Road Rash (17 page)

But instead of laying into this asshole, Danny put his arm around him like he was a long-lost friend. “Hey, buddy, how’s it going?” he said cheerfully. “You having a good time tonight?”

“Well, I
was
, until—”

“Good!” he interrupted. He nodded toward me and Amber. “These are my friends Zach and Zelda. My name’s Danny.” He steered the guy away from us. “You like our music?”

The guy nodded. “Uh, yeah.”

“Cool! I can tell you’re a fun guy. Is there anything special you’d like to hear …?”

By then they were out of earshot, heading over toward the restaurant side of the club.

Amber turned to me and let out a big breath. “Thanks.” She shook her head. “I don’t know why guys think that being a total jerk could ever work.”

“Because sometimes it does,” I mumbled.

She just looked at me for a moment. “Are we talking about anybody in particular?”

“Nobody you know.” I went to go get a coke and a bottle of water for the next set. As I made my way back to the stage, Danny came up to me.

“Hey, bro, thanks for watching out for Amber. That dude was
hammered
.”

“No problem. Man, you did a stellar job of turning him around.”

“Drunks are mimics—they pick up your attitude and adopt
it, like a chameleon. Half the time, the only difference between a friendly drunk and a mean one is the mood of the guys around him.”

I looked around at the raucous crowd. “Well, then we’d better get up there and keep all these guys happy.”

And by all accounts that’s exactly what we did for the rest of the evening, although I got a little lesson in mob psychology on the way.

We’d blazed through most of the third set by midnight, and the place was in total party mode when suddenly I noticed some sort of commotion back by the bar. I could barely see the area from my little perch up on the stage, so I craned my neck for a better view. At first I wasn’t sure what was going on. If it had been happening in front of the stage instead of in the back of the room—and if we’d been playing more Anti-Flag and less Aerosmith—I would have sworn it was a mosh pit. But I was willing to bet most of this crowd had never moshed in their lives. Nope, I was seeing my first classic bar brawl.

I couldn’t make out the details, but it spread quickly as people kinda backed away in a circle and others tried to crowd in for a better look. Meanwhile, the floor was still packed with people dancing, but I could see things getting out of control. I wasn’t sure what to do but I figured I should do something, so I stopped playing. The other guys, however, tried to keep going. Didn’t they know what was happening?

Glenn came back to me and shouted over the noise, “Keep playing, man!”

I jumped back into it and believe it or not, people kept on dancing, oblivious to what was happening. I looked back at
the fight, and two of Jake’s guys had waded into the mess and dragged someone out by the arms. As quick as it had flared up, it was over.

By the time we ended the song, they were marching the guy to the door, and they didn’t seem too worried about hurting his feelings, either. I got a good look as they tossed him out. He was beat up, bloody, and belligerent. And guess what else? He was the same drunk who’d been such a butthead to Amber.

But I didn’t have a lot of time to think about it, because we lit a fuse under “My Generation” and kept the party blazin’.…

“That was a great Saturday night,” Jake said, “even by our standards. I’ve said since the beginning of the week that you guys sounded great, but with the classic tunes and those clothes and all … Well, it was just about perfect—they ate it up. You can bet I’ll be giving Corey an outstanding report on you.”

We were hanging in the bar well after the last set was done. It was long past last call, and by law the place was supposed to be closed down by now. Hell, by law I wasn’t supposed to be there at all once the gig was over. But there we were, along with a dozen customers and the staff, just kinda basking in the afterglow.

“Hey,” Danny said, raising his glass, “we appreciate it.” He was sitting at the bar with Amber. I was at a table near them, talking with a couple of locals about bike trails, and Brad and Jamie were at the table next to me.

Somebody sent up a cheer. “Here’s to Big Habit!” Everyone raised their drinks and toasted. I couldn’t resist. I raised my glass and joined in, louder than anyone. “Yeah, to Big Habit … whoever they are!”

Brad corrected them. “It’s Bad Habit.
Bad
Habit.”

“Okay, here’s to Fat Habit!” someone else said. They were drunk, but not that drunk. It was like an inside joke or something.

“It’s
Bad
 …,” Brad insisted.

“All right, three cheers for Big Fat Habit!”

“Bad …”

“Sorry. Hooray for Big Bad Fat Habit!” And on it went, with bigger and better messed-up versions of our name.…

Finally, after a few minutes of this, some guy stands up on a table. “Okay, everyone—I’ve got it!
Big-Fat-Badass-Funky-Monkey-Hobbit-Habit!
” Everyone cheered and he took a bow and sat down. And that, apparently, was our new official name.

Where was Glenn? He was missing all the fun. I looked around and spotted him at a table across the room. With Jackie-the-waitress on his lap.

I would have expected him to look a little happier, considering. But he was just sitting there, not saying much. She put her mouth to his ear while her hands went elsewhere. He looked at her, then finally shook his head. She leaned forward and kissed him—long and slow—then stood up and left.

The scene reminded me of the last time I’d seen Kimber. Uh, except for the kiss …

Shit. I had to get back to her.

“What’s the name of the club again?” Jamie asked from the passenger seat as we were coming down I-15 from Helena into Butte. After three weeks on the road, the venues were starting to run together in our heads.

“Hang on,” Brad said, scrolling through his phone. “Uh, it’s called the Four Leaf Clover.”

“Okay, everybody,” she announced. “Keep an eye out—we’re looking for some good luck.”

Less than thirty seconds later Glenn drawled from the driver’s seat, “Well, if that’s the club up there on the corner, we sure could use some.”

As we approached it, the big green blob painted on the side of the building resolved into a faded clover. Except one of the leaves had halfway flaked away, so it was more like a three-and-a-half-leaf clover. And it got better from there.…

The front of the building was all windows, but the faded blue curtains were pulled so the light of day wouldn’t scare
away the roaches. Some of the windows had been broken and were boarded up with plywood. Above one of the boarded-up windows was the universal symbol for a classy joint: a neon sign—also broken—depicting a martini glass. And if there was any remaining question, this was resolved by another sign that simply said
LIQUOR
. But hey—this one actually flickered a little.

There was a marquee above the door, but instead of announcing the band playing, it just said
LIVE MUSIC
. Brilliant—that way you didn’t have to change it every week.

We parked and got out, looking at the place. “This can’t really be it, can it?” Jamie asked.

I was thinking the same thing, but when we got to the front door, we saw a sign taped up inside one of the windows, like someone had taken a piece of paper and scrawled a quick note on it.…

The last couple of weeks had flown by, almost in a blur. The bookings at Billings and Helena were fine. Not as nice as Bozeman—I was starting to realize we were spoiled there—but the clubs were decent and the people were nice. And the gigs themselves went okay—the crowds seemed to like us and people danced a lot (once we decoded the vibe of each particular venue, that is). But nothing really memorable like that classic gig at the Dog & Pony. Okay, one thing that sticks out was an email from Kimber, which I got the evening after I’d written her.

For some reason I was in a better mood after that. And that lasted all the way up to when I finally finished that track I’d been working on.

It needed a bass part. I could have asked Danny to play it—he would have nailed it, first take. But that would have meant telling him I was working on one of Glenn’s original tunes, and I hadn’t even told Glenn yet.…

So on a day when the rest of the band was going to take a sightseeing trip around Billings, I asked Glenn if I could borrow a guitar.

“Aren’t you going with us? You’re the unofficial cruise director, man.”

“Thanks, but I’ll pass. I’m just going to stay here and hang, maybe work on a few things.”

“Okay.” He nodded at the acoustic leaning against a chair. “Help yourself.”

“Um, it sort of needs to be an electric.…”

He considered this for a moment. “All right.” He looked at the case next to the bed. “But please put it back in the case as soon as you’re done with it.”

I realized he thought I meant his main Strat. Wow. “Thanks. Really. But there’s no way I’m touching Blackie. I just want to use your backup or something.” He kept a new MIM tuned and ready to go behind his amp onstage. It looked like Blackie, minus all the road rash, but its financial value was only ten percent as much. And its emotional value was more like
one
percent.

“Oh—no problem,” he said. “Knock yourself out.”

Once they’d left, I fired up my computer and got to work.
I’m not going to lie—I’m not much of a guitar player. I’ve been goofing around with it for a couple of years, mostly so I could get some song ideas out of my head and into the hands of a
real
guitarist. But there’s an advantage to being a drummer—you already have the “rhythm” part of the instrument down. For basic rhythm playing—which is all I can really do—the main challenge was learning how to fret the fundamental chords. Once I got my left hand to do that, the strumming part with the right hand was pretty easy, and I could fake my way through some simple stuff.

My plan was to play a very basic bass part, using the lower strings of the guitar. I’d already figured out the chord changes for the song, and as it played in my headphones, I laid down a driving bass line. I wasn’t nearly good enough to play all over the neck, but by making myself stick to root/fifth stuff, I could get through it okay.