Road Rash (14 page)

Glenn woke up around nine, probably because of me ticktacking at my computer.

“What are you hacking away at?” he asked, one eye open.

I looked over. “Trying to save your unblemished reputation.”

“She said she was eighteen, Your Honor. I swear.”

“Not that reputation. I’m talking about you never bailing on a gig.” He gave me a blank look, so I nodded toward my computer and the headphones that were plugged into it. “I’ve got tons of tunes in here, old and new. I’m going through them for stuff that might work for us, building a Jake-worthy playlist for us to woodshed.”

“Cool.” He yawned and stretched. “And thanks for the help last night.” He must have seen
my
blank look. “I meant with Brad, about the Saturday thing.”

“Yeah, why’d you have
me
explain to him what we should do? I’m pretty sure you’d already decided on everything I said.”

He didn’t say anything for a second. “Maybe,” he finally replied as he started pulling his clothes on, “but I think it’s good
for him to hear it from someone besides me.” He came over and looked at my screen. “So what’s the plan for the songs?”

“Well, I took some of the older stuff we faked our way through last night and I found thirty or forty more that fit the same mold and saved them as a big playlist. Now I’m going through it and breaking it into four sets and putting them into order.”

“Wow. Did you do that for the Sock Monkeys?”

“Yeah, sometimes. Or I’d keep the master list by my kit and call them on the fly. Depends on the gig.”

“Sure,” he said, nodding. He paused. “But before you go too far arranging sets … You know how you can get through a tune with just a few clues?”

“Yeah …”

He pointed to one of the oldies at random. “Take this one—‘Hot Blooded.’ Let’s say you were raised in a cave and had never heard it. I could tell you, ‘It’s just a four-on-the-floor straight-ahead rocker … maybe a hundred and twenty beats a minute … has a few accents during the verse, but no sweat—you’ll get it after the first four bars, and even if you just play right through it, you’ll still be okay.’ Would that work for you?”

“Uh, I hope so. That pretty much sums up last night.”

“Right. But now let’s assume you’re going to have to
sing
this song that you’ve never heard.…”

Whoa … If I were a character in a manga, there would have been a little lightbulb going on over my head. “Oops—good point. So what do you think?”

“I think … that I’ve said enough.” He grinned. “Me, I’m going
to go find some breakfast before practice. Most important meal of the day, right …?” He grabbed his stuff and left.

“Thanks for all the help …,” I mumbled as the door closed behind him. Speaking of breakfast, I’d been thinking along the same lines. But instead I dug up a power bar and took a bite as I got out my little printer.…

Brad and Jamie came in together, each holding a Starbucks. Venti, no less.
Man, you’re killing me
, I thought.

Jamie must have seen my look. She held up her cup. “You want some coffee?”

I figured she was just being polite. “I’m good. But thanks.”

I must have paused a little too long. “Amber’s still there,” she said as she took out her phone. “What do you want?”

“Just a coffee. Cream, no sugar. That’d be great.”

“No problem,” she said, texting away. “You eat yet?”

That power bar was just a lump in my stomach. A very lonely lump. “Uh, not really.”

She nodded. “Okay.” She hit a few more keys and put her phone away.

Glenn walked in. “Hey, guys,” he said. He looked around. “Does anyone know where Danny is?”

“He’ll be here in a few,” Jamie said. “He’s with Amber, getting some coffee.”

Looks like I had some time. I turned to Brad. “Hey, do you have a minute?” I held up some papers. “I have a few questions about some songs.”

“Sure.” He headed to a nearby table. “Let’s do it.”

We sat down. “I’ve got a bunch of classic-rock tunes on my computer,” I said, “and I put together a big list of the ones that kinda fit what these guys seem to be looking for.”

He nodded real slowly, like he wasn’t sure about this.
“Okaaay …”

“But you have to sing them, not me.” I took out the master list I’d just printed. “So, anything on here look doable to you?”

His mood lightened. “Let’s take a look.” He took the list from my hand and started running down it. “Hmm, let’s see … I know this one … and this one.… God, I
hate
that one.…”

I gave him a pen. “Here, why don’t you mark all the ones you already know. And maybe also mark some of the other ones that you like and you think you could learn pretty easy.”

“Dude! You’re like a den mother. Are you always this organized?”

“Hey, just trying to save us some time.” I probably came off a little defensive, but I guess I expected something more for trying to help. “You’re not the only one who’d like to get out and see something other than the inside of this club.” Oops … I guess I
had
been cooped up too long.

He looked at me for a second and I wasn’t sure what was going through his head. Then he finally grinned. “I hear ya.”

He started marking the list. A few minutes later Danny and Amber walked in, laughing.

Danny held out a bag to me with a flourish. “It’s
Coffee Boy
, at your service!”

“Thanks, man.” I looked inside. There was a venti coffee and some sort of enormous muffin with nuts and berries and, I don’t
know—small winged creatures?—sticking out of it. I glanced up from the bag and saw Amber looking at me. She was standing there with a receipt in her hand. Oh, yeah …

“Um, it’s fifteen twenty-two. Let’s call it fifteen bucks even.” She was serious.

Fifteen dollars? For
that
? So far this road thing was more rash than riches. But I’d ordered it. Sort of. I reached for my wallet as I swore that this was the last time I got on this particular bus.

Right when I got my money out, I noticed Amber was busting up. “Just kidding,” she said. “And thanks for breakfast yesterday.”

Danny held out his hand for her to slap. She did, but at the last second he closed his hand and snagged hers. “Damn, you’re good,” he said to her. Then he turned to me and winked. “Don’t ever play poker with her, bro—you’d lose your Underoos.”

“Hey!” Jamie said to the room at large. “Are we gonna make some music or what …?”

We got down to business.…

“According to what Jackie said, it ought to be here somewhere,” Glenn said.

“Jackie?”

“Yeah. That trippy young-old waitress …”

I let it go.

We were walking up the main drag, looking for a bite. I’d figured we’d eat in the D&P’s dining room like yesterday, but after practice Glenn had said, “C’mon, let’s get out of here—I
know just what you need.” I literally hadn’t been out of the club since we’d arrived, so I jumped at the chance to stretch my legs and see a little bit of Bozeman, but we ended up in a restaurant that wouldn’t have been my first choice … Yamaguchi Sushi.

The place was a lot busier than I would have expected a Japanese restaurant in Montana to be. And different. Meaning it was clean and comfortable, but there weren’t any bamboo screens or whatever in sight. More like some of the nicer Southwestern places we have back home. And there was disco music, of all things, coming from the ceiling, and a big screen above the bar was showing a ball game with the sound turned off. Kimber would have called it “eclectic,” in her professor voice.

“You okay with this?” he asked.

“Uh, sure …”

“You like sushi?”

I shrugged. “Don’t know—never had it.”

When the waitress came over and said, “Hi, what can I get for you?” Glenn looked at me. “Okay if I call it?”

I nodded. “Lead on …”

He ordered a few different things, and I just figured,
What the hell, bring on the bait—I’ll choke it down
.

After the waitress left, I said, “You know, I was way impressed by how fast you guys made the new stuff sound totally pro today. I mean, on the first run-through some of those songs sounded like a record. That was like magic.”

“You were there, too.”

“All I did was pay attention.”

“Exactly. You’ve got big ears.” He saw my expression and
laughed. “Not on the sides of your head.” He tapped his forehead. “Up here. You
listen
. That’s the big secret.”

“That’s it?” I was kinda hoping for something more.

“You know who Eddie Bayers is?” he asked.

I’d read that name somewhere recently … maybe in
Modern Drummer
? I shrugged. “Is he a drummer?”

“Oh yeah. An A-list Nashville studio drummer. Played on tons of sessions—you’ve probably heard him on hundreds of songs on the radio. Anyway, I was at a big music convention in LA and I wandered into a clinic he was giving. He’d brought some other session guys with him and they were set up onstage. The clinic was called Anatomy of a Session, and the guys onstage were looking at charts. They’d handed out copies of the chart at the door also, so the audience could follow along. And here’s the brilliant part—this was the first time Eddie’s guys had ever seen the song, so we were going to get that fly-on-the-wall look at what really goes down at a pro session.”

“Wow, that’s totally cool.”

“Yeah, they sat there talking about the tune, and Eddie’s saying, ‘The feel is like this …’ and he sort of hums the basic groove, and the bassist says, ‘So I come in after four bars, then?’ and the guitar player asks about one of the chord changes, and so on.”

“Sounds pretty normal, so far.”

“Yup. So far. And then after a couple minutes of this, Eddie looks around and says, ‘We good?’ and everybody nods, and he counts it off. And that’s where ‘normal’ went right out the window. Man, those guys
nailed
it, first take, cold. I don’t mean they got through it without a disaster. I mean it sounded
like a polished record. Even the guitar solo—perfect. I’ll never forget it.”

“And they had those ‘big ears’ …?”

He nodded. “Yeah.
Huge
ears. That was really the lesson for me. When those guys played, they weren’t about themselves. They were all about listening to each other and playing for the music. It wasn’t a chops fest at all—nothing to prove. We’re trying to do the same thing now, only instead of charts, we’re using tunes off your playlist.” He paused. “Remember your audition?”

“Huh?” I deadpanned. “Did I audition for this gig?”

He laughed. “As painful as it might have been, in an hour you put together some concepts that took me a whole lot longer to figure out. I was as impressed by that as much as anything.…”

Just then the waitress returned with our food. She set three plates in the middle of the table, along with a few small dishes of sauces and something that I swear was a big gob of green Play-Doh.