Title: Standard Tuning
Author: Andi Tozier
Publisher: NineStar Press
Release Date: 05/12/2026
Heat Level: 3 – Some Sex
Pairing: Male/Male
Length: 280
Genre: Historical, Genre/lit, historical, family-drama, bisexual, musician, supergroup, drug addiction, BDSM play, slow burn
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Description
It’s 1988 and solo act Bill Kason is invited to take part in a supergroup. Three generations of talent band together over three long weekends to record an album; talking shop, tweaking tunes, and touring their memories. Behind the music and the rumors that he saw Jesus in a Connecticut bathroom, Bill is barely holding himself together, but he is willing to make the effort for the sake of Martin Henry, one of the best-loved men in the music business and beyond. With Bill always somewhere between suicide and spiritual awakening, Martin is the only one who can make him take a good, hard look at himself, and not be completely repulsed. The question now: is Martin’s friendship and admiration enough to make the difference?
Standard Tuning
Andi Tozier © 2026
All Rights Reserved
“Oh, Bill?” Martin called out. “Standing in the doorway doesn’t actually count as being in the room.”
Bill took two steps into the main room and soldered himself against the wall.
“Much better,” Martin said.
Everyone else got comfortable on couches and chairs with their instruments in the acoustic variety so they could best be heard. Martin next to James, Fisher by Roger, all of them huddled together in campfire formation.
Fisher and James were attempting to recall the theme song to Bonanza, and it wasn’t going well. Roger tuned his Gibson, humming his way through the necessary notes involved.
As Bill was clinging to the walls like a boy at the school dance with sweaty palms and his dad’s suit, Martin made the long walk over to check his dance card and handed Bill the acoustic he’d brought in, saying, “An Ovation? You know, Bill, I’ve seen your ticket prices. You can afford better guitars than this.”
Bill took it from his hands and gave it a strum. “Didn’t want to bring my good stuff here. You all might steal it.”
James countered with, “Bill, you stole records from my house.”
Bill shrugged. “Equal opportunity.” He perched on the side of a stained oak chair, his boots on the cushion, which seemed far enough away from it all to feel safe. “Do you want those back?”
“No,” James said. “I bought others.”
Another strum. “Can I have them?”
“No, and why would you want to have the same records?”
Another strum, up a fifth. “Might sound different.”
James worked the butt of his palm into his eye. “You think so?”
“Actually, I think I have a Martin of yours around here somewhere. Let me check.” Martin got up to search the other room.
“Martin has a Martin. Hey, that’s pretty good,” Fisher said to no one’s approval.
Bill played a little something on the Ovation.
“That’s off one of the albums, I know it is.” James caught on quick. This was going to be fun.
“Huh?” Bill played dumb.
“It’s gonna be like this all weekend, isn’t it?” Roger looked to Fisher.
“God, I hope so,” Fisher said.
“Bill, I love you.” Martin returned to his side, and swapped guitars with him. “Stop teasing and let’s play.”
The level of talent would crack your head open and bust the world apart. Phrases, variations, instantaneous harmony, this impossible freedom and connection. Anything he was feeling was buried in the song, caught between the strings. You looked at the person, you looked at the instrument, you did your best to brush up alongside greatness. When he thought of moving frets, someone else’s fingers were already there. When he latched onto a rhythm, they were there to fill it out and even when they collapsed in stupendous errors, he felt like this was the time, the place where together they could scale the heights.
Most of all he felt understood in three-four or seven-eight time.
Because no matter what one of them would throw out there—a snippet of lyrics, a slide or style, an old standard, or a jam of one of one another’s songs—it was there to be picked up and carried along.
Sometimes when folks covered Bill’s songs, it could go from a gentle twist of his ear to a set of nine-inch knitting needles puncturing his eardrums. Here, where Fisher and Martin or James and Roger could harmonize lines of Bill’s, words he’d struggled with, wrestled into submission, when the trauma was gone and the battles suddenly sounded sweet, he got caught up in the newness of it all. His fingers forgot their placements and the skin of his knuckles and the catch in his breath were the only things keeping him from plunking on a wrong chord.
It was like they’d held on to a letter of yours for years, found meaning where only you had carefully hidden it, and brought it back to you, spoken from a balcony to the lowly servant, delivered straight to the heart. Before his friends completely overwhelmed him on such a pull from the personal vaults, he hauled out his harmonica and found a way to back up the fun.
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Andi Tozier grew up in Florida and found their way to the Midwest. They hold an MFA in Fiction Writing from Columbia College Chicago and have credits in anthologies and small publications. Their love of music and writing is vast and varied, and they’re happy to share this work with NineStar Press and all their readers.
