Chapter Fifteen #2
This was a level of the music industry we’d never seen before, and it moved fast. In order to get through it, we needed to be on the same page at every step of the process so we could roll on a dime into some empty slot Pressley landed us and work shit out no matter where we happened to be.
“Can you make that section just a half beat slower?” Tony asked, tapping out what he meant on the edge of his notebook.
“Yeah, let me try that,” Tibby replied.
It took a few playthroughs for him to adjust his rhythm to the one Tony was after, but when he nailed it, we played the drum track again, squirming in our seats over how awesome it sounded.
Tibby grabbed the notebook and added his changes before playing through it a couple more times, with me joining in after he was comfortable with it.
Now he wove some of that same deep bass rhythm through the bridge until it was so damned haunting it made my chest ache playing it.
Something about it hit Tony in the feels, because he swiped at his eyes a couple times as we played.
When we took it from the top again, he added the vocals, a bit too high in the beginning but getting lower and deeper as he progressed.
He found the tone the song needed by the second chorus and really nailed the ending, prompting us to charge right back into the opening again.
Time got lost in the loop of the song, with a few pauses to adjust a word in the lyrics here and there before we dove back in.
“Holy shit, that doesn’t even sound like the same song,” Claude said from the doorway of the booth, a look of approval on his face as he fell silent to hear the rest of it play out. “Do you need me to adjust anything?
“No, actually,” Tibby said. “We worked it around the drumline to pull out the more sinister aspects. You nailed that shit hard, so we upped our games to really highlight the vibe.”
“Can I hear it from the top?”
“Hell yeah,” I said.
“They want Tibby next, but in about fifteen minutes,” Claude said as he dropped into the chair across from me.
“Good thing I’m warmed up,” Tibby said before he launched into the song.
With the drumline playing from Tony’s phone, we were able to perform it for Claude, whose hands found the beat of the song, without the need of his sticks. Fifteen minutes might not be a lot of time, but we worked through that song three times before Tibby was called into the booth.
“I think we need to move that one up the list,” Claude said, as he made note of three minor changes he wanted to make to his beat.
“I agree,” Tony said.
With the list between us, we started looking for the best slot to move it into. Between the current four and five wound up being the consensus, so Tony drew an arrow on the master list he’d printed up, and we turned our attention to the next song that could use improvement.
That first day set the tone for our week, with not much time for more than showers and goodnights by the time we made it home each night.
Dinner was one of the subs and salads we’d stocked the fridge in our rehearsal space with.
Bottled water, iced tea, and Gatorade made up the rest of the contents.
We had six songs down by the time we rolled into our Friday night gig, far more exhausted than we’d expected to be when we started unloading the box truck.
“Hey, you guys need a hand?”
Deep voice in a dim alley? Let’s just say we all stepped closer to Wolf when the voice rang out.
“We might,” Wolf said. “You make it a habit of volunteering your time?”
The guy who stepped fully into the light was well over six feet, with clothes that dropped off a skinny frame like they’d once fit him better.
“When it looks like someone needs it,” the guy said, closing the distance and holding out his hand. “My name’s Vance.”
Wolf shook his hand firmly and looked to be sizing him up. “Wolf. And yeah, we could use some help.”
“Yeah, we can,” Claude said. “Especially with these drums. I’m Claude.”
One by one we introduced ourselves as we carried in our equipment, Vance displaying surprising knowledge about where to position things on a stage. He certainly earned a raised eyebrow from Wolf, who only had to adjust a few things before we were all set up.
Somehow, all of that exhaustion melted after we’d been introduced.
Having learned our lesson at the previous show, we kicked things off with Fuck You!
and followed it up with Failed and Fried, which had gone so smoothly that the sixth song we’d recorded was a bonus acoustic version of it that we couldn’t wait to unveil the next time we played an acoustic set.
We still played the covers we’d rehearsed, since they’d be a part of our Rocktoberfest set, but as we finished polishing the rest of the songs for our recording session, we’d slowly integrate them into our sets and phase out the covers well before our debut album dropped.
Tonight, I wasn’t gonna fuck up and fiddle with my hair.
I wasn’t going to let it matter if the flash went off and maybe caught a hint of those scars.
Me and my boys were gonna be the stars of every superstar fantasy we’d ever had, even if this was a club and not a stadium.
Balls to the wall, we played our set, and afterward, I was gonna see if Pressley wanted to play a bit of one-on-one, particularly while I was still flying high from being onstage.