Backstage // Josh & Jake Kiszka

Part 1

This wasn't downtown Nashville. Your usual sort of week night small venue crowd. The type of people who stumbled in for a drink but hung back for the music. You could feel the vibration of this crowd. Their voices like a heart beat and their energy unlike anything you'd ever experienced in a dive bar.

This was transcendent. Their anticipation for what would come after you palpable in the air you breathed. But you played anyway, careful to draw in their response as they began to pay attention. Their eyes suddenly gravitating towards you. An eerie sort of shock on their faces as they listened.

They liked you. Their sparkles began to shimmer for you. Arms reaching for the sky. They screamed for you. The adrenaline coursing through your veins began to pump harder as you clutched the mic. Feeling your palm grow sweaty around it and your entire body rise into a place you'd never been before.

At first, you'd been completely blindsided when the call came. The years spent playing to twelve people in a room had slowly gathered traction and you were comfortable playing the sort of venues that you knew you could fill.

"They watched you guys play a couple of weeks ago, they want you on every North American date. Kaleo pulled out, The Daydreams are in!"

They watched us. They wanted us. You'd been unable to finish the call, letting your phone slip out of your hand as your managers voice trailed off into the ether. Already struck by the magnitude of it. Greta Van Fleet didn't put on shows, they shared spiritual experiences with crowds of thousands who had gathered to hear their musical sermons.

The thought of opening for them was intimidating to say the least. You could taste the lust, the gathering friction of the crescendo that would be four men standing right where you stood in that moment. It wasn't lost upon you. That mounting arousal. For the music, for the men who provided it. You were a sweet appetizer. But not as satisfying as the main course.

They cheered when you exited. Waving as you ran to the side of the stage, your mind still out there performing even as your body trawled the corridors towards the backstage area. It was cavernous. Not just a room in the back of a bar with one mirror shared between the four of you, but a selection of rooms dedicated to certain aspects of life on tour.

Massage therapists and chiropractors. Communal areas for friends and family to gather before the show started. Dressing rooms and wardrobe areas. Dedicated spaces for the opening band, too. It felt like a circus beneath fluorescent lighting. The transition from your life on the well established Nashville circuit was about to implode.

You didn't know it on that first home town show, either. That everything else was about to irrevocably shift. That the chaos was about to sweep you up into the eye of a storm you couldn't run from.

Josh had been the first to seek you out. Hours before the show was due to start, when your nerves almost piqued and got the better of you. You looked up from the book you were reading and was greeted by the most enigmatic smile. A set of glistening rhinestones curved around his cheekbones as they lifted, causing him to glimmer as he spoke.

"What you reading?" He asked casually, as if he hadn't meant to stop by but had been pulled in as you sat with your feet up on the dresser.

You immediately recoiled. Watching how he appeared to be amused by your reaction. He came to lean on the dresser in a pair of tailored silk pants that were so creamy white they perfectly reflected the dim light around the dresser mirror. Sitting snugly at his waist, he carried a jacket adorned with lace in his hand and laid it down next to your array of make-up brushes and collection of lotions and potions.

"Delta of Venus." You replied, admiring the cover before placing it down next to his costume.

You were alone in the dressing room. The echoes of your bandmates doing a last minute soundcheck for their instruments drifted in through the partially open door. Your instrument was on pre-show rest as you lubricated it with a glass of milk and honey.