The deadline for submissions is the day after tomorrow, but I can save myself an email and tell you right now that this song will definitely be on our upcoming Best in the Rockin’ West compilation CD. It’s the strongest entry we’ve gotten so far, and unless something unexpected comes in under the wire, we’re going to make it the opening track on the record.
The CD goes to replication this week and hits the street by the end of the month. We’ll start playing cuts from it on the air before it comes out. I’ll get you your five free copies as soon as they’re available.
Hope this news rocks your day!!!
Don
I just sat there for a minute, basking in this weird mix of elation … and fear.
21
“Original Prankster”
From: Zach Ryan [[email protected]]
Sent: Tuesday, July 13 3:14 PM
To: Kimberly Milhouse [[email protected]]
Subject: News
Mi Hermana Pequeña …
(Oh yeah, I wasn’t going to call you that anymore, was I? Sorry …)
It was the best of tunes, it was the worst of rooms … Take a look at the attached pics. This is the room they gave me and Glenn at the Four Leaf Clover. (I know I told you the last few places weren’t fancy, but they should rename this place the Grapes of Wrath—seriously!) But you know, it doesn’t matter, because …
And then I was going to give her the good news. Tell her all about the song I’d produced … how Brad had totally shot it down … how I’d sent it to Wild 107 on a whim and just gotten this email that changed everything. What a relief it was to finally get a little validation.
But none of that was really the point, was it?
… because I’m out here to play music and become a better musician and see the country and all of that good stuff. And if sleeping in a total dive once in a while is part of that experience, then so be it.
I’ve had my confidence shaken during the past few months, but you were always there, telling me I was worthy. Well, you know what? I finally got some news that supports your hypothesis, my dear professor.
More later, when I’m sure. But for now—thanks.
L,
Z
She really was the only one that had given me any support when things weren’t going so well—she deserved more than a phone call and a card for her birthday.
I had a few hours, so I headed to the older section of town and browsed the store windows, but I couldn’t seem to find anything. Part of the problem was, I wasn’t sure what I was looking for. I mean, was I looking for something like music or books? Booorrring … Or maybe for clothes, like a sweater or whatever? Get real—I was totally clueless when it came to that stuff. I spent most of my time hoping I’d get inspired by something, but I was striking out, big-time.
Finally, I found myself walking through what must have been a little gallery district, because every other shop was selling paintings or knickknacks or ceramics or whatever. There was a handcrafted-jewelry shop that had some cool-looking stuff in the window, but no way was I getting her jewelry.
Then I spotted them. I couldn’t believe it—a pair of silver earrings shaped like pi signs. You know: π. Perfect. Plus, the novelty of the mathematical symbol would take away from the scary jewelry-ness of the whole thing.
I went in and asked the woman behind the counter if I could see them. Actually, what I really wanted to see was the price tag. I mean, why do they have to write the price of jewelry on this little microsized tag and then turn it around so you can’t see it?
Anyway, they were a hundred bucks. She must have seen my face.
“Who are they for?” she asked.
“A friend. Uh, a girl.”
She smiled. “I see. I’ll tell you what—those happen to be on sale for seventy-nine dollars, but just for today.”
That was still a lot of money, but Kimber had been real nice to me. And I’d saved a little of my gig money after expenses, and there was no getting around it—they were perfect for her.
“Thanks. I’ll take them. Can you wrap them for me?”
“Certainly.”
Then I bought a card next door and I got directions to a place where I could get it shipped off to her. When I got there, I filled out the card.
Don’t ever let anyone tell you that π r2.
Because believe me, baby, pie are round …
Have a great 16th!
L,
Z
You know, for being such a dive, the FLC actually drew a pretty good-sized crowd. Not that they gave us standing ovations or anything, but at least they were more responsive than the staff. Which might have had something to do with the fact that they were also the hardest-drinking crowd we’d seen. At some clubs the people are there for the music, and the food and drinks are kind of a bonus. Other places are all about the social scene—the dancing, flirting, who’s-going-home-with-who thing. (And each of these places required some fine-tuning of our set list, believe me—we kept applying the hard-earned lesson we’d been taught back at the Dog & Pony.…)
But at the FLC the name of the main game was alcohol. Okay … judging by some of the people leaving and then coming back in, maybe other chemicals were involved, too. But for such a hard-drinking crowd they were reasonably behaved. At least for the first part of the week …
Friday night was packed, and the place seemed a little tense. A few fights broke out, but here the staff just let them run their course. Usually the fights ended up going outside, where you could hear shouting with lots of f-bombs being thrown back and forth. During the second set there was the sound of breaking glass, and a few minutes later I could make out the flashing red lights of a police car through the grimy windows.
At the next break Glenn came up to me. “Hey, can you live without your eighteen-inch crash?”
“I guess so.”
“Good. I just want to be ready if something breaks. If you take the stand apart, we’ll have some pretty good lengths of pipe up here onstage.”
And not thirty minutes later I damn near used one of them. We were in the middle of a song when this total assbite decided he’d get up onstage. Maybe he just had the urge to sing along—who knows? Glenn said something to him, probably asking him to get down, and the guy ignored him. When Glenn said something again, the guy pushed him away and started heading toward Jamie. I was about to stop and help, but before I could budge, Glenn unslung his guitar—Blackie!—and swung it like a bat.
He tagged the guy in the shoulder, which spun him around, and then Glenn gave him a hard shove in the hip with his boot, and crash … the guy went flailing over the front of the stage. The whole thing took maybe ten seconds, and Glenn had his guitar back on and was back in the song. The guy lay there for a minute, then staggered to his feet. He made like he was going to try to climb back up onstage, and I decided that if he did, I was going after him with a piece of that stand in my hand for insurance. But his friends grabbed him and dragged him out the door instead. Holy wow …
Thankfully, we got through the rest of the night without anything else breaking—that was one gig I was glad to see end.
I didn’t hang around afterward to unwind—I was toast. I fell asleep wondering if this is what they meant by “paying your dues.”
Someone was shaking me. “Zach! Zach, get up, man—someone’s messing with our motor home!”
“Huh …” I opened my eyes. It was Glenn. “What’s going on?”
“I need some backup. Someone’s down in the parking lot, breaking into the Bad-Mobile. Let’s go!”
WTF …? I rolled out of bed and pulled my jeans and shoes on. It was still dark out. I looked around, wishing my cymbal stand or something were nearby, but I couldn’t see anything worthwhile. I would have given anything for at least a flashlight.
He must have seen me look at the pull chain for the bulb. “Don’t turn the light on—they’ll see it.”
Crap. “Okay, let’s roll.”
As we flew dow
n the hallway, I said, “So why don’t we call the cops?”
“Take too long … all our stuff’ll be gone by then.”
By the time we got down to the parking lot, the door to the Bad-Mobile was wide open. There was no one in sight—whoever they were, they must have been inside.
I looked at Glenn. “Now what?” I was trying to whisper but it was difficult because I was panting so hard. “How many guys did you see?”
He shrugged, but I wasn’t exactly sure which question he was answering. It didn’t really matter, because just then he picked up a beer bottle off the gravel and flung it at the motor home, where it hit the side with a loud thunk. “Hey!” he yelled, his voice surprisingly loud and deep. “Get the hell out of there!”
At first there was no response. Then there was some commotion inside, and after a minute someone stuck his face out for half a second. The face disappeared, then a few seconds later three guys came out. One of them might have been the butthead who’d climbed onstage, but at that moment I was more concerned by the fact that there were three of them, they weren’t exactly little, and one of them had a bass guitar in his hands while the other two were each carrying some of our spare electronic equipment.
We stood there for a second, maybe fifty feet apart, looking at each other in the dim blue light of a distant streetlamp. Then Glenn spoke up. “The cops are on their way—they’ll be here any second. If they catch you with that stuff, it’ll be B&E plus grand larceny and you’re going to prison. All for some crap that ain’t worth a hundred bucks in a pawnshop. So if you’re smart, you’ll put it back and get the hell out of here.”
One of them said something to the others that I couldn’t catch, then turned back to us. “You didn’t call no cops,” he shouted hoarsely. “Screw you!” He started to move away from the Bad-Mobile with the bass in his hands.
“No,” came a voice from beside us. “Screw you.”
I whipped around. It was Danny, holding a gun in his hands. And he looked like he knew how to handle it, too. All of a sudden I could feel my heart pounding in my chest like a freakin’ bass drum.
“All right, guys,” Glenn said. “Game over. Put the stuff down and clear out.”
The two guys who hadn’t said anything set their stuff down and backed away with their hands up, then turned and ran off. The other one hesitated.
Danny pointed the pistol right at him, holding it up with both hands as he looked at the guy over the sights and squinted one eye. “Bro,” he said slowly, “that’s my 1965 Fender Precision bass you’re holding there, and there’s no way I’m gonna stand here and watch you walk away with it. Comprende?”
Even though the guy was probably drunk or high or whatever, that seemed to get through. He put it down and half ran, half staggered away.
“And don’t come back!” I yelled for some stupid reason, probably because I hadn’t said anything yet.
I took a deep breath … I could feel it kinda shake as I let it out. I turned to Danny. “Wow … I didn’t know you’d brought a gun on the road with you.”
He bristled. “You got a problem with that?”
“No, I just—” Then I stopped stone-cold—he was pointing it at me. “Are you crazy?” I said. “What the hell are you doing?”
He put his finger on the trigger.
I took a step back. “Hey!”
He pulled the trigger.
Squirt …
I looked down at the drops of water on my bare chest, then I looked back up at him. He tried to keep a straight face, but he busted up, and pretty soon so did Glenn.
I was pissed. “You son of a …” But it was hard to stay mad, and that kind of laughter is totally contagious. Pretty soon all three of us were standing in the parking lot at four in the morning, laughing so hard we had tears coming out of our eyes.
22
“Whiskey in the Morning”
We spent the next hour or so unloading anything of value from the Bad-Mobile and putting it up in our room—we figured there was no guarantee they wouldn’t come back, in spite of my parting words. And whenever the conversation wound down, either Danny or Glenn would hold up a finger and shake it like a strict teacher and say, “And don’t come back!” and then they’d be doubled up all over again, laughing so hard they could barely breathe.
By the time we were done, the sun was up, and we were so wired from the excitement and the exercise that there was no way we were going back to sleep.
“Anyone up for breakfast?” Danny asked. “I found the perfect local joint. It’s like the total funk de funk, man.”
So he led us downtown, past the coffeehouse Glenn and I had been to earlier. We turned the corner onto Main Street and followed him into this place with a big vintage sign out front that said B&W BAR & CAFÉ.
“This is it, guys. What do you think?”
“I think …,” Glenn said dryly, “that the name is certainly accurate.”
He wasn’t kidding. You walked in the double doors—NEVER LOCKED!, the sign said—and running down the right side of the long room was a lunch counter. Or breakfast counter, as the case may be. Complete with vinyl-topped chrome stools bolted to the white linoleum tile. Right out of some old movie. And there were actors on the set, in the form of locals sitting on those stools drinking coffee and eating from plates piled high with home fries and ham steaks and hotcakes. And a guy behind the counter with one of those tall, round paper chef’s hats, cooking up a storm on a huge griddle. And a waitress with a uniform, complete with name tag which—I swear to God—said MARGE. And yeah, she was a little large. And she was definitely in charge.
But going down the left side of the room was a bar. With metal stools, too, only not bolted to the floor. Of course. How could you have a bar fight with the stools bolted to the floor? And the floor was also linoleum, but it was more a blotchy black, not cheery white. The different types of flooring met down the middle of the room, like the borders of two totally different countries. And yeah, the bar side of the movie set had its own characters, too. There was this skinny dude behind the bar, pouring shots. He was so pale he looked like he’d never left the place. (At least while the sun was up. I looked for pointy canines, but I couldn’t tell.…) And there were rough-looking old guys lined up at the bar, pounding down whiskey. At six in the morning. (I guess that’s kinda the definition of “rough old guy,” isn’t it?)
It was surreal, the two opposite sides of the room, each with its own group of people at their own counters, back to back maybe ten feet away from each other … but worlds apart.
There was no chirpy little hostess waiting to seat us, either. You just walked in, chose your poison—coronaries on the right, cirrhosis on the left—and took your stool accordingly. We just stood there for a minute, taking it in. I think we were all pretty loopy from the whole parking-lot adventure and the lack of sleep that followed.
“I’m liking it,” I finally said.
“Me too,” Glenn agreed. “It’s real.”
Danny looked around the room. “If I lived around here,” he announced, “this would be my regular hang.” He paused. “The girls would absolutely hate it.”
Glenn nodded. “Maybe that’s part of the attraction?”
We looked at each other and slowly grinned. Like I said, it was a goofy morning.
We found some stools at the breakfast counter and had a seat. After a few minutes Marge-the-waitress came by—with a pen jammed behind her ear and a cigarette dangling from her mouth—and took our order. I swear, she was the one that Jackie, back in Bozeman, must have used as her role model.
“Back in a few,” Glenn said after we’d ordered, and he took off in search of the restroom.
Maybe it was the loopiness of the morning—I don’t know—but out of the blue I turned to Danny. “Hey, you wanna listen to this tune I found? I think we could cover it.”
“Sure, let’s hear it.”
So I dialed up “Every Day” on my phone, handed him the earbuds, and pressed play. Aft
er a few seconds he was nodding in time and tapping his foot. And then he was smiling as he was nodding and tapping.
When it was over, he took out the buds. “That was pretty awesome.” He looked at the phone. “KJ? Never heard of them. Where’d you find it?”
“I think they’re an indie band out of California. The tune’s getting a little airplay.” Close enough … just a matter of tense, right? “Anyway, I heard it and liked it, so I downloaded it.”
“I could totally see us doing that. It rocks.”
I just nodded casually, but inside I was thinking, Yesss!
When Glenn came back, Danny was all like, “GT, you’ve gotta hear this cool song Zach found. It’d be a killer tune for us to cover.”
Note to self: You have got to learn to think these things through.…
I waved it off. “Remind me later,” I said to Glenn. “Actually, I’ve got a few different things I want you to hear.” I put my phone away, then looked over at Danny and changed the subject. “Was that really your P Bass that that guy had?”
He shook his head. “You think I’d leave that alone in the Bad-Mobile overnight? But I thought it was better than saying it was my cheap backup that I could replace at any Guitar Center.” He grinned. “Worked, didn’t it?”
Just then the food showed up. And as we ate, we rehashed our heroic foiling of the robbery of the faithful Bad-Mobile. When we were about done with breakfast, I brought up something that had popped into my mind earlier. “So, you heard us go down the hall, and then you heard us in the parking lot below?” I asked Danny.
“Yeah, my window was cracked open. And you guys weren’t too quiet down there.” He imitated Glenn in the parking lot. “Hey,” he called in a deep dumb-guy voice that sounded like Patrick on SpongeBob. “Get the hell out of there …!”
“Well, I’m glad we were so noisy. So, how come Brad didn’t come down with you?”
Road Rash Page 14