Fast Lane

by Ashley, Kristen

  “You underestimate me.”

  Abruptly, his expression changed.

  Gentle but earnest.

  And determined.

  “Lyla, cher, love of my life,” he framed my head in his hands and put his face close, “you are not gettin’ me. I’m tellin’ you, what I said at your house holds true. I needed to give you the space to come out from under me and breathe and I needed the space to work all of that out of me and those two did not go together. There was no other way it could be, it had to go like that. And I know, given the choice, you would have stuck by me, and I couldn’t have that because I had to let my life go dark so I could find the light and I’d never let you descend in that darkness with me, so I’d make it so you went away. And when I did, it’d be in a way you wouldn’t come back.”

  “Prea—”

  “Lyla, baby, I love you and I will for the whole of my life and part of that, an important part, is back then, even if you didn’t wanna do it, didn’t know you were doin’ it, you gave me what I needed.”

  My mouth clamped shut.

  “At that beach, I walked away from you, and in my head, the same words tumbled over and over, ‘Don’t call my name, don’t call my name, don’t call my name.’ And I got up to that condo and was sick to my stomach. Puked in the sink for what felt like hours. Because you didn’t call my name and I was wrecked. I didn’t know how to be without your love shinin’ its light on me. And I was also so fuckin’ glad you didn’t call my name because if you had, I would have caved in a snap. Then I’d spend the next however long it took wrecking you, truly wrecking you, and I would not have been able to live with myself when I’d done that.”

  My head fell forward so my forehead was resting on his line of his nose.

  Then he whispered, “She finally gets me.”

  “But I…there were…” I swallowed. “You should know…”

  “You got a guy,” he stated flatly.

  I pulled my head away, but my eyes went anywhere but to him, and I said, “Not exactly.”

  “Cher,” he said warningly.

  I looked at him. “I lied. Sonia did too so you would…um…”

  He started grinning. “So, I’d fuck off.”

  “Something like that,” I mumbled.

  He kept grinning.

  Damn.

  All that he’d just said, and he was grinning.

  And now I had to say what I had to say.

  “I had a thing, with Cat,” I whispered.

  The grin disappeared.

  But he just said, “Okay.”

  “It didn’t—”

  “How ’bout, in that, we do what we did before. You knew you weren’t my first. We didn’t talk about that. Now you do the same,” he suggested. “When we were together, it was just you for me, and me for you. And now that we’re back together, we got that back too.”

  I totally could do that.

  So, I nodded.

  Preacher didn’t say anything.

  I didn’t either.

  Okay.

  Now what?

  Were we…?

  What?

  He said “back together” but what did that mean?

  Exactly.

  “You listen to the CD?” he asked.

  “No,” I told him.

  “You gotta listen to the CD, baby.”

  I now wanted to listen to the CD.

  But in that moment, I needed something else.

  “Where do we go from here?” I asked.

  “Well, in a little bit, I gotta be in Louisiana to start rehearsin’ with the boys. But between then and now, you wanna see my cabin?”

  Lyla and McCade:

  (Lyla) As much as we could be together in that six weeks, we were together. The cabin was an easy drive from Phoenix, so I went up on the weekends if Preacher was there, and sometimes Preacher stayed at my place in Phoenix as well.

  But he had a lot to do in LA with the album about to drop so this wasn’t as much time as we would have liked to have.

  While all this was happening, we had no idea that Jesse was facing an onslaught.

  (McCade) We shoulda guessed.

  [Grins]

  Reckon we were in our own world.

  (Lyla) We absolutely were in our own world.

  But we’d made the decision that this would be just us. We had this little window of time where it would be just us in a way that it never was.

  So, we took it and in doing so, kinda forgot the people we loved would be worried about what was happening between us.

  [Off tape, directed to Lyla]

  Both you and Simms said you were worried about telling McCade that you were pregnant. Obviously, this worked out well. Why was it that you were concerned?

  (McCade [visibly stunned, and perhaps annoyed] to Lyla) You were worried?

  Yes, honey. (Lyla)

  For fuck’s sake, why? (McCade)

  Well, we’d just gotten back together. The album was about to drop. The media were beginning to hound. You’re within days of starting rehearsals to do your first show in six years, and then embark on a tour. You’d been through hell. I’d been through hell. It wasn’t a time to start a family. I mean, we weren’t even living together, and with you going off to tour for five months, that wouldn’t happen soon.

  And I know you. If you weren’t pissed I was pregnant, and even if you were in the beginning, you’d want me close. You’d want to keep an eye on me. You wouldn’t want to miss anything. And you were off on tour and I had a job. (Lyla)

  All right, I hear you.

  Though no way in fuck I’d ever be pissed you were havin’ my baby.

  But why didn’t you tell me you were worried? (McCade)

  Because you weren’t pissed so I didn’t think it factored. (Lyla)

  [McCade turns attention to interviewer]

  Make it clear I was in no way pissed.

  I was over the goddamned moon. (McCade)

  He was. He really, really was. (Lyla [smiling slowly])

  [Off tape, directed to Lyla]

  That day at the beach house, when you reunited, did you listen to the Follow Your Star CD?

  [Smiles quickly, openly and brightly]

  It took a while.

  We had other things we got busy doing.

  But after a few hours…

  Yes.

  [Turns head to look down at her husband, still smiling]

  Oh yes.

  I did.

  Jesse:

  They got married up at that cabin.

  The day after the tour ended.

  Lyla was seven months pregnant, and both times she was pregnant, she hit around six months, she was pregnant.

  Big ole belly.

  [Chuckles]

  She did not care.

  She knew how beautiful she was.

  Don’t matter anyway.

  She was happy.

  Shawn’s aunties made her wedding dress, and, outside Natalie, Lyla was the most beautiful bride I’d ever seen.

  Left her job in good hands down in Phoenix and started volunteering at an animal shelter up there.

  She runs that animal shelter now.

  Preacher himself cleared out another patch of their land, little bit farther up the mountain. But it wasn’t only him who built the studio up there.

  Roadmasters recorded our next album there and then…

  [Slowly smiles]

  Well then, the rest, I guess, is history.

  Interviewer’s Notes:

  Since their comeback, regardless of some of the bandmember’s side ventures—including DuShawn Williams’s ongoing solo efforts, the Second Coming carrying on throughout the aughts before disbanding in 2011 after Dave Clinton’s partner had their first baby and he wished to spend more time at home with his growing family, eventually becoming (for the most part) a stay-at-home dad, Jesse Simms going on to be a sought-after music producer, and Tim Townes becoming deeply involved in his wife, Marty’s film documentary directorial efforts—P
reacher McCade and the Roadmasters released six more albums and toured four times.

  All of these albums were recorded in the studio on McCade’s mountain.

  The band still records and performs, and to this day is managed by Tom Mancosa.

  In 2007, Jesse Simms married Natalie Rathwaite, a paralegal he met while the Roadmasters were organizing their third Legal Aid charity concert.

  Natalie Rathwaite-Simms has since become a civil rights attorney, and they have two daughters, aged ten and eight: Delphin (which is, incidentally, Preacher McCade’s middle name) and Genevieve.

  Jesse Simms’s mother, Minnie, died when Simms was fifty.

  Thus, she lived not only to see her son earn success in one of the most respected, and enduring, rock bands in history, but also the marriages of all of her children, and the births of six (seven) grandchildren.

  Simms’s sister, Lana, married an NYPD officer who is now a detective. They have three children. She lives with her family in New York City.

  Shortly after these interviews were conducted, Simms and McCade, with Lyla and Lana, encouraged Simms’s sister Penny to enter rehab.

  Penny is still married to her second husband, they have one child, and she is sober for the first time in over three decades.

  Penny’s first child is still unknown to the Simmses.

  After McCade’s parents were found guilty, and the story broke not only about the death of Baptiste McCade, but the conviction of DuShawn Williams and McCade’s parents’ part in that, from before Preacher McCade’s disappearance, until very recently, McCade, the Roadmasters, Tom Mancosa and Williams’s and the Roadmasters’ fans campaigned vigorously for a review of Preacher McCade’s father’s statements as a witness in the prosecution of DuShawn Williams.

  DuShawn Williams was exonerated in 2019.

  Williams donated the restitution he received to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.

  Loretta and Oscar Williams are both still alive and thus have lived to witness their son’s many accomplishments as well as his name being cleared.

  Oscar Williams, and posthumously, his father, Buddy, are in consideration to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for their recording careers, as well as their influence and training of not only DuShawn Williams and Preacher McCade, but also Louisiana Jazz, Blues and Funk greats Coltrane Richardson, Maurice “MoMo” Bell, Teona “Baby” Foster and Maryjane Jarrett.

  DuShawn Williams and his wife Vanessa have three children, all boys: Oscar, Muddy “Mudd” and John Lee, known as “Buddy”.

  Tim Townes and Marty Townes still surf, make music and films and reside in the home in Malibu that Tim purchased at the beginning of the Roadmasters’ rise to fame. A home that they’ve shared since they met.

  Other than Brody, they have no children.

  Brody Townes is also said to be a world-class surfer. However, even if he’s widely known as one of the best, he did not enter the circuit.

  Instead, at the of age seventeen, he started the website RockitRollit.com which is a portal for independent musical acts to submit work, including audio files and videos, in which subscribers can listen, view and make playlists and the artists earn royalties, gather followings and a number have gleaned record deals.

  His father provided the startup capital, is a consultant in this venture and all the Roadmasters, as well as Tom Mancosa, sit on the board.

  Although Brody Townes is in his early 20s, he’s been declared one of the one hundred most influential people in the entertainment industry and it is known his estimated worth is ten times his father’s.

  Dave Clinton met Janey “YB” (short for “Yo, Bitch”) Rogers, lead guitarist of the all-female punk band, Yeah, I Got Tits, in 2008.

  After the duo was banned from five hotels in four cities for destroying rooms, in 2009, Rogers announced she was “off the market,” indicating she’d become engaged to Clinton. She did this during a live interview on an airplane, after which she jumped out of it, parachuting safely to the ground.

  Clinton and Rogers married on a beach in Fiji in 2010 with Rogers wearing a leopard-print mini-dress reminiscent of Wilma Flintstone and Clinton wearing a misshapen V-neck T-shirt, loose, patterned pants and a shawl-necked collar cardigan much like the fictional “The Dude” Lebowski.

  Once named husband and wife, they charged into the surf whereupon Rogers pretended to drown.

  The Roadmasters were in attendance and there is a now-iconic picture of the band members and their respective partners standing on the beach close together, laughing at these antics.

  Lyla is wearing a T-shirt that states: “I ♥ My Uterus.”

  After this picture was published, there was such a run on this T-shirt, at one point, they were selling for $1000.

  Clinton and Rogers filed a petition for divorce the very next day which was granted after six months.

  And since their wedding, they have never spent a day apart.

  Yeah, I Got Tits disbanded in 2012, Rogers briefly fronted the band So What? before she left music altogether and now works as a spokeswoman for a variety of women’s rights organizations.

  They have three children, two girls and a boy, Maizie, Daizie and Haizie.

  In 1997, Tom Mancosa started an entertainment management agency that specializes in musical acts.

  Currently, his company has over one hundred employees that provide management and representation to over two hundred and fifty artists in the music industry.

  Mancosa has also been named as one of the one hundred most influential people in the entertainment industry.

  Mancosa and his wife Simone have three children, two boys, Frank and Leo, and a girl, Claudette.

  Rick Pileggi remains in prison on drug, racketeering, assault and attempted murder charges, serving his life sentence without the opportunity for parole.

  Nick Pileggi has been married four times and has six (seven) children by three (four) different women. He is currently employed as head maintenance engineer of the local high school.

  Nick Pileggi requested to be interviewed for this project but was denied by the interviewer.

  Josh Hardy resides in Los Angeles and, as Simms described during his interview, is a sessions player.

  When contacted to offer his version of events, Hardy sent the following statement:

  I want nothing to do with anything regarding Preacher McCade and the Roadmasters.

  I regret the statements I made about Preacher, Jesse and Lyla only because the Roadmasters made me regret them.

  It was a better band when I was in it and they know it. It’s unfortunate they made it so the world wouldn’t know it.

  This is a lesson that jealousy is an ugly thing and I’ve lived that for the last thirty years.

  Upon reading this statement:

  Jesse:

  [Grins]

  Yeah, he’s definitely lived that.

  Lyla:

  [Laughs uncontrollably]

  McCade:

  [Shakes head]

  Fuck, that guy’s still an asshole.

  Cat Trelane remains one of the most sought-after and influential photographers in the fashion industry, as well as continuing his photojournalism on tour with several musical acts and throughout the filming of a variety of movies.

  Since his first book with the Roadmasters, he’s published seven more.

  At a recent retrospective of his work, a segment of the show was dedicated to images of Lyla.

  All of the Roadmasters, including Tom Mancosa, and all of their partners, Lyla as well as Preacher McCade attended the opening.

  It was noted, however, that McCade and Lyla left early.

  Trelane remains unmarried.

  Throughout the late 90s and the aughts, Leeanne Brewster would consistently, and publicly, give rise to grievances against Tim Townes, and after Townes married, his wife Marty.

  Thus, at sixteen years of age, making firm statements he was acting on his own, Brody Townes petitioned the courts for emancipation from his
mother, who at the time, shared custody of Brody with his father.

  This petition was dropped, Leeanne Brewster gave up custody rights to her son and disappeared from the public eye.

  She currently resides in Santa Barbara with her husband, an executive recruiter, and their two children.

  She declined the opportunity to provide a statement for this project.

  Brody Townes retains a strained relationship with his mother.

  After his tour when the Roadmasters opened for him, Bobby Sheridan’s career would begin a drastic decline dogged by rumors of rivalries (and not simply with the Roadmasters), professional jealousies, aggrandizing behavior and declining record sales.

  In fact, his next album would be widely criticized as, to quote one reviewer, “so derivative in a sophomoric way of McCade and the Roadmasters, it hurt to listen. But this comes as no surprise, since his first three were imitative of Petty and his Heartbreakers.”

  He would be dropped from his label in 1994.

  Sheridan also declined the opportunity to provide a statement for this project, though on the telephone, he gave permission to be quoted as saying:

  “Fuck Preacher McCade and especially fuck Tommy Mancosa.”

  He, and what members of the Mustangs that remain with him, currently tour the casino circuit in New Mexico, Arizona and Nevada.

  Preacher McCade’s father died in prison in 1999.

  Preacher McCade’s mother died in prison in 2014.

  They both received state-funded funerals that were unattended.

  Jesse:

  Guess Lyla’s momma was right.

  [Off tape]

  Sorry?

  We should all follow our stars.

  [Dips head to the interviewer’s phone that is currently recording and grins largely]