me have. I find it cathartic realising when I can't always be in control."
She was silent, her eyes flicked up and to the side, accessing a memory, I had her thinking, but at the expense of a decent facial expression.
"Someone once taught me to step back, shut my eyes, count like an elementary kid and reassess. And guess what?"
"It gave you an uncanny sense of calm and inner purity?"
"When I opened my eyes again, nine time out of ten I was still looking at an asshole."
I held my hands out, open to the side, the Cannon dangling from my neck, all I was missing was the Hawaiian shirt to completely fit that role. Luckily that item of my apparel was now stuffed at the bottom of my suitcase with the rest of my dirty laundry.
"What you got then, hot shot?" she asked, taking a swig of bottled water and the time to fine tune her already peach perfect lips.
I scrolled back through the thumbnails, pausing where I thought I'd done OK.
"I'm not even in the full frame, can't you shoot on target?" Obviously she knew that was kind of the point, give the impression of dynamics. "This cover had better not kill the record, I do not need to deal with another 'Grateful.'"
At last, a chance for me to casually drop into the mix my knowledge of her catalogue, "Well I think you sing pretty good Gospel, but then I'm hardly the target market."
"That was my problem, there was no target market, no-one expects tweenyboppers to grow up."
At this point I should have suggested that having your alt-rock, on-off boyfriend, slash husband, slash babyfather produce your first full on Gospel album was not the smartest move; but I wanted to live to see tomorrow. As every magazine exclusive testified, somehow she and Avery Barkley had beaten the roulette wheel and were very much still an item.
"Yeah, it's as if no-one remembers you previously cut 'For Your Glory,'" I replied. This time I really had won a point, just another zillion to go to make par.
"Hey Deacon, take a look at these will ya." She yelled across the corridor. Deacon Clayborne and me, in the same room, oh yes. Days could sometimes turn sweet. He peered down at the small screen on the back of the Cannon, pulled out his glasses and looked again. This man who's named appeared in the credits of many albums in my collection, who was one of the reasons why I dreamed of being a guitar player, but knew I never could, was now hunched over my DSLR. I wanted an hour, good light, a Roli and some old fashioned film with him. Deacon Clayborne was the personification of analogue. Give me just that one hour and I could have shown Barnesicle what can be achieved by tackling portraiture as if it were a landscape. He gave a faint nod of approval, then remembered himself.
"I'm sorry, I've never understood what it is that makes an art director pick a sleeve, but for what its's worth I like them, a lot. Nice meeting you." He shook my hand with all the power and control that stroked his guitar strings, and certain country music ladies."
"What next then." Juliette's voice brought me back into the room and she laid the phone she had been toying with again back on the side.
"By the door," I suggested, knowing I could get a partial reflection in the glass wall. "You're making a musical comeback, so let's try you coming into the room." Juliette groaned in despair. I may have been walking a tightrope across Niagara Falls, but truth be told I was enjoying the ride. Not being part of Juliette Barnes' outer orbit, let alone her inner circle, yet still being granted up close and personal access to her meant I had nothing much to loose from this experience. Even if Glenn Goodman sanctioned my work for the cover art, the lady herself could I knew, easily wake up one morning and demand something completely different by that lunchtime. And get it. I checked my last few frames and what I saw did not match my expectations. All the elements for a great picture were in place, but the sum of the parts just did not add up. Then miracle of miracles, her phone buzzed. She glanced down and to the side and her eyes caught fire as she clocked the ident. Click.
"Sorry, I've got to take this." She was out the room burbling "Hello Sweetpea," while I light as air, was shaking like a leaf in a tornado. I pulled up the last image…. YES… the money shot, got it! When she came back from the call I fired off a few more for the show of it, but really I was going through the motions.
My time with country greatness was closing fast. With the protective icon of my camera body stashed back in its bag I was condemned to being mortal, and star struck again. I pulled out something from a side pocket. "One last thing," I said, "Would you mind signing this."
"Sure, It's not for you, it's for a friend, I know."
"Actually it is for me." I handed her the CD single case and she looked down.
"What? You are kidding me, 'Boys and Buses.' Your twelve year old niece, should you even have one, would tell you that song's juvenile crap."
"That song," I responded hotly, before my brain could interject between my heart and mouth, "is near perfect country-pop crossover. It puts a smile on my face every time I hear it."
She looked ceiling-wards, "Oh, God he really means it. Just consider yourself lucky you never had to sing the albatross 27 nights in a row on tour. 'Dirt.' Yeah, I totally get how that crossed over, that's why we wrote it, but 'Buses,' you're just freaky."
"You've become too close to appreciate the song's candy coloured beauty." The face she pulled suggested she thought I'd completely lost the plot and even the first draft script. "Want to know why?" I challenged.
"Go on then," she sighed, "tell me what the CMA committee missed."
"She handed me a pink Kleenex," I quoted, "And I'll never forget what she said next."
Juliette's mouth dropped. "I wrote that line," she said softly. My turn to be stunned. "Glenn got me a co-writing credit as part of the deal to record the song and me being stupid ol' me thought that actually meant something."
"Best couplet in the song."
"Why thank you, the original was pretty awful."
"Which was?"
She screwed up her face in remembrance, "She handed me a box of tissues, said my girl you got issues."
"Well I can see why you changed it, how did you get away with that?"
"Simple, I deliberately screwed up every take until they let me try my own line."
"Way to go."
"So for you, yes I will sign." She handed it back to me with a wink. "And if one word of what I told you ever gets out, I'll sue you're sorry ass to Tallahassee and back."
"Yes Ma'am."