2025-06-23 - Smile For The Camera

It's a beautiful summer morning here in the northern Great Lakes. A perfect day for recreation, to be sure, and even that rarest of things in these climes-- sunbathing. Those who've come here today for peace, quiet and a good laying-out have found an unexpected sort of company, for a good quarter of the rooftop deck has been roped off by security. That particular area isn't empty per se, but it's more sparsely inhabited than the rest.

Its denizens? A pair of casually-dressed young women with Macbooks set out on a table near one of the unlit firepits, and a trio of sun-kissed young men who look tan, fit and elegantly sloppy in old t-shirts, jeans, and assorted beaded and braided necklaces and bracelets. Presently, the three of them are larking around with a hackysack of all things, standing in a circle and talking trash as they strive to keep the soft little sack of beans aloft with toes, feet, knees, an occasional header... anything but their hands.

The sound of their laughter and delighted voices rings out over the rooftop.

Dodge has her camera slung over her shoulder as she makes her way up to the rooftop deck section that has been roped off. This wasn't technically for the park, although she'd made the case that the park benefitted from the exposure of her freelancing a gig from her old employer, Rolling Stone, to do an editorial shoot of a band with some hype behind it.

She lifts a hand and waves as she arrives, tightening her camera strap on her shoulder and taking in the setting, looking for the angles. "Hey there," she greets them all, no one in particular. "I'm Dodge, I'm here for the shoot."

The two girls from the record company look up, one of them reaching for her phone and tapping out a quick text-- letting someone know the photographer's arrived, surely....

But the band themselves seem to be in charge, relaxed and comfortable on the day. Redirecting the hackysack toward Jake, the slender bassist, with a dink off the side of his right-foot Samba, Brandon O' Donnell separates himself from his friends and bandmates to take a few easy steps toward Dodge. Hands in his pockets, for all of The Silvertones' buzz he looks the picture of the unassuming indie rocker.

"Hey," he says to her, pulling his right hand out and offering it up. "I'm Brandon." He squints a little, blue eyes curious. "Didn't you shoot us a few years ago? For that RS piece on The Last Promenade?"

"Hey Brandon," Dodge greets amiably, meeting the handshake with her own. She narrows her eyes, catching her lower lip under her teeth in contemplation. "Ah, yeah, that sounds familiar," she chirps. "I think I did. How've you been? Funny we both ended up here at Spellbound after all this time, right?" she supplies.

"So, this is mostly going to be candid, so you guys can just do what you were doing and I'll take some shots, then we'll do a posed group shot at the end," she directs, offering an easy wave to the two girls from the record company.

The question of how he's been gets a look exchanged behind Brandon-- Jake the bassist and Steve the drummer sharing a flat, ironic moment of resonance that threatens to erupt into snickers before they both get a hold of themselves. Innocent of his bandmates' shared snark, the singer and now lead-guitarist-by-default just smiles pleasantly. The last six months, at least, have been pretty good. The other guys might even be starting to realize it.

All Brandon says, at first, is a simple agreement. "Sounds good," he replies to her direction, waving off the record company girls-- who seem only too happy to dive into their phones. Hands back in his pockets, he half-turns toward his friends.

Then, over his shoulder, he pauses to fix Dodge with a little grin.

"We brought Ansel's twelve-string. You know, just in case his ghost wants to drop in."

Is he serious?! Well... maybe. It is Spellbound.

"Great," Dodge chirps, pulling her camera off her shoulder and popping off the lens cap, looking into the tiny digitized screen to adjust some of the settings and account for the ambient light.

"So how long are you guys in town?" she asks, directing the question to Jake and Steve while she performs these little housekeeping tasks, which only takes a few moments. Then she looks through the viewfinder and seems satisfied, and she maneuvers to a sidelong angle such that she can see all three of the bandmates' faces, and takes her first shot--more of a test shot than anything, really.

She looks down at the screen to review the shot, checking the composition and the lighting, and once again seems satisfied with what she sees. "Alright, I think we're ready to roll. At the risk of saying something you've heard a hundred times before: act natural."

“Long enough to do a little work,” Jake begins. “This shoot, a couple demos, maybe a little more—“

At that, he looks to Steve. The blonde, curly-haired drummer just grins a big ol’ grin and adds, “Yeah. Maybe a little more than the usual. Right, B?”

“Huh?” Brandon breaks away from acting natural to cast a curious look toward his friends just as the camera goes off. The result is a remarkably candid moment unexpectedly, the pop idol seemingly interrogating his friends.

“Someone toss me a football,” Brandon quips then, which gets the other guys laughing as he explains to Dodge, “It’s one of our things.”

For better or worse, Dodge has her camera up and is shooting when Brandon turns towards the other two, catching the candid moment and immortalizing it in film. (Well, in memory card. She's shooting digital today.)

"That's great," she encourages, looking at the screen to preview some of the photos before she's lifting her camera again and pointing it at the guys. She moves to a different vantage point, standing on one of the tables to get some downwards facing shots while the bandmates laugh.

"What are some of your other things?" she asks inquisitively, just to keep them talking, to keep the conversation going.

“Well,” Brandon starts—

“He’s got a big head,” Jake laughs, as the singer makes a face.

“He’s in looooove,“ Steve throws in, his best middle-school mockery thrown atop Jake’s jest.

For his part, Brandon swivels away and puts his hands up in a fake-defensive posture.

“Spare me,” he tells the guys dryly. “You just wish that you—“

“WE KNOW,” the rhythm section answers in unison before all three begin laughing together. The resulting camaraderie is likely a great look for the next set of shots.

The shutter clacks like a wooden fan as Dodge gets snaps of the camaraderie and playful banter between the bandmates. "Lucky lady," she chimes from behind the camera, making an assumption; Brandon gives straight guy energy. "How long have you two been together?"

"And have you guys met her yet?" she asks of Jake and Steve, adjusting something in the lens and moving to another angle.

'Straight guy energy' is a fair assessment of Brandon O'Donnell. Sure, he has plenty of boys among the three-million-odd Instagram followers of a singer famous more or less everywhere that speaks English besides... well, here in the USA... but there's never been a question of exactly which followers those charming smiles are donned for.

Plus, there was always Wendy Lockhart. ItsWendysWorld98 remains a popular music-industry follow. Now, though, there's Ruby St. James, about whom both Jake and Steve nod their heads in knowing reply to Dodge's question as Brandon smiles all too innocently.

"She's cool," says Jake.

"She's hot," ripostes Steve.

"She's great," agrees Brandon, splitting the difference. Then asking out loud, of both Dodge and his friends, he wonders, "Did any of you hear about that protest at the... well, whatever it was last night? Some kind of thing for influencers?"

"Derek wanted you to go," calls one of the record company girls, glancing up from her phone. "Why didn't you go?"

Glancing over toward their table, the singer tells the girl, "I was busy, Katie."

She doesn't seem to believe him, but he looks back to Dodge and says with a wry smile, "Anyway... I hear it was almost exciting."

A wry grin touches the corners of Dodge's mouth as the bandmates rattle back and forth and she captures a few more shots. From time to time she focuses on one of them specifically, and other times she zooms out and captures them as a group.

"It was almost exciting," she agrees with a low chuckle. "Some protestors got a little carried away, they had signs and everything. Kept screaming about a cult and a conspiracy of some kind, but security got them out of there pretty quickly. And dozens of people were filming everything, it's probably all over socials so, at the very least, they accomplished their objective if what they wanted was attention," she muses. "They sure got it..."

"That's all they ever want," Brandon grumbles as Dodge finishes her recap, prompting Jake to snicker, albeit kindly. The singer wanders over toward the balcony wall, an unimpeded view of the seemingly-limitless inland sea the locals call Lake Michigan both his reward-- as a view-- and the backdrop for a shot, as the others follow suit.

In unison, as if understanding innately how these things work, all three balance forward on their elbows to gaze out yearningly over the waters and toward the horizon. Keeping the banter going, Brandon asks the photographer, "Were you there, then? What were they protesting, anyway?"

Dodge smiles as the bandmates all balance forward on their elbows and look out over the water, getting sidelong shots from either side, and a few from behind them with the grand view of the lake laid out before the trio. They require very little instruction, so it's making her job a lot easier.

"Well, they were protesting the park, it seemed. They said it was dangerous, that Visions of Wonder," the parent company that owns the park and signs all their paychecks, "Is keeping secrets from everyone, that we're all in a cult, that things are being hidden from the world and that's what they wanted to draw attention to," Dodge relates as she shoots and the shudder click-clacks with every shot.

"It's not like the magic is really kept very secret, but I suppose there are things that the people up at the top don't tell the rest of us. That doesn't necessarily make it sinister, but--" and she shrugs. "I don't know. Not sure who they were, whether they were angry ex-employees or visitors or what."

Being photographed is old hat for these three, indeed. Odd, maybe, that they don't seem to acknowledge the whitespace that exists where Ansel might've lounged in the past, the lack of their gone-too-soon guitar virtuoso's often shy and withdrawn presence on the periphery of group shots almost easy to ignore.

Almost.

"I don't know," Brandon says, thoughtful now that he's heard the woman's story. Turning away from the Lake, he goes on, "I've seen some pretty weird shit here. Done some amazing things. Seen... ghosts."

Ansel.

"Been healed."

A beat passes, his lips pursed silently before Brandon continues:

"But there was that weird cloak-and-dagger shit. The guy who stalked me at the bar. Sent his spies to tail Ruby when she dove the wreck." He runs his hands through that mop of golden hair and asks, "Do you think they're wrong? I think there's a lot more going on than they tell us. A lot more."

"Do I think they're wrong that there are things VoW doesn't tell us? Absolutely not," Dodge admits, taking a moment to pause, lowering the camera and flipping through some of the shots on the device's tiny digital screen, scrolling to the settings and pushing a few button to adjust some more settings as the natural light has changed a little since they started.

"Do I think it's malicious in nature? I don't want to believe that, but I don't really know. I've been here for over a year and I've seen a lot of crazy things, too, but none of it ever led me to believe that the organization behind the park was up to something scummy or wrong. Secrecy doesn't always mean foul play," she supposes, but then again. "Although it does pretty often, that's true enough."

She sucks the back of her teeth and raises her camera again, getting in a few more shots. "I think we're just about good here," she announces.

“I don’t trust it,” Brandon replies, the words delivered in an easygoing, honest tone so redolent of his native Midwest. Neither the animus of the protesters nor the paranoia of a conspiracy theorist, his is simply the casual appraisal of a normal guy.

The fact that he isn’t normal doesn’t escape him, though.

“I mean, in my industry,” the erstwhile singer adds with a self-effacing smile, “You learn not to trust anyone. But this is different. On some level, working here… it’s like some fucking exercise in gaslighting en masse.“

Jake snickers, shaking his head. “You wanted to be here, bro,” the slender, stylish bassist tells his friend.

“Yeah,” Brandon agrees, glancing between his pals and the photographer. “But opting into an illusion? If you’re choosing to suspend your disbelief… you’re still accountable for what you say and do when you’re imagining shit. I think the biggest swindle of all is when they convince you it’s your own dream.”

He falls quiet, then, pondering something silently. Jake offers Dodge a helpless shrug, apologizing for Brandon’s sudden mood.

Steve? He’s flirting with the two record company reps.

Dodge is right. The session has definitely wound to an end.