Page 36 of More Than Scars
“Pressley, it’s okay, really,” I said, reaching out to catch his hand and lace our fingers together. “We’re your first band. We’re all figuring this shit out together. It’s not like I thought about it until a few minutes ago. The only thing I was focused on was spending the day with you. I needed a down day, and today was perfect. The bookings, Rocktoberfest, heading into the recording studio, that was a lot all at once, and I hadn’t fully sorted it out yet. Today let me do that. The guys are gonna rank the songs. I’ll do the same after we finish eating. I’ll compile them when I have them all and put together the final order, with the songs that need tweaking at the bottom of the list. We’ll work out rehearsal time over lunch tomorrow. That should get us back on track.”
“Thanks, Bowie.”
“No need to thank me, like I said, we’re in this together.”
He gave my hand a squeeze, then let go so we could finish eating, but he wouldn’t let me help with the dishes when we were done.
“Go get your shower, you’ve still got songs to go through,” he said. “I’ve got this.”
I took him at his word and hoped he wouldn’t stew, but he was right; I had work to do.
As a unit, we’d been up until after midnight, but we had everything set up and ready to go at the studio by ten. OurFuck You!anthem had been number one on everyone’s to-record list, while Desperate Aggression had been at the bottom, since we hadn’t nailed the chorus or the drum track down. Claude was close, and each time he came back from a session with Diamond and Shadow, he got closer, it just wasn’t all the way there yet, just like the guitar riffs on Failed and Fried. I was struggling with those. Most of my time around the firepit was spent working on them and the rest of the lyrics to Resting Bitchface. We had everything else, including a killer duel between Tibby’s bass and my six-string, but the lyrics, which Tony had started, and I was supposed to finish, weren’t quite hitting right yet.
They called Claude in first to lay down the drum tracks, while all around me, my bandmates got comfortable. Notebooks came out, Tibby put his earbuds in while Tony put his headphones on, and I reached for my acoustic.
While we hadn’t playedFailed and Friedon Saturday night, I’d been thinking about it since then, especially the bridge, which needed some of the energy Claude and I had brought toFuck You!. An idea popped into my head as I played through it, then painstakingly played through it backwards, having to pause a few times to check the chords. Forward,backward, backward, forward, once, twice, change chords, and do it again. And there it was. I added a bit of an embellishment on the end, then set to work finishing the chorus.
It flowed easier now that I’d already tapped into what I was after, though the more I thought about it, the more I felt like the intro and exits needed a bit more bass. Tapping Tibby on the leg, I got him to pull his earbuds out, which caught Tony’s attention, so he killed his music too.
“So hey, I’ve been working onFailed and Fried,and I think we need more contrast,” I said as I turned the notebook around, showing them the new chords I’d been working on. “Claude’s got that killer funeral march beat going at the beginning, and I feel like we could really nail the tone we’re going for if we add a sick bassline to it.”
Tibby’s eyes lit up as he stroked his chin, studying the notes I’d made, nodding a little.
“Play what you’ve got for me,” he said, once he’d read through the whole thing.
Tony leaned forward in his seat, completely dialed in to the slow evolution of the song. Like me, Tibby had brought a backup, not to record with, just to have in case inspiration hit. Now, we got rolling on the changes, with Tony bringing up the recording of our rehearsal session so Tibby could listen to Claude’s intro and sync up with it.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Pressley taking pictures and Stoli hovering in the doorway, watching us work. He nodded when I caught his eye, and then I turned my attention back to the new bassline Tibby was crafting. I truly get it now. What he and the others had been trying to teach us.
This was a level of the music industry we’d never seen before, and it moved fast. In order to get through it, we needed to be on the same page at every step of the process so we could roll on a dime into some empty slot Pressley landed us and work shit out no matter where we happened to be.
“Can you make that section just a half beat slower?” Tony asked, tapping out what he meant on the edge of his notebook.
“Yeah, let me try that,” Tibby replied.
It took a few playthroughs for him to adjust his rhythm to the one Tony was after, but when he nailed it, we played the drum track again, squirming in ourseats over how awesome it sounded. Tibby grabbed the notebook and added his changes before playing through it a couple more times, with me joining in after he was comfortable with it. Now he wove some of that same deep bass rhythm through the bridge until it was so damned haunting it made my chest ache playing it. Something about it hit Tony in the feels, because he swiped at his eyes a couple times as we played. When we took it from the top again, he added the vocals, a bit too high in the beginning but getting lower and deeper as he progressed. He found the tone the song needed by the second chorus and really nailed the ending, prompting us to charge right back into the opening again.
Time got lost in the loop of the song, with a few pauses to adjust a word in the lyrics here and there before we dove back in.
“Holy shit, that doesn’t even sound like the same song,” Claude said from the doorway of the booth, a look of approval on his face as he fell silent to hear the rest of it play out. “Do you need me to adjust anything?
“No, actually,” Tibby said. “We worked it around the drumline to pull out the more sinister aspects. You nailed that shit hard, so we upped our games to really highlight the vibe.”
“Can I hear it from the top?”
“Hell yeah,” I said.
“They want Tibby next, but in about fifteen minutes,” Claude said as he dropped into the chair across from me.
“Good thing I’m warmed up,” Tibby said before he launched into the song.
With the drumline playing from Tony’s phone, we were able to perform it for Claude, whose hands found the beat of the song, without the need of his sticks. Fifteen minutes might not be a lot of time, but we worked through that song three times before Tibby was called into the booth.
“I think we need to move that one up the list,” Claude said, as he made note of three minor changes he wanted to make to his beat.
“I agree,” Tony said.
With the list between us, we started looking for the best slot to move it into. Between the current four and five wound up being the consensus, so Tonydrew an arrow on the master list he’d printed up, and we turned our attention to the next song that could use improvement.