“It’s not the same.”
He nodded. “Yeah, it’s not the same, but it’s better than an invisible drummer who does nothing.” I looked up at him from my cup of coffee, and the enthusiasm on his face was contagious. I smiled and stood. “Atta girl.”
We went to the second bedroom in his apartment, the one that didn’t touch any other apartment in the building. CJ had intentionally rented that particular apartment for that reason—he kept all his instruments and musical doodads in there to minimize noise, but he also reminded me on more than one occasion that he still had neighbors above and below—and he liked his apartment and wanted to stay. So, even though we’d be playing, we wouldn’t be cranking the music to the max; we’d play it just enough to hear. What was a bummer was he had a drum kit, but it was going to gather dust.
After setting up, he said, “So…play me your favorite song so far.”
I didn’t know that I had a favorite, but I did have one that I thought would be popular—the one I’d been humming the night CJ had volunteered to practice with me and Vicki, the song I’d named “Gonna Get Ya.” So I played the first verse and chorus, and CJ fiddled with the knobs and sliders on his drum machine, producing a solid beat. “That work for now?”
I listened for half a minute and then nodded. “Yeah, I think that’ll work.” So I played along, and after I’d gone through half the song again, I heard CJ throwing down a bassline that made it start to sound like a real goddamn rock song. Hell, yeah. I grinned at him and nodded, playing with even more zeal.
“Now you gotta sing.” I was still smiling but I shook my head. “I want to hear the melody, Kyle. And I know you can sing, because you did backup for the Vagabonds. Just do it.”
He was right. It didn’t matter how un-frontwoman-like I felt—I could do it, and I needed to know if the words and the melody actually worked with the riffs I’d written. Just because I’d half heard them in my head didn’t mean shit. I wouldn’t know if they were great until I heard them—with the music. Unlike Beethoven, I needed to hear them outside my head as well. Inside me, they were like unhatched eggs. Once we played the songs, they sprung to life and grew and I even changed them once I had them up against CJ’s bass…and the drum machine. I still wasn’t sold on the damn thing—yeah, it kept a beat but there was nothing spontaneous or artistic about it. So I looked up at him from my strings and said, “Yeah, okay. Let’s start from the beginning then.”
He grinned and nodded and just a few seconds later, we were playing the intro again. I never would have realized it, but all my lyrics had turned out to be personal. “Gonna Get Ya” had started out as just a rant on paper, expressing anger, mainly because Liz, a woman I never would have friended had I met her at random but who had turned out to be one of my best friends ever, had wound up pretending like I didn’t even exist. I’d known she was upset when I’d confessed to her that her last set of songs, the one she’d written for the Vagabonds’ third album, had made me feel despondent, but things hadn’t been the same since. We’d never gone back to normal, whatever that might be. She’d pretty much put up a wall and decided to be done with me. In the press after our breakup, Barbie was very vocal about how much she hated me, but Liz avoided the question entirely…which somehow seemed to hurt more than Barbie’s tirades.
So “Gonna Get Ya” had become an anthem of sorts, not that I’d ever admit it to anyone. Liz was a hell of a songwriter—I’d never contested that—but I’d always felt like she was a mediocre music writer. I’d frequently put my spin on her music and that she’d rarely protested told me that she knew I was making her music better. Her lyrics? There was no question that she was an amazing poet…but her music often felt contrived and dated.
A tiny green monster had bubbled up inside me, though, as I watched Liz get all kinds of press while she promoted her upcoming album. I should have been happy for my friend; instead, I was angry and upset that my project hadn’t even gotten off the ground…so my song was basically my way of saying, “Enjoy it while you can, ‘cause I’m comin’ to steal your thunder.”
The first two lines I sang were a little tentative as I tried to wrap my mind around the words, continuing to play the music with my fingers, and finding the melody I’d pondered weeks ago when I’d penned the lyrics, but I got them out just the same: “You think you’re so smart, / That you’re way ahead of me.” By the time I hit the chorus, though, I was belting out, “Gonna Get Ya.”
I didn’t dare look over at CJ.
I just focused on the sound—and it sounded pretty damn good. Yeah, a little rusty, because I hadn’t played it much and CJ was just learning it, plus we had a stupid drum machine and I’d never sung the damn song before.
But just the same…I could feel my first single being built from the ground up. And it was fucking good. It heard what I’d wished the Vagabonds had sounded like all along: Heavy, hard, and kick ass.
You might also enjoy these
BOOKS BY JADE C. JAMISON
Savage
Substitute Boyfriend
Finger Bang
Quickies: Sexy Short Stories and Other Stuff
Old House
Then Kiss Me
MADversary
Worst Mother
Fabric of Night
Stating His Case
TANGLED WEB SERIES
1 Tangled Web: A Steamy Heavy Metal Novella
2 Everything But
Punctured, Bruised, and Barely Tattooed (companion novel)
3 Seal All Exits
BULLET SERIES
1 Bullet: An Epic Rock Star Novel
2 Rock Bottom
3 Feverish
4 Fully Automatic
4.5 Christmas Stalkings
5 Slash and Burn
NICKI SOSEBEE SERIES
1 Got the Life
2 Dead
3 No Place to Hide
4 Right Now
5 One More Time
6 Lost
7 Innocent Bystander
8 Blind
9 Fake
WISHES SERIES
1 Be Careful What You Wish For
VAGABONDS TRILOGY
1 On the Run
2 On the Road
3 On the Rocks
NONFICTION
Indie Writer Companion
COMING IN LATE 2015 AND 2016:
Locked and Loaded (Bullet #6)
Lies (Nicki Sosebee #10)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jade C. Jamison was born and raised in Colorado and has decided she likes it enough to stay forever. Jade's day job is teaching Creative Writing, but teaching doesn't stop her from doing a little writing herself.
Unfortunately, there's no one genre that quite fits her writing. Her work has been labeled romance, erotica, suspense, and women's fiction, and the latter is probably the safest and closest description. But you'll see that her writing doesn't quite fit any of those genres.
And Jade is a-okay with that!
On the Road: (Vagabonds Book 2) (New Adult Rock Star Romance) Page 31