So on a day when the rest of the band was going to take a sightseeing trip around Billings, I asked Glenn if I could borrow a guitar.
“Aren’t you going with us? You’re the unofficial cruise director, man.”
“Thanks, but I’ll pass. I’m just going to stay here and hang, maybe work on a few things.”
“Okay.” He nodded at the acoustic leaning against a chair. “Help yourself.”
“Um, it sort of needs to be an electric.…”
He considered this for a moment. “All right.” He looked at the case next to the bed. “But please put it back in the case as soon as you’re done with it.”
I realized he thought I meant his main Strat. Wow. “Thanks. Really. But there’s no way I’m touching Blackie. I just want to use your backup or something.” He kept a new MIM tuned and ready to go behind his amp onstage. It looked like Blackie, minus all the road rash, but its financial value was only ten percent as much. And its emotional value was more like one percent.
“Oh—no problem,” he said. “Knock yourself out.”
Once they’d left, I fired up my computer and got to work. I’m not going to lie—I’m not much of a guitar player. I’ve been goofing around with it for a couple of years, mostly so I could get some song ideas out of my head and into the hands of a real guitarist. But there’s an advantage to being a drummer—you already have the “rhythm” part of the instrument down. For basic rhythm playing—which is all I can really do—the main challenge was learning how to fret the fundamental chords. Once I got my left hand to do that, the strumming part with the right hand was pretty easy, and I could fake my way through some simple stuff.
My plan was to play a very basic bass part, using the lower strings of the guitar. I’d already figured out the chord changes for the song, and as it played in my headphones, I laid down a driving bass line. I wasn’t nearly good enough to play all over the neck, but by making myself stick to root/fifth stuff, I could get through it okay.
It sounded weird when I listened to it playing back, because I had this lame guitar part along with Glenn’s killer stuff. But then I pitch-shifted my entire part down an octave, and that did it. Instead of hearing two guitar parts, there was just the one hot guitar part, supported by a bass part underneath it.
Doing it this way really made me miss Kyle. He was great at this sort of thing—he would have come up with something way better that would have added more sophistication to the track. But the part I played worked well enough to drive the tune along and beef up the bottom end without getting in the way, and that’s what mattered right now.
Next up was backing vocals. Compared to patching together a bass part, this was easy money. I set up a mic in the room and ran it in flat and dry—I could always process it later if I needed to.
The first thing I did was double the parts Glenn sang on the choruses. I tried to clone his phrasing and sing as much like him as possible, in unison. Once I did that, I put down an actual backing track. I’d started to think of the tune as “Every Day,” because that was the hook line. So I went back and hit all those every day parts, singing a fifth above Glenn. And I didn’t try to be real smooth about it this time—I sang those with a little more rasp in my voice to help give it an edge.
All this took a couple of hours, so I saved the session and shut down my computer before the others came back. I didn’t get a chance to work on it again until Helena, but that was the part I was really looking forward to—the final mix.
There are a hundred different approaches you can take to mixing a song, but for a high-energy tune like this I usually start with the drums. My feeling is that they’re the bedrock—if the drums aren’t happening, nothing’s happening.
I only had four tracks of drums—kick, snare, and two overheads—so I had them dialed in pretty quickly. I went for a simple but hard-hitting sound. But I wanted them to have some punch, so I compressed the kick and snare, giving them more impact without totally drowning out the other stuff.
Then I brought up both of Glenn’s tracks—the guitar and lead vocals—which were the heart of this song. But guitar and vocals occupy the same space, frequency-wise, so you have to be careful or they’ll start competing. I had the guitar pretty hot in the mix to showcase that killer riff at the top, but then I pulled it back when his voice came in. Things are funny that way. Once the listener gets used to a certain part, you can pull it way down (or even off) and they’ll still hear it in their head. Weird, huh?
So once I had a balance between the vocal and guitar, I brought in the bass to warm it up and fill in some gaps. Then I brought up the doubled vocal, which made the mix sound bigger and … I don’t know … more urgent, if that makes any sense. Then I cranked in the backing vocals on the hook lines, and that brought the energy level even higher.
After that, it was just a matter of playing with the balance, going with my gut until it did that same hair-up-on-the-back-of-your-neck thing that it did the first time I’d heard Glenn sing it. I was pretty happy with it at that point, so I burned a copy on disc, then saved and shut down. But I wasn’t quite finished yet. I’d done all this on headphones and my little computer speakers, and while I’m pretty familiar with how things should sound on them, you never really know until you listen on something a little more … substantial.
So I took it over to the club.
It was early afternoon and the club was empty, so I fired up the PA system and played the mix through it, cranking it up pretty freakin’ loud. Then I sat in the middle of the room and listened with my gut. I was trying not to think Does the kick have enough compression? or Should I boost the mids on the guitar a little? I was just letting it pump out of those big fat speakers at me.
I ended up with a big-ass grin on my face. It may not have been perfect, but that thing slammed. I got an unsolicited second opinion, too. There was a scruffy kid cleaning glasses behind the bar, and after I’d listened to the song a couple of times and shut down the PA, he called over.
“Hey, is that you guys?”
“Uh, yeah,” I admitted. Close enough, anyway.
He nodded three or four times slowly. “That song kicks ass, dude.”
That made up my mind.…
He took out his earbuds and shook his head. “No way.”
“Huh?” I guess I really am stupid, expecting Brad to have an open mind about one of Glenn’s original songs.
“Doesn’t do anything for me at all. Plus, no one’s ever heard it, so it ain’t gonna fly at a club.”
“But if we started playing it, and maybe some other originals, then people would hear it. You can only get so far covering other people’s stuff.…”
“So you’re not happy with ‘how far you’ve gotten’ in the last couple of months? Last I remember, you were tossed out of some little high school band that wasn’t so hot to begin with. If GT hadn’t convinced us you were the second coming of Travis Barker, you’d still be back in Los Robles shoveling manure or whatever.”
Whoa. “Okay, I was just asking if—”
“Yeah,” he interrupted. “And I was just answering.”
And that was the end of that.
I guess I’d had some dumb vision of Brad and Danny and Jamie loving the song and wanting to learn it and of us surprising Glenn with it or something. I knew Brad would be the hardest to convince so I’d tried him first. And last, apparently. There wasn’t any point in showing it to Glenn. I tossed it in a nearby wastebasket. All that work for nothing …
Then I stopped. Okay, I thought, so the score’s one to one. That didn’t mean it was game over. So far it was No-Name-scruffy-dishwasher-dude versus Mr. Semipro-Rock-God. (My vote sure didn’t count.) I took the disc back out of the trash. What I needed was a third-party opinion. From someone who had half a clue but who didn’t have their ego involved.
And I knew just where to get it.…
20
“Welcome to Paradise”
Dear Mom, Dad & Alicia-the-monkey-girl … ☺
>
So far, this has been a great trip. Butte’s our last stop up here before we head toward Yellowstone for the next leg. It’s totally cool—an old mining town with a ton of history. The downtown area is kind of like the courthouse square in LR, only bigger and older.
The club here is different than the others—I guess you’d say it’s got a real “vintage” vibe to it …
Cheers!
Zach
The Four Leaf Clover was actually better on the inside than it looked from the outside—the decades-old stench in the place was 60/40 beer to urine, as opposed to the other way around.
The first thing we did was check in with the guy behind the bar. Well, we tried—he was a surly dude who wouldn’t make eye contact and didn’t say more than five words to us. We got a grunt and a nod, “No,” and “Alex is in back.” Okay, the last was accompanied by a thumb jerked over his shoulder to indicate the supposed location of the supposed owner, so maybe I should give him credit for six words. Eight, if you include the FU phrase tattooed across his throat right below his Adam’s apple. Nice …
Of course there was no house system involved, so we had to haul in and set up our own PA. Same deal with stage lights. We didn’t carry much lighting, but the situation was so poor that our six little LED PAR 64 cans would probably double the onstage brightness, so we dug them out and set them up.
After we got our gear loaded in, we went through a quick sound check. Everything sounded fine, but the response from the few people working there was a little underwhelming. As in, absolutely nada. Not Hey, you guys sound pretty good, or even, Man, that guitar was loud. (Hell, I would have been happy with You suck!—at least that would have indicated they’d actually noticed that a live band was playing in the same room.) But it was like they’d seen it all before and just couldn’t be bothered.
After sound check Alex, the owner, finally appeared behind the bar and waved us over—apparently, it was too much effort to actually come to the stage and welcome his new band for the week.
“Here’s the deal,” he grunted by way of greeting. No handshake, no How was the trip? or Can I get you anything? and certainly no time for introductions. We were obviously expected to know who he was, while he obviously didn’t give a shit who we were. “Start at nine o’clock, fifteen-minute break at ten-thirty and midnight.”
“Wait—we’re going until one-thirty, aren’t we?” asked Brad.
He looked at Brad like he was an idiot. “Yup” was all he said.
Four sets was the usual minimum. Heck, a lot of clubs set it up where you’re on for forty-five and off for fifteen, every hour, giving you five shorter sets. Better for the band, and anyone with half a clue will tell you that the time when customers buy the most drinks is during a break. But apparently this guy only had a quarter of a clue, and he was going to wring every last minute of music out of us.
“I’ll start a tab for you,” he continued, totally ignoring the implied question about what happened to our third break, “and it’ll come out of your paycheck at the end of the week.”
“Okay,” Brad said. “What’s the policy on meals?”
Alex gave him that I-don’t-have-time-for-idiots look again and said, “Like I said, you run a tab and everything comes out of your pay.” In other words, they weren’t comping us for anything.
He slid three keys across the counter. Each one was wired to a grimy length of cut off broomstick, like when you ask to use the restroom at some funky gas station. “Rooms are upstairs.” He turned to leave, then thought better of it and turned back. I don’t know, maybe his higher math skills finally kicked in and he realized there were two guys for every girl in our little entourage. “We ain’t runnin’ a free flophouse for locals here, either,” he grumbled. “You get a bunch of sluts who wanna party with the band, you’re either gonna pay extra or you get a room at the Super 8 across the street.”
And with that, our official welcome to the Four Leaf Clover was brought to a close.
“Holy crap!”
“Welcome to the other side of the road,” Glenn said.
We’d just walked into our room above the club. The funk was so bad that it felt like a movie set from one of Mr. Langley’s films on the Depression.
There was a pair of saggy twin beds separated by a beat-up old dresser in a small room with a high ceiling. Dangling from the cracked, yellowed plaster over our heads was a single bare bulb on a cord, with a pull chain. Across from the beds was a thrashed sofa that literally had a spring sticking out of it—I honestly thought they only had those in cartoons. On the floor was this rug that looked like they’d taken some old rope that’d been lying in a barn for a hundred years and coiled it into a big oval. If you kicked it, little clouds of dust arose.
But hey—bonus! Our window looked down on the gravel lot behind the bar, giving us a bird’s-eye view of the pukefest that almost certainly occurred there every Saturday night after closing time.
The idea that anyone would actually bring a girl back to a place like this was just sad. I had half a mind to go get a room at the Super 8 myself, just to make sure I wasn’t carried off by roaches in the middle of the night.
“You know,” Glenn said, “suddenly I have this urge to go somewhere. As in, anywhere.”
“Ditto,” I said, dropping my duffel on one of the beds.
“So let’s go get some coffee or something.”
“Okay, just a sec …” I held up my phone. “I’ve gotta get some pics of this place, or no one will believe it.” I took some quick shots of the room and the view. “Okay, I’m good to go.”
We ended up walking uphill, toward what looked like the original downtown.
“This okay with you?”
We were going by a coffeehouse a few blocks from the club. Bert’s Best Brew. Kind of a funky, organic version of Starbucks. It smelled great from the doorway. “Sure, looks perfect,” I said.
Glenn ordered a coffee and a sandwich from the deli case. Good idea—I don’t think I’d want to eat at the ol’ Four Leaf Clover even if it didn’t go on our tab.
So it’s my turn to order and I’m looking at the sandwiches, too, kinda distracted, when out of my mouth comes, “Venti half-caf three-pump white mocha … nonfat, no whip, extra-hot …”
The guy behind the counter just looks at me like I’m from Jupiter or something. Glenn finally elbows me and says, “Man, we’re not at Starbucks.”
“Huh?” I look up. Oops.
“Yeah, dude,” the guy says in this completely over-the-top LA surfer talk. “Like, totally.”
“Dude! I am, like, so totally sorry. Just flew in from the Coast and I am, like, so majorly jet-lagged it’s, like, unbelievable.…” I dropped it. “Cup of house, and that turkey sandwich. Thanks.”
We got our stuff and sat down. What was so weird about it wasn’t just that I tried to give the guy a Starbucks order—it was the order itself. That was Kimber’s drink, exactly the way she liked it.
Glenn looked at me. “You okay?”
“Well, there’s this girl …” Seems like my mouth was totally off the leash and there was no getting it back.
He just laughed. “Yeah, that’s kind of a given.” He blew on his coffee and took a sip. “Anything you want to talk about?”
I shook my head. “I’m not withholding—I’m just not sure what’s up with her yet. Her brother was in my old band, and he and I were really tight. Were …”
“Man, that sucks. What happened?”
So I told him the whole semi–sob story about being replaced by Justin’s cousin and how it turned out that Josh’s dad had a studio and was all connected and stuff.
“… and the pisser is, I know I’m as solid as he is. I mean, I don’t think I’m God’s gift to music or anything, but—”
He held up his hand, palm out. “Stop. Man, you are head and shoulders above him. End of story.”
“You’ve heard him play?”
“Yeah, I caught them at Land of Lights before we left. I only s
tayed for half a set, but it was enough. They were fools to let you go.”
“Thanks. But they ended up with free access to a pro studio and a guy with connections.”
“Yeah, but I ended up with a very musical drummer, so I win. Connections and studios are great, but in the end it’s all about the songs and the performance.”
“Maybe, but what if you have all that but no real contacts?”
He grinned. “That’s pretty much our situation right now, isn’t it? And they’re sitting in the opposite bus. So if you had to choose, which one would you rather be driving?”
He had a point there. If only things were that simple …
After a while Glenn headed back to the FLC. I decided I’d stay and send the pics. When I checked my email, there were a couple of messages. One of them was from an address I knew as well as my own. Well, I used to know it that well.…
From: Ky [[email protected]]
Sent: Monday, July 12 11:21 PM
To: Zach Ryan [[email protected]]
Subject: [none]
Hey, just wanted to give you a quick heads-up that Kim’s b-day is next week, in case you weren’t aware. No big.
Later,
Kyle
Whoa … That was, like, totally unexpected. Even though I did know when her birthday was. I’d been thinking I might call her. Hmm … maybe I should send her a card, too.
I recognized the address of the second email, too. And to tell the truth, I didn’t really want to open it. It felt like when my phone said that Glenn Taylor had called after the audition. I was pretty sure what the email said, but if I actually read it, then any shred of hope would be gone.
Not that I really had high expectations anyway. I’d just been looking for a second opinion.
Yeah, right …
From: Dandy Don Davis [[email protected]]
Sent: Tuesday, July 13 12:26 PM
To: Zach Ryan [[email protected]]
Subject: RE: Song Entry
Hey Zach!
Thanks for submitting the song “Every Day,” by your band, Killer Jones. I just heard it this morning, and that track totally kicked my butt!
Road Rash Page 13