by W E DeVore
JJ and Tom joined them, and Tom winked at Q saying, “I think we should give that rock star of yours a nice, long solo. Just to be friendly. Y’all feel like jamming Motherless child?”
Q grinned at him. “That would be the friendly thing to do, Tommy. Seeing as how he came all the way uptown and all.”
JJ glanced over his shoulder at Derek and let out a low whistle. “That poor white boy’s going down.”
◆◆◆
By nine, the Cove had a respectable crowd of a hundred or so people. Not as great as Q had hoped, but better than it had seen in a while. Word hadn’t spread as fast as she’d expected that Stanley Gerard was playing an impromptu gig at the Cove. She tried to remember the last time she’d seen it filled to capacity and failed. But a hundred people on a Saturday night at the end of May was still better than nothing.
She’d managed to placate Derek, telling him that they wanted to make a show of bringing him up a few songs into the set, to build the suspense. He was sitting at the bar, overtly flirting with Yvie, much to Ben and Sanger’s annoyance and Yvie’s apparent delight.
After ten minutes of being ignored by the woman with whom he was presumably on a date, Sanger finally walked over to the side of the stage and gestured for Q to join him.
She jumped down to stand next to him on the dance floor and he said in a low whisper, “If that motherfucker calls me ‘Spot’ one more time in front of Yvie, I’m going to lose my shit.”
Q put her hands on her hips. “Well, bark at him, not me.”
“Go to hell, Clementine,” he said. “That’s not helpful.”
“Hey, cowboy, you’re the one who had a lover’s quarrel with your ex in front of her on your first date. You ask me? You’re getting off easy. Sit down and take your medicine like a man.”
He glanced at Stanley sitting on the piano bench and hung his head, shoving his hands into his pockets and she took sympathy on him.
“Look, Sanger, it’s just for a couple of songs, then I’ll bring Derek up here and bury his ass when he tries to take a solo. You want my advice? Don’t make a territorial display. You’ll just be giving him what he wants. It’s a game for him and it’s not fun unless he gets a rise out of you.” She pushed him back towards the bar. “So, stop making it fun. Go play a game of pool or something. Give Yvie some space to make you suffer.”
By the look on his face, suffering was exactly what Yvonne Bordelon had been making him do. Q stood on her tiptoes and kissed his cheek before saying, “Just try to stop being so serious for one night. For me? Please. I’m begging you to loosen up. You’re completely harshing my vibe right now.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” he asked, glaring at her.
“You’re being a little black raincloud that’s eating joy and I’ve got enough on my plate without worrying whether or not you’re having a good time. It’s Saturday night. In New Orleans. You’re at a show with a pretty woman and an open bar tab. It ain’t rocket science, cowboy. Have a couple drinks, shake that rarely shooken ass of yours... just relax, will you?” She reached out and rapped on his forehead three times with her knuckles. “You’re thinking too much. Stop it.”
He started to laugh and all tension that had ensconced him evaporated. “How do you do that?”
“Haven’t you gotten the memo? Ask Derek. I’m the motherfucking archangel, cowboy.”
He leaned down and kissed her cheek. “Never thought I’d agree with that asshole, but, yes, you are.”
She pushed him back towards the bar and hopped on stage to sit beside Stanley behind the old upright. As usual, Stanley was on rhythm and Q took the melody. She looked towards the side of the stage at Michael and nodded to him.
He gave her the thumbs up. She nudged Stanley and said into the microphone, “You gonna greet the crowd or what, old man?”
The audience laughed, and he said, “Nah, young blood, I thought I’d leave that to you. Seeing as how you like to run your mouth so much.”
The crowd hooted, and she prodded him with her hip. They started playing the intro together and Q said, “Alright, then. Ladies and gentlemen, I’m Q Toledano and we’re QT and the Beasts. These two old men on stage with us are a couple of nobodies I picked up at a nursing home.”
Stanley said into the mic, “With age, comes experience, my dear.”
“That’s what y’all keep on telling me….”
“You’re in love, don’t try to deny it.”
They picked up the tempo and swung into a boogie-woogie rhythm as the band started behind them. The horn section blew a funkier version of the melody. They sang in harmony:
You try to hide it
You try to fight it
Stanley and Q looked at each other and pecked their heads at one another to the instructive lyrics:
You go in and out and back and so it goes
But when it’s there, you can’t defy it
You’re in love! Don’t try to deny it
As they finished the first verse, Stanley’s right hand moved up between hers to double the melody. She made a show of batting his hand away as if they were fighting for control of the piano and shouted, “Stay in your lane, old man!”
It ain’t a car, so you can’t drive it
It ain’t a wave, so you can’t ride it
It ain’t a rule, so you can’t mind it
You’re in love! Don’t try to deny it
The piano solo was coming up and Stanley suddenly said into the mic, “Take over for me, kid. Give an old man a thrill and let me solo.”
He slid off the bench, keeping his left hand running the rhythm while walking behind Q to sit on her right. She slid down the bench doing several questionable chord changes to make her way down the keyboard.
Stanley let go of the keys with his left hand and sat down to take over the melody and the solo. Q’s brain flipped through the mental gymnastics of suddenly playing the rhythm and harmony instead of the melody, while her fingers did some gymnastics of their own trying to play a Stanley Gerard bass line.
As the first song came to a close, Q realized that she was sweating profusely. Stanley handed her a towel from the top of the piano.
He said in the mic, “Try to keep up, young blood.”
The audience exploded in laughter and applause. Q grinned at Stanley. There was a delight inside him that had been absent all these weeks. It was as if he fed off the adoration and it strengthened him, if only for a few joyous, fleeting moments. Three songs into the set, he grimaced at her and she knew he needed a break. He stood up and walked to the back of the stage where Tori stood waiting, concern and worry tracking over her face. She glared at Q as she walked with him to the bar and Q tried not to take it personally. Tori had made it abundantly clear over the last three days that she disapproved of this gig and blamed Q for it. Once Sanger had called to tell her that he would be at the Cove with Yvie on a date, her recriminations had grown exponentially.
Q pointed to Derek at the bar and beckoned him to the stage with her index finger, saying into the microphone, “Ladies and gentlemen, I have a confession. Stanley wanted to get the Voodoo Boogaloo back together tonight, so he asked me to convince Cinco Morello to come play with us.”
The crowd screamed in unison.
“Calm down,” she said. “I fucked up and invited this dude instead. So, he’ll have to do.”
Derek swam through the crowd like a predatory, primeval creature and stepped onto the stage. When he shyly waved at the surprised cheers and camera phones and picked up his guitar, Q realized it had probably been decades since he’d played in a venue this small, this close to the audience. She watched him set up his rig with care and caught a glimpse of nervous energy breaking through the hardened shell of his excessively confident demeanor.
Before his armor went back up, she called the tune, “Motherless child, in F. Try to keep up, Cincinnati.”
“Don’t worry about me, angel,” he said.
She counted out the tempo. “One. Two
. One two three four.”
Tom and JJ started a simple soul shuffle. Tom’s snare cracking against the two and four of the beat. JJ’s bass line throbbed like a heartbeat, setting the foundation for them all to build on. Charlie and Walter played a simple three-chord pattern, somehow making their two horns sound like a single instrument. Q followed on the two and the four of Tom’s shuffle, settling into a slow, hypnotic groove.
Derek started playing a basic rhythm on his Les Paul and Q was relieved that he was at least in time and not turning their simple, steady funk into a white bread monstrosity.
She sang:
Sometimes, I feel like a motherless child.
Sometimes, I feel like a motherless child.
As she sang each phrase, JJ echoed her in a call and response to add a little more gospel to the vibe. They jammed on the melody for several minutes until everyone was deep in the pocket, locked into the steady rhythm Tom was laying down. She let all the fear and hurt from what was happening to Ben, and the pain that Ethan had caused them both, to fill her and she wailed:
Sometimes, I feel like I’m gonna break down and cry
Sometimes, I feel like I’m gonna break down and cry
‘Cause you left me, you left me in the wild
JJ shook his head and cried, “Preach, sister Q.”
Charlie took a breathtaking trumpet solo. He blew a high descending melody. Repeating it, just as Q and JJ had repeated the same words over and over. When he was done, he and Walter backed down into a simple horn part, blowing a long note and bending it down then back up again.
Q stopped playing and clapped her hands to the steady pulse of the kick drum until the audience did the same, before locking back into the beat with JJ and Tom for several more bars. She decided it was time to mess with Derek. If he thought he could hang with Stanley Gerard, now was his chance to prove it.
“Show us what you got, Cincinnati,” she said in the mic.
She looked over at him to see his reaction. His eyes were closed and he was moving to the groove, shuffling his feet like a Lakota warrior. He slid a long sting ray down his fretboard then back up to catch the same note Charlie had used to start his solo, the guitar echoing the same melody, but ringing out just as pure as the trumpet.
Q’s jaw fell open and she grinned at Stanley in surprise. He gave a wide-eyed nod of approval from where he was sitting at the bar. Derek continued to play, his solo wandering from mourning to rage and back. Q drew a circle in the air, signaling the rest of the band to keep playing and let him finish his thought.
Walter said into his horn mic, “Get it, Cincinnati.”
“Preach!” JJ shouted. His dreads were floating around him as he bounced to the two and the four of the beat, stank face fully engaged, his eyes closed.
Tom was wearing a broad grin, watching Derek play, and hitting the snare drum with enthusiasm. As the guitar solo became more frenetic, Q wondered if this steady train was about to go off the rails, but just like that, Derek stopped playing, leaving the groove in place and joining the rest of them in the rhythm section.
She played a quick high note solo before signaling the rest of the band to stop, so that just the steady four-on-the-floor pounding of the kick drum remained. JJ started his pulsing heartbeat again and Walter and Charlie joined in. Derek resumed his Lakota sun dance beside her, muting the fretboard, drumming on the body of the guitar.
She sang:
Sometimes, I feel like I’m gonna break down and cry
Sometimes, I feel like I’m gonna break down and cry
Then I get down, yeah, I get down on my knees and pray
I get down on my knees and pray, pray, pray
“Derek,” she whispered into the microphone. “Let me hear you pray, baby.”
They all continued the mesmerizing rhythm, waiting for him to respond. Just when she thought he hadn’t heard her, he played a high-pitch wail that sounded like a wounded animal. She closed her eyes and began to drift in and out of reality as she lost herself in the steady groove of the band and the magic that was being spun by the most unlikely of sources. As his solo descended into barely controlled madness, Q stopped the band and let him have some space for a few bars. Tom kicked out the beat with the bass drum and they all picked the pattern back up until Derek abruptly stopped and settled back into the spellbinding music they were creating.
Something about the way Derek had played, pushed up her own maternal abandonment issues that had been floating just beneath the surface of her consciousness since they’d recorded the title track for the new Dark Harm album. She closed her eyes and sang, her voice breaking, railing at heaven:
Mama, oh mama, why did you leave me all alone
Mama, oh mama, why did you leave me all alone
Oh, you left me, yeah, you left me all on my own
They all stopped playing and she sang slowly, barely above a whisper:
Yeah, you left, oh you left me, a motherless child
They blasted out a Vegas-style ending and stopped playing. Everyone on stage burst into laughter in wonder and amazement at the minor miracle they’d just crafted that was now lost forever. She noticed at least three cell phones were out taking video, including Ben’s, so maybe it hadn’t been lost forever, after all.
“Derek Sharp, everyone!” Q exclaimed, turning to applaud Derek with the appreciative crowd and finding him absent from the stage.
She looked towards the hallway to her left and saw him packing up his guitar. He picked up his guitar case, threw his gig bag over his shoulder, and walked towards the front door.
She nodded at Charlie and said, “Take over.”
Charlie called a tune and they all began playing before Q could even jump off the stage. She followed Derek through the crowd that was futilely trying to slow his progress to the door with handshakes and selfies. He wordlessly pushed through the masses and out the door. Q dodged a few wayward dancing elbows and ran after him. He was already halfway across the parking lot by the time she made it through the front door.
“Yo! Cincinnati! Where are you going? That was incredible,” she called after him.
He opened the back door to his Porsche and slid his gear in. She slowed to a jog and joined him at his car.
“And here I was thinking you were just a one-trick Goth-rock pony with no real taste in music,” she teased him, paraphrasing the same words he’d said to her the first time they’d met.
He spun around and slammed the door.
“Why the fuck did you call that song?” he asked, clearly upset with her.
Q looked at him in confusion. “It’s a great jam.”
“Why that song, Q?” he asked, again, his face inches from hers.
“Ok, ok, none of us knew you could play like that. Stanley needed to see what you could do, kind of like an audition. Also, the Beasts wanted to fuck with you. See if you’d embarrass yourself trying to play a solo in that much space, which you didn’t. Why don’t you play like that on your albums? That was amazing. You should recut the guitar on this new record and play like that, because those power chord riffs are dullsville. I’m serious. It would be mind-blowing. Like over the top, like...” She flicked her fingers above her head and made an explosion sound with her mouth.
He scowled at her and didn’t say anything.
She punched his arm congenially. “Come on, Cincinnati, come play with us. If I let you leave before we play the new arrangements for Stanley’s record, I’ll never hear the end of it. I texted you instead of Cinco Morello, you understand me? The Cinco Morello. Stanley wants to bring the Voodoo Boogaloo and that’s impossible without a raging motherfucker on guitar. So, you have to hang. We really do need a guitarist. I can’t let the old man down.”
She stood back and put her hands on her hips, looking him up and down. “Who the hell kicked your puppy? You just kicked ass in front of Stanley Gerard. In my world that’s a good night.”
“I’m sorry, it was the way you sang in there…” He shook his head an
d rubbed his temples.
And then she saw it. The familiar traces of a panic attack forming around his eyes. Overwhelming anxiety bubbling through the surface as explicit animosity. She thought about the other night at the studio and realized that whatever damage that song had brought up was probably still roiling just beneath his skin.
“Oh, shit, Derek. I get panic attacks, too.” She apologized and backed away to give him some breathing room. “You want some water? I can get the keys to the apartment, if you need a minute to yourself.”
He opened the door to his car and sat sideways on the passenger seat. She squatted down in front of him, taking his hands in hers, placing her thumb on his wrist to confirm what she’d suspected: his pulse was racing at a frantic pace.
“It was the whole mama mama thing, wasn’t it?” she asked, suddenly feeling very guilty.
He nodded and took several slow breaths.
“It creeps Ben out, too,” she said. “Says it makes his skin crawl. I’m a motherless child, myself. It backs up on me every now and again, I guess.”
His eyebrows stitched together as he struggled to comprehend what she was saying, and he shook his head.
“My mom died when I was four, Derek. Drunk driver,” she clarified.
She thought about the way he had played and realized that there might have been more to it than just wanting to show off, remembering the first two lines of the title track for his new album:
Hey little boy, is your mama home
Did she go away and leave you all alone?
“You?” she asked, tilting her head to the side to look up at him.
He nodded. “Something like that.”
When he didn’t elaborate, she left it alone and said, “Come on back in, Derek. I’ll buy you a drink and introduce you to Stanley. He might even tell you about the time he played with Bowie, if you play your cards right. No more songs about childhood abandonment. I promise.”
He didn’t respond, looking up at the night sky instead.