Road Rash (12 page)

“Hey, what is that?” I asked. “It’s great, but I can’t place it.”

He barely looked up from his guitar. “It’s just something I’m working on.”

Whoa … “That’s
yours
?”

“Yeah.”

“Wow. Nice.” He just nodded. “No, seriously,” I added. “That’s a totally killer riff.… Is there more? A chorus?”

He stopped and looked up at me. “Thanks,” he said. “Yeah, I’ve got a chorus. I’m still messing with the bridge, but it’s about there.”

“Lyrics …?”

“Yup.”

That was it—just
yup
. “Well …?” I finally asked, with my hands held palms up in that universal let’s-have-it gesture.

He didn’t say anything. Hmm. Even though he freakin’ smoked on guitar, maybe he was insecure about his singing. I’d seen him sing behind Brad and he sounded fine, but some people just didn’t like to sing solo. Or maybe he had lyrics, but no melody yet …? “Hey, that’s okay,” I finally said. “You can play it for me whenever you want. Or not. No big.” I turned around and started unpacking my stuff. And as I was placing my clothes in the little dresser on my side of the room, he started playing.

He played the original riff a couple of times before he stripped it down to a simple, chugging eighth-note thing that made up the body of the verse. Then he started singing.…

I’d guessed wrong. He didn’t give the impression that he was insecure about his singing. It was more like the song might have been a personal thing to him.

His voice was actually pretty damn good. Well, a better word might be
effective
. To me, if it’s convincing on a gut level, then it works, no matter what technical skills the singer has. He didn’t have that big rock voice that Brad had—it was a little leaner, a little more intimate. But it worked perfectly for that song. The tune was about communication problems between a guy and a girl—hardly a new topic—but the sincerity of the delivery, along with the guitar riff and the overall vibe, really worked.

After a couple of verses and a chorus, he stopped. “That’s most of it, so far. Like I said, there’s a bridge. Probably half time. Then a solo and a couple of repeat choruses and an ending.”

That all made sense—that’s probably how I would have arranged it, too. But what was more interesting was what he didn’t say. Like,
So, what do you think?
Or,
Do you like it?
He just went back to trying some different chord voicings on the guitar.

“Hey,” I interrupted him. He looked up. “Dude, that’s a freakin’ great song. I can totally hear the drum part, the bass, backing vocals. Hell, I can hear that on the radio.”

“Thanks.”

“You got more originals?”

“Yeah.”

“So why aren’t any of them in our set list?”

He didn’t say anything for a long time. Finally, he looked at his watch. “We’d better get going—it’s almost time to meet everyone downstairs for dinner.”

The waitress turned to me. “And what will the drummer boy be having?”

Jake was right—the staff was really friendly. “The trout sounds good,” I said.

“It is,” she promised. She looked at Glenn. “Okay, guitar hero, what’ll it be?”

“Do you have sushi?”

“Just California rolls,” she admitted.

“Wasabi and ginger?”

“I think I can scare some up for you.”

Glenn thought about it for a second. “Okay, sold.”

“You’re jonesin’ bad, huh?” She pointed up the street. “When you get a chance, head a few blocks that way. There are two places. One right here on Main, and one a block off it, on Bozeman. The real deal, flown in fresh.”

“Thanks—I’ll remember that.”

Brad snickered. “I’ll eat fish,” he said, “but not bait.”

“Whatever floats your boat, honey,” she said. She winked at
Glenn, finished writing up the order, and left. It was like she was right out of the old-school-waitress academy, but in reality she was maybe twenty-five, max, and kinda cute. Cracked me up.

As we ate, Brad and Glenn were joking along with the others, and I realized Danny had been right. And they all seemed so relaxed, shooting hoops and kidding around with the staff. To be honest, I was nervous. Not like I was at the audition, thank God, but still … It was our first real gig as a road band, in a big club that was totally new to us, so yeah, I had butterflies. Plus, I’d had to learn like fifty new songs in the past couple of weeks, and I’d be lying if I said I had all of them totally nailed.

Danny must have caught my mood, because he kicked me under the table and made a goofy face. “
Smile
, man. You look like you’re going to the gallows.” He grinned. “Look, here’s how it’s supposed to work—we storm into town, we rock their socks off, we have our way with their women, then we roll on to the next port o’ call like postmodern pirates. What better way for a young buccaneer such as yourself to spend his summer, right?”

I laughed. “Well, now that you put it that way …”

He nodded. “Relax, bro. You’re rock solid.”

I almost said
Aaaargh, matey!
but
matey
reminded me of
mate
, which reminded me of
Toby
, which of course reminded me of the Sock Monkeys and Kyle and the wonderfulness of
that
whole thing. So I just said, “Thanks,” and let it go.

Brad got up and stretched. “I’m gonna go back to the room and chill,” he said. “Meet back here at a quarter till for preflight?”

The others agreed, and one by one they took off, until I was sitting by myself. I was finishing off my water when our waitress
came by. “Looks like they ran off and left ya, huh?” I nodded. She sat down and said, “So tell me, honey. The hot one—does he have a girlfriend or anything?”

I honestly didn’t know who she was referring to. I mean, it’s not like we have this one obvious total-stud guy and the rest are all slobs or something.

She misread my hesitation. “Hey, I didn’t mean you were chopped liver, sweetie,” she said. “You’re a cutie-pie. But you’re a little young for me.”

Whoa … The food metaphors were coming too fast for me. “No, that wasn’t it. I just didn’t … Never mind. You’re talking about Brad, the singer?”

“Naw. He’s a pretty boy all right, but I’m talking about the gunslinger—he’s what I call interesting. And I saw you guys rehearsing. That guy can
play
.” She kinda shivered. “So …?”

Oh yeah, her question. I was about to say no, he’s not hooked up, when I thought about the tune he’d just played for me in our room. And about what happened this afternoon in the club. And I realized I really didn’t know these guys very well.

“You know, this is going to sound lame, but I’m kinda here on the tourist plan and I really don’t know. I suppose I could ask for you?”

She laughed and I swear, I thought she was going to reach over and ruffle my hair. “You really are sweet, you know that? But that’s okay, don’t worry about it.”

She went back to work and I went up onstage, where I sat behind my drums and fiddled with them, making sure everything was adjusted just right. Then I glanced at the set list taped
to the stage next to my floor tom and mentally went over the songs in the first set. It lowered my stress a little when they all came back to me—the groove, the tempo, the arrangement. Sometimes I “practice” songs in my head, just by letting them run on my internal playlist. Especially with new stuff—it makes me feel like,
Okay, I know what I’m doing
.

As I was going through the set, Brad walked in and came over. “Hey, you seen Jamie?” he said.

I shook my head. “Sorry, I’ve been here since dinner.” He nodded and walked off.

I checked tuning real quick … everything sounded fine. I would have played a little to loosen up, but people were starting to come in and I hate to noodle in front of strangers. It was almost eight—another hour to go. It was starting to dawn on me that road life was twenty percent onstage and eighty percent off. I was getting ready to do my usual pre-gig thing and grab a coke or a coffee and read a magazine or something when I realized I had a room right upstairs
—duh
. I guess I
am
a newbie tourist.

When I walked into my room, Jamie was there, talking to Glenn. They both looked up when I opened the door.

“Hey, Zach, how’s it going?” she said. “You ready for tonight?”

I wondered if Danny had said something to her, but then I realized that if my nerves had been obvious to him, they probably were to her, too. “Yeah, I’m good,” I said. “How about you?”

“I’m fine. I just hope there’s a decent turnout.”

“Me too. But I suppose one good thing about not being local is, if there’s not a great turnout, they can’t really blame it on us.”

“At least not the first night,” Glenn said. “After that, they sure
can
blame it on us—and believe me, they will—because a lot of it’s word of mouth, especially in smaller towns.”

I grinned. “So I guess we’d better not suck, right …?”

Glenn hit himself on the side of the head. “Wow! Why didn’t
I
think of that? I
knew
there was a reason I wanted to hire you.…”

“Okay, I’ll leave you comedians alone,” Jamie said, getting up.

“See ya, JD-girl,” Glenn said.

At the door she turned. “Bye, GT. Bye, ZR.” She laughed like that was the funniest thing in the world, then left.

I plopped on my bed and started reading the latest issue of
Modern Drummer
. I was getting into this feature on recording drums using a minimal miking setup when I heard music. Glenn was playing something on guitar. Not on his Strat—he was playing this little beater acoustic that he’d packed along. The tune wasn’t a rocker like the other one. It was slower, almost a ballad, but it had a really nice melody and these haunting, minor-key chord changes.

I didn’t say anything, I just kept on reading. When he finished, I looked up. “Let me guess—that was yours?” I asked.

“Actually, yeah.”

“Lyrics?”

“Not much yet. Just starting on it.”

“Hate to sound like a broken record, but man, that’s nice. What do you call it?”

He just blinked at me, then shook his head. I wasn’t sure if
that was
I don’t have a title for it yet
or
I don’t want to talk about it
, but I guess it didn’t really matter.

“Do you have any recordings of your stuff?” I asked.

“Well, just some rough demos of a couple of things.”

“You got them with you?” He nodded. “Can I have a copy?”

He shrugged. “Sure, I suppose so.”

“Great.” I dug through my stuff and handed over a thumb drive. “Just dump them on here whenever you get the chance.”

He laughed, like he didn’t really get why I wanted to bother, but he took it.

“Thanks,” I said.

“No problem.” He looked at his watch. “We’d better get rolling.…”

“Yeah.” I got up, then stopped. “Hey—I almost forgot …”

“What?”

“That waitress at our table tonight?”

“Yeah …?”

“She wants you.”

Now
that
made him seriously laugh. “Figures …” was all he said.

The Dog & Pony had a large movable wall between the restaurant and the club area, keeping the stage and the dance floor—and the surrounding seating and the bar—separate from the dining area. But by nine p.m. the dining side was cleared out and mostly served as a quiet place where the band could hang before the gig.

We all met there a few minutes before showtime. The band had done something before the show at Paisano’s that was a little, uh … different, and at the time I figured they’d done it because it was the first time with the new guy. We’d all gotten into a huddle and sort of went around the circle and said positive things. Kind of a cross between a group hug and a team getting psyched up before a game.

But apparently it was a regular thing with them, because they did it again here. We wandered into the dining room one or two at a time and ended up sitting at a table just shooting stuff around. Brad was the last to arrive. He sat near me, and I thought I could smell beer on him. “Is the PA hot?” he asked.

“Yeah, it’s all fired up and ready to go,” Glenn said.

“Cool,” Brad said. He looked at his watch. “Time for preflight.”

We all got into a huddle—Amber, too. Brad said, “These guys are gonna see what a band from California can do, ’cause we’re gonna kick ass tonight!” and Danny said, “Can’t wait for ‘Go My Way,’ ’cause I love the way baby bro hammers it!” I’ve gotta admit, that made me feel good in spite of the nickname, and I said, “I’m just happy to be here, and I’m going to do my best to keep up with all of you.” GT replied, “You’re good, man … you don’t have to keep up with anyone but yourself.” Jamie laughed at him and shook her head. Then she turned to me and smiled. “Zach, we’re really glad you’re here with us … facial hair and all.”

Everyone laughed, and Amber added, “You guys are going to do great tonight! Anything you want me to listen for?” There was no sound guy running the PA, so we were going to have to rely on our sound check to set our mix, plus whatever info we could get while we played.

“Thanks,” Glenn said. “You can tell us about small stuff during the break, but if anything gets really out of whack, let us know right away. I may get out front with my wireless, too—the more ears, the better.”

“It’s time,” Brad announced.

We wandered through the bar and up onto the darkened stage.…

I freakin’
love
drumming … There’s something about playing the drums that’s different from any other instrument. Maybe it’s the physical part. I mean, you’re generating sounds by
hitting
things. You’re the guy with his foot on the gas, driving the whole thing. You’re the one making people get up off their asses and dance. You’re the one setting the vibe—is the groove gonna be hard and mean, or maybe a little slower and sexier?