Road Rash (22 page)

I called her. Nothing. I texted her. Nothing. I was bouncing around town like I was stuck in some out-of-control pinball game, trying to figure out what the hell to do. Finally, I sat my ass down on the curb and wrote her back.

God
, was I pissed … I had all kinds of stupid thoughts. Like driving back home right then and making Kimber listen to me. Like finding Kevin Flanders and finishing the job I’d started at the 7-Eleven. Like doing the same thing to that suck-butt Toby, who was part of the reason I was stuck out here a zillion miles away from home in the first place.

I called Kimber again. Her phone was turned off, which it
never
was. I thought about calling Kyle, but he probably wouldn’t have a lot to say to me, either. I mean, I’d lied to him about the whole Kevin thing, too. And now he thought I’d been going around making rude comments about his little sister, so he probably wouldn’t be the most receptive person in the world, either. I even thought about calling Kimber’s friend Ginger, which shows just how stupid I was. First of all, the only one I knew with her number was Kimber, but beyond that, who was she going to believe?

Finally, I took a deep breath and told myself to chill.… If she wanted to buy that bullshit, there was nothing I could do about it, right? If she was going to take that loser’s word over mine, that was her choice, right? If she was going to be that way, he could freakin’ have her.

Right?

I got back to the club with an hour to go. I was really hoping to get some time with Brad—to clear at least
one
thing up before the gig—but I couldn’t find him anywhere. And the other guys were gone, too.

I went back to my room and tried to read … tried to
sleep … tried to not feel trapped in this roach-infested shit hole. All with zero success. I gave up and went downstairs at a quarter till, but I still didn’t see the others, so I just went up onstage and fiddled with my drums, making sure everything was right.

In a packed club that relies more on open doors than air-conditioning (can you say the Four Leaf Clover?), I like to have a water bottle and a hand towel nearby and, if possible, a little clip-on fan clamped to a cymbal stand blowing air at me. Looking at the crowd that was already packing the place, I knew it was gonna be warm. I checked my set list taped to the floor—this would be a bad night to screw up, but it was going to be hard to keep my head in the game.

I shouldn’t have even bothered.… With about five minutes to go Glenn, Jamie, Danny, and Amber hustled into the room.

“Where’s Brad?” I asked.

They looked at each other and their faces fell. Not good.

“Uh, we were out looking for him, and we were really hoping he’d be here when we got back,” Danny said.

“And you called him? Left a message?” They were nodding as I spoke. “Then maybe
I
should text him, saying it’s my bad, I’m sorry, I’m an idiot, and now won’t he please come home and save us?” As I eyed the rowdy-ass crowd, I realized I was only half kidding about that last part. They’d freakin’
kill
us if we didn’t play.

Apparently, I wasn’t the only one thinking that. Mr. Friendly there, behind the bar, yelled “Hey!” at us and pointed to the clock angrily.

“Wouldn’t help,” Glenn replied to me as he waved back at
the bartender, “and we don’t have time. We’ve got to get playing. Now.”

“Uh, so we’re going to just jam for a while, waiting for Brad to show?” Danny asked.

“No, we’re going to get up there and play songs.” He turned to Jamie and me. “Look, I know a bunch of tunes, and you each know some, too. We’ll just do those for as long as we can. It’ll have to do.”

That was going to be a challenge, since if it was a song the band already did, then Brad was likely the only one who’d ever sung it. So they’d mostly be songs we hadn’t all played together before.

“Man, we’ll have to totally be on our toes for that,” I said.

“No kidding,” Danny said.

“Yeah, we’ll try to keep it simple,” Glenn said. “Let’s go.”

And that was our cheerful preflight.

As I got up onstage and got ready, I found myself getting majorly pissed all over again. Unless he’d been hit by a truck or something, Brad had some serious explaining to do. No matter what, you didn’t leave your bandmates hanging out to dry like this.

Suddenly I knew exactly what I wanted to sing. “Hey, I can at least make the first one easy,” I said. “Let’s start with our usual opener—I know it.”

“You sure?” Glenn asked. “That ain’t no halfhearted song.”

“If I can’t cover it now, I’ll never be ready for it.”

“Okay—you got it.” He hit the lights, and without any introduction he went blazing into the opening riff of “So Far,” by Buckcherry. I really liked that song because it was about why
musicians—at least the ninety-nine percent of us that aren’t rich and famous rock stars—do what we do. It had a few f-bombs in it, and some venues weren’t cool with that.

But I was pissed, and the FLC wasn’t exactly a class joint anyway. I just spat out the words, and after the first time, Glenn got with it and jumped in on backing vocals. I may not be the best singer in the world, but I made up for it in attitude. At least, no one complained, and we actually got a few hoots and hollers afterward.

“Hey, B-Bro, that wasn’t half bad,” Danny said, with a big grin on his face.

“Yeah,” Glenn agreed. “Pretty damn solid. I think this might work.”

“Thanks, but it’s mostly gonna have to be you from here on out, because I only know a few tunes from our set list.” If Glenn knew how to play and sing a song, he could show the chord changes to Danny and Jamie and tell me the basic groove, and we could probably get through it alive.

“Okay …”

So on we went. We stuck with standards and classic blues tunes, and Glenn sang most of them. It was actually pretty amazing, all the stuff he kept pulling out of his ass. I’m fairly sure that things looked pretty normal from the crowd’s point of view, but to us it was anything but.

Once we got over the initial nervousness and realized we weren’t going to get stoned to death by an angry mob, we relaxed. A little. But it was still definitely not your usual gig. We were focused on each other more than we were on the audience, as opposed to the other way around. It was weird, like
we were in the flow so much that the crowd didn’t even exist. Anyway, by the time we got into the middle of the second set, the song choices got kind of, um … interesting.

Glenn looked over at me. “You know ‘Take Me to the River’?”

“Sure. Al Green or Talking Heads?”

He grinned at that and I knew I’d shed my little-brother identity again, at least for the moment. “A little of both. Four-on-the-floor, about like this …” He tapped his guitar in tempo with his pick.

So we go into it, only he lets the intro build for a
long
time, until it’s like being at a church revival or something. I’m talking like a couple of minutes nonstop, just vamping, and the room is absolutely pounding. Then suddenly he stops playing and tucks his guitar behind his back, so it’s just me and Danny playing the groove. I automatically strip it way down, so I’m just playing the kick and a little hi-hat. I mean, it’s still a solid-ass pulse, but it’s way sparse. That’s how you put a spotlight on something—get so simple that it grabs people’s attention and makes them focus on what’s coming next.

Then Glenn strides up to the mic and grabs the stand like he’s gonna preach to the congregation, but he’s looking sideways, over toward the keyboards.

It was like Glenn’s intensity fed my anger, which found its way into my drumming, which fed his intensity even more. I guess what I’m saying is, that song
killed
.

It suddenly hit me that what I really wanted was for someone to be recording the gig, because it was clearly something special. But even a recording is nothing like being there, in the eye of it all. You play your part, it goes out into the universe, then it’s gone. Forever. All you can hope to do is experience it as it happens and remember it the best you can. Believe me, I tried.

We were all over the map that night, song-selection-wise. We followed that with “Can’t Stand Losing You,” “Girlshapedlovedrug,” and “Want You Bad.” All with Glenn singing.

Then Jamie says something to Glenn and he nods, then he comes back to me.

“You know ‘Right Hand Man’?”

I shook my head. “Sorry. What’s the groove?”

“Well, that’s the thing—Danny and I’ll be playing in 7/4, but you just stay in 4/4 the whole time, no matter what. It’ll feel weird at first, but trust me on this.”

I nodded. “Got it.”

Danny started this riff on the bass, and it seemed like it dropped a beat at the end of every other bar. But I did like Glenn said and played it straight instead of trying to follow him, and sure enough, it wrapped back around and things lined up. I thought it was pretty cool, but that was just the beginning, because then Jamie started singing. Holy freakin’ wow. She normally had a nice, smooth voice, but this was just plain
nasty
.

Whoa. She was in full-on skank mode, but she made you buy it. Big-time.

After the song was over, Glenn looked at me with his eyes open wide like,
Yeah … that was hot
. Then he glanced at the clock. “We’ve gotta stretch this one out before we break,” he said. “Let’s do ‘The Sky Is Crying.’ ” He looked at Jamie. “Hey, JD-girl … can you get an old Hammond sound, like a B-3 or something?”

“Sure.” She hit a few buttons on her keyboard, then played a note.

“Perfect!” Glenn said. “It’s a blues, in C.” He turned to me and Danny. “You guys know it?”

“Stevie Ray version?” I asked.

“Yeah, slow 6/8 thing.”

Danny and I had a wordless exchange, then I nodded. “We’re all over it.”

Glenn stood at the microphone, but the crowd was noisy, not paying much attention. “Hey,
listen up
!” he belted into the mic. It sounded like a football coach addressing a team. Everyone got quiet all of a sudden and looked up to see what the heck was going on.
“Shhhh …,”
he said softly. “Listen close. Can you hear it?” Then he started singing.

On the word
crying
I came in hard and slow, trying to lay down that big fat slammin’ blues thing. Danny was right there in the pocket, totally locked in on the kick drum. After the first verse Glenn took a little solo, fast and furious. Then after the
next verse he nodded to Jamie and she took twelve bars, playing a really tasty solo of her own. He sang another verse, then he walked over and stood in front of his amp, with his back to the crowd. He reached over and threw that sucker wide open and freakin’ cut loose. I don’t mean he played a bunch of busy, show-offy crap. I mean it was one of those tell-a-story-with-your-ax moments, and it totally translated. Long, slow, bending notes. In the middle of it he threw his Strat up behind his neck and just wailed.

Funny thing … it was like the opposite of the time Justin had tried it.
That
had been all about the look, the pose, the chicks-dig-it factor. In this case, I think if you’d asked Glenn afterward, he wouldn’t have even been aware he’d done it. Danny and I were hammering out the groove while Glenn shredded, and in the middle of it all Danny came over to me with a big grin on his face and yelled over the music, “Double frickin’ Trouble, bro!”

After he’d gotten out whatever he had to say, Glenn took it back down by bringing it around to a verse, then in classic blues fashion we came to a crashing halt just before the very last line, which Glenn sang by himself.

We got some serious applause after that, and someone yelled out, “
That’s
how you do it!”

We took a break, and as we were sitting at a table off to the side of the stage trying to figure out what the hell to play next, a guy came up to us who didn’t really fit in with the decor. He was
kind of short, with a long leather coat, black dress shoes, and a spiky hundred-dollar haircut. And he was carrying a
briefcase
.