“Yeah, with a G at the top of the chorus. Got that, JD?” Jamie nodded back.
“Cool,” Danny went on. “Let’s fire it up and see what happens. Who’s gonna care, tonight?”
Glenn shrugged, but that was good enough for me. I said into my mic, “This is one of our original tunes, written by our guitar player, Glenn ‘GT’ Taylor. Hope you enjoy it as much as we do.”
Glenn turned to me and kind of made a face, but I just pulled an Alicia and stuck out my tongue. Then I started clicking my sticks in time and counted it off. He had no choice—he started playing.
It’s funny. I’d heard that thing a million times during the production process, but this was the first time I’d actually played it with a band. Hell, this was the first time the song had ever really been played, period. And it felt even better than the recording. Way better.
The intro drove hard, with me pounding the kick and snare and Danny doing a much better job with the bass line than I ever could have. Then we pulled way back for the vocals.
You go north
and I go south …
every day.
You hear words
that don’t come from my mouth …
every day.
And hearing him sing it—the raw emotion in his voice—I got chills. Seriously.
I sang the every day parts, like I had on the recording, and Jamie joined in with me in unison, strengthening the line.
By the time we got to the solo, we were burning. I heard something that made me look up, and I had to smile. Amber was standing next to Danny, whacking the crap out of the tambourine on the backbeats and making my snare sound even stronger.
I kept the energy level up through the repeat chorus and all the way to the end, never letting up until we got to the big crash ending. And the crowd loved it. One guy even yelled out, “That was bitchin’, man! You got any more originals like that?”
“Not yet,” Glenn admitted. “But here’s one you’ll like.” We ended up doing “Bad Luck”—which I thought was pretty appropriate for me tonight—then followed it up with a bunch of other strong tunes.
Near the end of the set—as we finished up “Naive,” by the Kooks—Glenn broke a string. He started to go for his backup guitar, which is what you’d normally do at a gig until your next break, but this wasn’t a normal gig and there weren’t any more breaks—we were close to being done. Plus, I knew he’d way rather be playing Blackie. So I stopped him.
“Just change your string, we’ll cover.” I was thinking that Danny, Jamie, and I would jam for a minute, but then I remembered how much the audience had liked “Something’s Wrong.” It only had a few simple chords, and I knew them.
I strapped on Glenn’s acoustic and stepped up to his microphone. Damn, it felt like I was naked. I’d never sung onstage without the comfort of being behind my drumset, but this was the perfect night for it. “We’re going to do a little sing-along,” I said into the mic. There were a few grumbles, so I said, “This is so easy you can do it if you’re hammered. In fact, it’ll probably sound better if you’re hammered!” That brought a few laughs. “It goes like this—we sing a line, then you sing something’s wrong. Easy money, honey.” Then I strummed the opening chord and jumped into one of the verses.
When you like music more than life,
Something’s wrong.
When you start sleeping as you drive,
Something’s wrong.
Every time I got to something’s wrong, I pointed to the crowd and they sang it. Okay, they more like drunkenly shouted it, but at least they went along with it. I looked over my shoulder—Glenn wasn’t quite done yet. So I went to the front of the stage and held the mic out and let people make up their own first lines, then everyone would join in on the refrain. Some of them were lame, of course, but some were pretty damn funny. One girl obviously needed a change in her relationship status:
When your boyfriend is a monkey,
Something’s wrong.
When his socks are smelling funky,
Something’s wrong.
And then this came from the grizzled old guy next to her, who sang back at her:
So you need a new banana
Something’s wrong.
But you’re stuck in Butte, Montana!
Something’s wrong.
I don’t know if he was a popular local dude or what, but the crowd totally cracked up at him. Either way, I figured I should quit while I was ahead, so I wrapped it up.
By then Glenn was good to go. “Thanks, man,” he said to me. “That was some first-rate tap-dancing.”
Then Jamie sang the hell out of “Can’t Getcha Out of My Mind,” by Deep Dark Robot, her voice almost cracking on the line I’m feelin’ like a junkie that’s jonesin’ for a broken heart.… When that was over, we realized we were just about done. We were debating what to do for our last song when someone shouted out, “Clapton!” Then other people started joining in. “Yeah, play some Clapton!” Man, these guys loved their oldies.…
I figured we’d do “Crossroads,” like last time, or one of the old barroom standards, like “Cocaine” or maybe even “Bell Bottom Blues.” I looked over at Glenn for some direction, but he was messing with his amp. Then he walked to the front of the stage and just stood there, looking down. I couldn’t be sure from where I was sitting, but I had the impression his eyes were closed. Then he looked up toward the ceiling and, without checking with us or anything, whipped out the signature riff from “Layla.”
That’s all he played at first, just those half dozen opening notes, and he let the last one sustain. The crowd recognized it immediately and went crazy. Glenn milked that one note until it built into a howl of feedback from his cranked-up Marshall combo, then he did one of those dive-bomb-down-the-guitar-neck things and went into the main groove of the song.
I caught Danny’s attention and held one finger to my lips and twirled my other finger in the air—Wait and let it build a little. I let Glenn go through that part four times—instead of twice, like it usually goes—before I came in on full drumset, and during the third and fourth times Danny and I built up pounding eighth notes all the way through, starting from nothing and slowly adding tension, so that when we finally exploded and joined Glenn in the groove, it was this massive release.
I kinda channeled Steve Gadd’s take on it and played just a hair behind the beat. It’s hard to explain, but it makes it sound more … profound or something. And I definitely got my money’s worth—I sat there and took it all in, even as I played. And what a show it was.…
Glenn absolutely nailed the song, guitar and vocals, and that’s not an easy thing to do with that tune—usually one guy plays the soaring guitar melody while someone else sings. And halfway through it I realized I wasn’t hearing any keys. I glanced over at Jamie but she was just sitting there, not moving, watching Glenn. He came out of the first chorus and went into the next verse.
I tried to give you consolation
When your old man had let you down.
Like a fool, I fell in love with you,
Turned my whole world upside down …
I couldn’t blame her—this was a perfect example of what I was always trying to tell the guys in the Sock Monkeys about emotion overriding perfection. Yeah, I’m sure Brad could have sung it technically better, and yeah, it would have been nice to have another guitar playing, but none of that mattered—this had that real-deal thing going on that made everything else trivial.
Anyway, we made it to the end of the rock part of the song and I figured we’d probably wrap things up right there, but as my cymbal swells were starting to fade away and the applause started, Jamie began playing the slow piano coda that builds into the instrumental second movement of the whole thing. Man, that’s got to be one of the prettiest pieces of music ever written.
I let her get through it by herself once, then I came in with a simple ride-cymbal accompaniment and Danny started playing that real smooth bass line. Glenn did this thin
g where he’d back off his volume pedal, pick the string silently, then step on the pedal and let the note swell. It totally changed the attack of the note, making it sound more like a violin than a guitar. If Kimber were here, she would have called it “ethereal.”
We went through that cycle several times, each time getting a little bigger and a little fuller until we were freakin’ soaring. My strongest memory of the evening is gazing out over the crowd and seeing all these faces looking up at us, just listening and swaying in time to the music. As far as I was concerned, it could have gone on forever.…
26
“Midnight Confessions”
We didn’t have to be anywhere until Tuesday, when we started at West Yellowstone, so we were going to meet at noon on Sunday and strike everything and load up our gear like usual. But I ended up staying to tear down and pack up all my gear after the other guys disappeared. It wasn’t my incredible work ethic—I just had way too many things swirling through my head to go to sleep. But when I was halfway done taking my set apart, I saw Jamie walk up to the bar and get a cup of coffee. All of a sudden coffee sounded good.
The place had just about emptied out as I sat on the stool next to her. “How’s it going?”
She shrugged. “Okay, I guess.” She was way subdued, nothing at all like she’d been onstage just a little while ago. “How about you?”
I didn’t even want to get into the Kimber thing. “I’m fine.” The woman behind the bar came by and I asked her for a cup of coffee. She seemed a lot nicer than Mr. Friendly and I briefly wondered if it was going to show up on our tab. I turned back to Jamie and held my hands up. “So? Any word on Brad?”
“Yeah. He’s up in the room, crashed out.”
I almost asked, Whose room? but I didn’t. “Any, uh, explanation on where he was?”
“Not really …” She glanced over at me, then looked down at her coffee. “He wasn’t in any condition to explain anything,” she added, “but wherever he was, they were serving green beer.”
“Huh?”
“I saw it. Coming back up.”
Whoa—TMI. But I just nodded, as if seeing people puke up green beer was something that happened every day.
“He’ll be fine tomorrow,” she said. She shook her head slowly. “And I’m sure he’ll explain and apologize. He always does.”
“He’s done this before?”
She sighed. “Well, not exactly like this, but he can be, um … impulsive.” She thought about it. “He’s like the yang to GT’s yin.”
“Yeah, I can see that. But Glenn wasn’t exactly Mr. Passionless tonight, was he?”
I meant it as a joke. Mostly. But she took it seriously. “No,” she said, shaking her head slowly as she considered it. “No, he certainly was not.”
The hell with it. It was 2:30 a.m. after a bizarre gig after a bizarre day following a really bizarre morning—was there ever going to be a better time? “It’s none of my business …” Other than the fact that I’m a thousand miles away from home with you guys, stuck inside some sort of weird reality show. “But what’s the deal with you and Glenn? I mean, I don’t know much of the band history or anything, but I’m not blind.…”
She took a deep breath and let out a big shaky sigh. I was thinking of a way to backpedal when I realized there were tears in her eyes.
“Oh, hey,” I said. “I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean to—”
She held up her hand. “No, it’s fine … I actually appreciate you asking.” She took a sip of her coffee, then called over to the bartender, who was nearby. “I know it’s after last call, but is there any way I could get a shot of Baileys in here?”
The woman looked around, then took Jamie’s cup, dumped it, and poured in fresh coffee followed by a good slug of Irish cream. “It’s on the house, honey.”
“Oh, thanks. I never do that, but it’s been a rough day.”
“I can tell.” She winked. “Just don’t tell Alex.”
Jamie smiled. “Cross my heart.”
She sat back, took a sip, and kinda went aah … I swear, I almost asked her what it tasted like, but I caught myself in time.
She looked over at me. “GT’s nice. Super-nice. And he’s smart, and he’s really talented. And I’ll kill you if you tell him I said this, but he’s sexy as hell, too.”
And I’m sitting there thinking, And the problem with all this is …?
I guess I was thinking a little too loud. “But the problem is,” she said, “he’s married to his music. Or at least seriously engaged. You ever see that old movie That Thing You Do?”
I shook my head. “Sorry.”
“Watch it sometime—you’d love it. The main character is a drummer who joins this band at the last minute and has a big influence on them, changing their destiny.”
“Huh.”
“I know, right? But my point is, there’s a girl in the film who’s in love with the bandleader, only all he cares about is his music—he’s the main writer and singer. He’s also a butthead who treats her badly, and that’s where the analogy is kind of backward, because GT isn’t like that at all—in some ways he’s actually more like the drummer, who’s a smart but positive guy. But he does share that trait about putting the music first. Trust me.”
“Have you ever talked to him about that? I mean, specifically?”
“No. He is who he is, and that’s not a bad thing at all.”
“You know, you sound just like him—he said almost the exact same thing to me once.”
She snorted. “Well, that’s just great.”
I laughed. “Hey, I call ’em like I see ’em. But you never know—it might be worth a try.”
“Look, Zach, I know you like GT. You’ve got a little of that same attitude in you yourself. It’s sweet of you to put in a good word for him, and maybe you’re looking out for me, too. But I think it’s too little, too late.” She paused. “I’ve been in a band with Brad for four or five years now, and we’ve always gotten along really well. But for most of that time he’s had one girlfriend or another.”
“And now?” I had a sinking feeling I already knew the answer.
“And now he’s single, been that way for a while, since shortly after GT joined. He’s fun. He’s a regular guy. Sure, he’s a great singer, but he doesn’t just live for music. That’s the difference.”
I was throwing my opinion around right and left tonight, so why stop now? “I don’t think that Glenn only lives for his music. I think he’s someone who follows his passion, regardless, and I think that would hold true whether it was music”—I looked at her—“or you.”
She didn’t say anything for a long time. “You know, you’re actually quite a bit like him,” she finally said. “And I mean that as a compliment. Mostly. You’re going to make some girl very happy someday.” She took a drink of her coffee and laughed. “Or miserable.”
“God, you’re psychic tonight,” I mumbled. I nodded toward her cup. “So, how is that?”
She slid it over and I took a sip. “Wow, that’s good!” I took another, bigger swig.
She pulled it back in mock horror. “In that case, stay away—you’re a mere child!” She got serious. “Really, Zach, thanks for caring … you’ve given me something to think about. Not that that makes it any easier.” She smiled, but it was the saddest smile I’ve ever seen. “I’d better get going now.”
“Yeah, me too. Hey—one question. The girl? In that movie?”
“Yeah …?”
“Who’d she end up with?”
She stopped and thought about it. “Hmm. I guess you’d say she followed her passion.”
Q: WHAT DO YOU CALL A DRUMMER WHO BREAKS UP WITH HIS GIRLFRIEND?
A: HOMELESS.
I woke up before nine o’clock and couldn’t get back to sleep. I lay there for a while thinking about Kimber’s email, but that got old really quick, so I rolled out of bed, got dressed quietly, and went down to the club.
I had the rest of my stuff packed up and was sta
rting in on coiling up the PA cables when Glenn showed up.
“Hey, you don’t have to do that all by yourself,” he said. “The others’ll be down in a while and we’ll all tear down.”
“Couldn’t sleep, so I thought I’d make myself useful.”
“Same here. I’m thinking about getting paid, actually.”
“Uh … we didn’t get paid last night?” Usually the managers paid us on Saturday night. Sometimes they’d even pay you before you went on, so they didn’t have to deal with it afterward on a late night.
“Nope, couldn’t find him anywhere. So I’m going looking. Want to join me?”
“Sure.”
Glenn went over to some guy cleaning up behind the bar. He was like Mr. Friendly’s brother or something, but more grumpy than downright mean.
“How’s it going?” Glenn said.
Mr. Happy kinda nodded, but not even a microscopic hint of a smile.
“We’re looking for Alex. Is he around?”
“Who wants to know?”
“We’re the band. We’ll be pulling out in a few hours, and we need to get paid.”
“Ain’t seen ’im. He don’t always come in on Sundays.”
Glenn thought about this. “Okay, thanks. Would you do us a favor? If you see him, mention that we’d like to settle up today, because we weren’t planning on staying over tonight.”
Mr. Happy just nodded, then went back to wiping down the scarred-up bar.
As we walked away, I said quietly to Glenn, “So what do we do now—wait around all day in case His Majesty shows up?”
“Not if we can help it.”
We went back toward the stage, but Glenn kept going until we were outside. He looked up a number in his phone, then punched send and turned the speaker on.
“Yeah?” That would be one Mr. Happy, best receptionist in the West.
“Hey, howzit goin’, this is Mike,” Glenn said quickly in a low, gruff voice. “Need ta talk ta Alex.”
“Hang on a sec, he’s in the back.” There was a click, then someone picked up the line.
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