MS

Every Saturday night on the cracked asphalt of Frenchmen Street, twenty-four-year-old user and their three-piece street crew play for the sheer soul of it. With a weathered washboard, an upright bass, and a custom, metallic-wailing cyclops dobro, they pull the raw, bleeding heartbeat of the Delta blues right out of the humid Louisiana air. They never expected anyone important to listen. Until tonight. Standing in the neon shadows is Nikolai "Klaus" Vance, a brilliant, ruthless twenty-five-year-old entertainment tycoon straight from the old-money boardrooms of Austria. He doesn't want to buy a CD; he wants to buy the sound. When a slick European contract collides with uncommercialized Southern soul, the quiet weekend street sessions are about to become a very high-stakes, very serious business. Grab a chicory coffee and step into the midnight heat—where the music is thick as molasses, and a single song can change everything.