“Yeah. Brent said he might be able to buy us some time. We can be a little late. Our set is just under an hour.”
“It’s all originals though.” I winced. If they were doing covers of classic rock songs or jazz tunes, then I could have probably held my own without practice, but I didn’t see how I could learn their set without a few nights of practice with them.
“It’s all simple stuff. We pretty much play the same rhythm parts for most of the songs, a few have a melody. They all have a little guitar solo in them, but I can try to cover them.” Nicole was pretty, and she fluttered her eyes lashes when she spoke. I guessed she was used to getting her way. Wasn’t that how all pretty girls were?
“No one is going to know if you mess up, dude,” Roger said, “Most of these people have never heard our songs. They are just here because the company is showcasing us.”
The idea sounded crazy. Even if we played through the songs right now, it would be beyond difficult to learn them enough to perform live. I’d probably have to keep some sort of cheat sheet and work my ass off to keep them from sounding terrible.
“We’ll probably have to cancel if you don’t say yes. We’d really appreciate it if you helped us out tonight,” Nicole asked again.
“I don’t have a guitar.” I shrugged.
“Dude! There are like ten in the other room. You can use whatever one you want.” Brent smiled and clapped his hands.
“Or a pedal board?” I winced. I had a small set up at home for the occasional times I wanted to add some flavor to my sound.
“We’ve got a bunch of multi-pedals. We can make this work. Come on, dude. My dad will get pissed off if they can’t play.” I saw Nicole, Roger, and Trey pale a little at Brent’s words.
“Okay. Do you have any staff paper and a pencil? I’m going to have to make a lead sheet for each song.”
“Yeah. We’ve got tons of that. I’ll grab you some. Come pick out a guitar and a pedal!” Brent gave a little fist pump and then darted into the other room.
“What kind of guitar do you want?” I asked Nicole and Roger.
“Jesse played a Les Paul, but whatever you are comfortable with,” the bassist answered.
“Yeah, whatever you want Eric. You are really helping us out,” Nicole said. Her guitar was a Stratocaster style, and I recalled their sound was a mix of rock, pop, and dance stuff. I nodded at the band and then took the half dozen steps into the first room of the studio after Brent.
“Take whichever guitar you want. They might not be in tune, but my dad normally has a tech come by every month to make sure everything is good. You never know when someone might need one for a recording.”
I looked over to the mix of stands in the corner. There were eight guitars displayed, with every single type of flavor represented. My eyes almost immediately drifted past the crowd of traditionally colored and sized axes to a sparkly orange one that sat at the back of the group.
I carefully tiptoed through the stringed forest and then picked up the guitar that had caught my eye. It was a G&L ASAT, which was the company’s version of the Fender Telecaster. It was close to the same guitar I had at home, but this one also had an ebony fingerboard and black pick guard that gave a nice contrast to the orange sparkle of the paint on the body and headstock. A quick run of my hand down the neck confirmed that it would take virtually no effort for me to get accustomed to.
“I’ll use this one,” I yelled to Brent while I slung the axe on my shoulder.
“Oh, cool. I’ve always liked that one. It will go good with this band. I’ve got your paper here.” He held up a notebook of staff paper and pointed to the corner by me. “There are some pedals on the shelf there.”
“Ahh, thanks.” I turned to look at the shelf. Most guitarists put together a custom set of unique pedals. Each pedal gave the guitar a single sound or effect and combined with the other pedals in a line to make it possible for multiple sounds to coexist. The process of a player setting up their board was time consuming and extremely expensive. I didn’t often play a lot of rock music, but my small setup had taken me about ten months of fiddling with and around a thousand dollars. Some players thought that the pedal board was just as important as the guitar they played.
The shelf Brent had directed me to only contained multi-pedals. Many guitarists would look down their noses at such devices, since they normally didn’t come close to creating as rich of a sound as getting the perfect, individual tone of each unique pedal, but what they may have lacked for in tone they made up for with versatility and a compact size. I grabbed one that had four foot switches on it and carried it back to the room where the band was playing.
“Nice guitar!” Nicole clapped her hands together when she saw the orange G&L.
“I thought it would work with your pink one. Tell me about the first song?” I sat on a chair, and Brent got me a small table to rest the notebook on.
“Okay, it’s in G Major. Here are how the chords go.” Nicole played me through three different changes in a dozen seconds while she lightly sang her part. I wrote down the chords and tried to key in a few lyrics so that I’d have a better guide to the changes.
Within a few minutes, I was playing the chords along with her. Trey and Roger filled in their parts to the music, and we actually sounded really tight. Both of the guys were skilled players and really locked in with their tempos. I noticed that Brent and Samantha had left the room and had closed the door to the studio behind them.
“The bridge has a guitar solo,” Nicole said. She strummed her guitar, and Roger played his part.
“What does Jesse normally play?”
“Sounds like this.” Nicole sang a part, and I committed the pitches to memory.
“Like this?” I played what I thought she sang.
“Shit. Exactly like that,” she laughed. “Maybe even better!” Roger and Trey joined in her laughter. I smiled back at their approval and then quickly wrote the music out on the staff paper of my lead sheet.
“You can write the music?” Roger leaned in over my paper.
“Yeah.” I shrugged. “Once upon a time I was going to be a professional musician.”
“Why did you change your mind?” Nicole asked.
“It’s a better conversation over a beer. Maybe after the show?” The three of them nodded. I looked at the part I wrote and then played it again. I actually thought of a better way to play the solo, but I figured tonight I’d stick to what they told me to play, unless I got mixed up and had to improvise.
“So now you’ve got all the parts. It goes part A, B, A, Bridge, then B, A. The last A part has an extra chord here.” Nicole played the verse and then added an extra E minor chord before the fifth C major chord. I played the changed verse and then wrote it down.
“What effects should I use?” I pointed at the pedal.
“For the verse, use a touch of distortion and maybe a bit of reverb.” I nodded and then toggled through the settings while I strummed. “Yeah! that one!” Nicole said, and I stopped the pedal, played a few more chords, and then wrote the patch number on the lead sheet.
“You can probably keep that for the chorus also. Just put something with more gain on during your solo.” I nodded and then fiddled with the settings to find a sound that cut a bit more. Then I saved the sounds to three of the four pedals on the deck and saved the sequence.
“Do you want to run through it again?” Trey asked with a bit of obvious nervousness in his voice.
“We’ve got eight other songs to go in, like, twenty minutes. I think we have to plow ahead,” Nicole said.
“Alright. Eight more. Let’s get going.” I grabbed my pencil and then readied a new lead sheet.
Chapter 13
I hadn’t set foot in Brent’s backyard before I met them all in the game room, so I wasn’t prepared for the size of the place, or the size of the stage.
Or the size of the crowd.
There must have been three, maybe four hundred people packed into what would have been a pretty mass
ive patio area with an Olympic-size pool tucked in the corner. The stage was raised a good four feet, and the crowd erupted into an actual cheer when we walked onto the platform. So much for this just being a group of industry folks. My guess was that a lot of the people were fans of the band.
“Thanks for coming, you sweeties!” Nicole said into the microphone while Roger and I plugged our instruments into the PA system. There was a sound-check guy at the side of the stage, and he gave me the thumbs up when I plugged in.
“We are going to do a quick sound check and then rock your socks off!” Nicole played a few notes on her pink guitar and made some hand motions to the sound engineer to raise her monitor volume so she could hear herself better. Then she gave the okay sign and looked at me.
I played one of my warm-up exercises and thought that my monitor sounded fine, so I gave the thumbs up to the sound dude, and he returned the motion.
“You are so fucking hot!” A woman’s voice screamed across the crowd when I stopped playing. A bunch of people in the crowd laughed, but I couldn’t see who yelled the words, probably Katherine.
Then Roger did his sound test, and Nicole walked a few steps back to me.
“Thanks again for helping us out. Don’t worry about anything; you are a fucking awesome player. You’ll kick ass tonight.” She winked at me and walked to the front of the stage.
“You motherfuckers ready to rock?” she yelled into the microphone, and the crowd went crazy. Trey snapped his sticks together three times, and we hit the first notes.
Then we were rocking.
The band’s music wasn’t terribly complicated. Most of it was power chords with the occasional fuller chord thrown in for complexity. Their music was good though, and had great elements of rock along with dance, and poppy, singable lyrics. In fact, a good chunk of the audience actually sang along with Nicole at parts. We finished the first song without a hitch, and I nailed the solo.
The crowd roared when we finished, and I took a step back to glance at the lead sheet for the next song. I had set it behind one of the PA amps. After a quick refresher, I gave Trey the nod, and he counted off the next song. This one was a little more difficult than the first, but it was still many times easier than anything I ever had to play on a classical guitar, so I felt really damn good about my performance.
The rest of the songs seemed to fly off of the fret board of the orange sparkled guitar. Suddenly we were playing the last song. The crowd was jumping up and down against the stage in time with Nicole, Roger, and I leaping on stage. I was drenched in sweat, but I didn’t feel like I had worked hard at all. If anything, I felt unbelievably connected with their music and the performance. These guys were great to play with, and I had never needed to search for the correct tempo or even guess at a key change. They had given me all the right info for my lead sheets, of course, but it felt like the four of us had a great connection on stage.
The end of the last song had kind of a repeating vamped section. When we began the part, Nicole stopped her singing to talk into the mic.
“Thank you so much for coming out to see us tonight!” The crowd cheered, and I smiled into the faceless crowd. I’d tried a few times to spot one of my friends, but there were just too many people, and the lights attached to the roof of the massive mansion made it hard to perceive individual faces.
“Give it up for Trey on the drums!” Trey did a neat drum fill, and the crowd cheered.
“Roger on bass!” Roger didn’t change the line he was playing, but he smiled and did a small bow on stage when the crowd cheered.
“Eric on lead guitar!” Nicole called upon me, and I shredded a small guitar solo across the neck. The crowd seemed to appreciate the demonstration, or my performance in general, and they screamed. I definitely heard Katherine and Kim’s voices shrieking above the roar of everyone else.
“I’m Nicole, and we are Jump! Kick! Check us out on the road this winter!” The crowd cheered again, and Nicole took the neck of her guitar again to finish the song.
Then we were done.
My brain felt like it was buzzing from a thousand happy bees. The night had gotten cold, but I hadn’t felt the chill while playing. Even now, it seemed as if I was standing in a sauna, and I saw steam rolling off of Nicole, Trey, and Roger’s bodies. Roger and Nicole unplugged their instruments, and I followed suit. Then I followed the three of them off of the stage and to the far side of the mansion, where there was a door leading to the hallway by the rehearsal room. It was actually a tough path to take, since the entire crowd seemed to swarm us as soon as we stepped down, and Nicole had to repeat a few hundred times that we were going to put our instruments away and then be right back to the party to hang with everyone.
“Damn, that was fucking awesome!” Trey said as soon as we stepped into the recording room. “Man, you are really damn good.” Trey grabbed me on the shoulder and shook me enthusiastically. Nicole and Roger quickly added their own appraisal and gave me appreciative hugs.
“Thanks guys. It is great music, and you did a great job prepping me for it.” I put the guitar back on its stand and was suddenly missing the weight of it on my shoulder. I thought about my own electric guitar in the closet at home and committed to playing it some tomorrow.
Except that I had the museum with Beth.
That I planned on not going to.
“You really helped us out, Eric. Thank you so much.” Nicole had put away her pink guitar and gave me another hug.
“No problem. I really liked playing with you guys.” I was about to say more, but the door opened, and my friends flooded into the small room.
“Holy shit, guys, you sounded awesome!” Brent was followed by Sam, Katherine, Kim, Patrick, and Daya.
“Thanks Brent.” Nicole gave a small smile and then shook his hand. “You see your dad?”
“Yeah, he seemed really happy. The crowd loves you!”
“We couldn’t have done it without our ringer.” Trey pointed to me, and I felt blood come to my cheeks.
“It was all good. Thanks again for letting me play with you.” I felt Katherine grab onto my arm and squeeze my bicep twice. I looked over at the pretty woman, and her green eyes seemed to be on fire. The room was big enough for all the people that had just filed in, but Katherine and Kim’s tight athletic bodies suddenly pushed against me from both sides.
“We gotta get back out there and schmooze with people.” Roger had finished putting away his bass, and Nicole nodded at his words. The group began to talk to each other about the show all at once and then migrated toward the exit of the studio.
“God, you looked so fucking hot on stage there. Let’s get out of here.” Katherine’s whispered breath was dripping with husky sensuality, and her mouth was a fraction of an inch from my ear. We were at the end of the group, and I almost replied, but I didn’t think I could whisper softly enough. The three of us slowed our walk down a bit so that the rest of the group could get out of the door.
“Let’s go back to my house,” Kim said as soon as the door to the hallway closed and the three of us were alone in the studio equipment room. Her tight body rubbed against mine while we walked, and it was almost enough pressure to push me over if Katherine hadn’t been using her own body to sandwich me from the other side. My hands were circling both women’s hips, and I dropped them down to squeeze their small, firm butts.
“It would be kinda rude to leave now. I think we should stay a bit longer,” the words escaped my mouth easily, but my dick was hard as a rock and completely disagreed with what I just said.
“Oh? You really want to stay here longer, King Eric?” Katherine’s hand slid across my cheek and pulled my face to her mouth. Her lips met mine, and our tongues danced together. Hers was wet, warm, and spoke of what she wanted to do to me once we got out of here.
“Aww. Poor King Eric, he has so many fans waiting for him now, he doesn’t have time for his little harem girls.” Kim’s hand stroked my cock through my jeans, and her lips began to nibble
on the side of my neck that faced her. The stimulation was enough to make me groan with gut-wrenching pleasure. I didn’t think my dick could get any harder, but Kim’s fingers knew how to slide across my jeans, and the pants were now painfully uncomfortable against my shaft.
“Okay,” I panted, and turned my face away from Katherine to kiss Kim’s delicious lips. She sighed into my mouth, and Katherine’s hand joined her friend’s in rubbing my cock through my jeans. “Did you guys drive here? Can you give me directions?”
“Hmm...” Katherine purred while she nibbled on my neck. “I suppose one of us should ride with you to make sure you don’t get lost.”
“I’ll do it, since we took your car over here,” Kim broke the kiss with me to speak and then pushed her slick tongue into my mouth as soon as she had finished.
“Aww. Then you two will have fun in the car without me.” I looked at Katherine while I continued to make out with Kim, and the tall, brown-haired woman was in full-pout mode. “How about we rock-paper-scissors for it?”
“Fine.” Kim broke from my lips again and held her fist out. The two beautiful women counted to three and then both kept their hands closed to form the rock. Then they counted to three again, this time Katherine picked scissors and Kim picked rock.
“Fuck,” Katherine said, while Kim squealed with delight. “Best out of three?” she asked with a sly smile.
“We could have gotten into our cars by now. Just let me ride him. Whoops. I mean ride with him,” Kim smiled at me and licked her lips.
“Okay, let’s just get out of here.” Katherine pulled on my shirt, and the three of us walked into the hallway.
The party somehow seemed to be picking up steam, and I observed about three times as many people in the game room as there were before. I actually saw Patrick’s broad shoulders at the same pool table, and I saw Sam sitting in the far corner, so I guessed that Brent and Daya were close by.
The two volleyball girls and I zigzagged through the crowd and then reached the front foyer to the giant mansion without getting noticed or pulled into a conversation with anyone else. I felt a little bad about ghosting out of the party, but I figured that Brent probably had his hands full with the band and guests. I kinda wanted to say bye to the band, but I figured they were probably really busy socializing with people from the recording company. Besides, they had already thanked me for playing with them, and I’d thanked them for inviting me.
Rock God_Book 2_A Contemporary Harem Fantasy Page 11