Tenney Shares the Stage

Facing the Music

The next afternoon, Mason and Tenney find Logan locking his bike outside Dad’s music store, waving cheerfully as though nothing is wrong. Tenney can’t tell what that means, since her lyrics mostly listed everything about Logan that drives her crazy. Dad pokes his head around a rack of guitar strings and floats a few joke band names, Double Trouble, the Dangerous Duo, Partners in Crime, Twice as Nice, insisting he could go on for days, until Tenney turns pink and Mason, laughing, begs him to stop and heads to the storeroom to do his homework.

Tenney asks to work in the listening room instead of the low stage where they rehearsed last time, and Dad agrees. It is a small room with high ceilings and good acoustics, and Logan picks a guitar off the instrument wall so they can squeeze inside and warm up together, sending quick, silvery notes through the air. Tenney suggests starting with the new material, and Logan mentions, almost too casually, that he revised her lyrics. She stops playing, caught off guard, but not every line, he clarifies. Just the second verse, plus a couple of changed lines in the third. She knows real co-writing means letting him make changes she can’t predict, so she nods and lets it go.

They count off and launch into the intro, the shimmery ring of Logan’s guitar melting into the deeper, woodsier twang of hers. Tenney sings her verse first, the one accusing him of shrugging her off and always insisting on doing things his way, and Logan doesn’t flinch. When his verse comes, Tenney realizes with a gasp that he flipped her own harsh lines back around, accusing her of criticizing his every move and acting like she is better off on her own. It stings, but the songwriter in her admits his verse is clever and honest, a fair answer to what she wrote about him. She gives him a pointed stare once it registers what he’s done, then joins him on the chorus anyway, her voice growing stronger as his harmony wraps around it.

Afterward, they talk it through honestly. Logan admits that hearing her lyrics annoyed him at first, but that they also inspired him to get his own point of view into the song. Tenney worries her verse came out too harsh, but he reassures her it’s great and that he knew exactly what she meant. Something is still bothering him, though. He stares at his guitar and says he has a lot on his plate with his family, and when Tenney pushes gently, asking what kind of stuff, he shakes his head hard.

Finally, an edge creeps into Logan’s voice as he admits his mom needs him to take care of his little brother, Jude, almost every day now, on top of other jobs around the house. He insists he can still handle the band and asks Tenney not to mention it to Zane or Portia, since he doesn’t want them worrying whether he’s committed to the music instead of focusing on it. Tenney doesn’t love keeping secrets, but she promises to keep it between them, and Logan sounds relieved.

Wanting to move past the heavy moment, Logan riffs on the melody at the bridge, his fingers flying up and down the frets, reminding Tenney he’s every bit as good on guitar as he is on drums. It gives her an idea. They could both play guitar, swap who sings each verse, trade lines on a third, and let an electronic drumbeat handle percussion instead. Logan loves it, and Tenney has an even better idea, rewriting the final chorus around what actually works between them instead of what doesn’t.

They spend over two hours reworking the song, talking over each other and writing down ideas as fast as they come, laughing instead of arguing, running the last verse and chorus over and over until the harmony finally clicks. By the time Logan’s phone buzzes with a reminder and he checks the clock over his head, it’s 5:30 PM, and neither can remember a songwriting session this fun.

At the front of the store, Dad is chatting with Ellie Cale, Zane’s niece and a talent scout at Mockingbird Records who discovered Tenney playing at Dad’s shop and invited her to a showcase at the Bluebird Cafe. Zane sent her with news: Tenney and Logan have been requested for a gig at Riff’s, a private downtown club where big-name musicians unwind after their own shows. Even better, they’d open for Belle Starr, the singer they met last month at her mansion during the City Music Festival, who is taking a break from her world tour to try out new material for family and friends before heading back out on the road. Ellie promises Zane will explain what it all means when he joins their songwriting session at Portia’s house on Sunday.

While Dad peppers Ellie with questions, Logan whispers that this is incredible, but he has to go, then slips out before Tenney can respond. She hurries after him and catches him unlocking his bike, blurting out that Portia was right that they make each other better. Logan agrees, calling them a good team as he rolls his bike out of the rack. When Tenney says she can’t wait to play their song for Zane and Portia, Logan grins, calling her “partner” as he pedals off.