“All right,” Jake said as the four of them sat drinking beer or iced tea (the tea was for Jake, who would be flying later) once the project was complete. “Tomorrow you start working.”
“The boys are ready,” Matt promised. “We’ll be here at nine o’clock and work until five. You have that catering service ready to go?”
“They’ll start with lunch tomorrow,” Jake said—yet another expense that KVA was incurring in the Tisdale Project, as they were now referring to it.
“Out of fuckin’ sight,” Matt said.
“Do you want us to come over in the morning to help you with your sound checks?” asked Nerdly.
Matt and Jake shook their heads immediately. “Naw, Nerdly,” Matt said. “We’re just starting the workups tomorrow. We don’t need to be perfect just yet.”
“That’s true,” Nerdly said, “but one should always strive to achieve the best sound possible, even if one is just doing a basic workup. Sharon and I have no plans for tomorrow. We would enjoy coming out to help.”
Matt looked at Jake for help.
“Don’t worry about it for now, Nerdly,” Jake told him. “We promised Matt he had the rest of July and all of August to work up his tunes before we started getting involved. I think production would be hampered if we started sticking our noses in right away.”
“Fuckin’ A,” Matt grumbled. He was still resentful that Jake would be involved at all. “You’ll be sticking your noses in plenty come September.”
“As per our contract,” Jake reminded.
“Yeah,” Matt said. “Our fuckin’ contract.”
They didn’t say much else. Jake and the Nerdlys each got in their cars and headed out for the day—the Nerdlys to their home, Jake to Whiteman Airport so he could fly home to his pregnant wife.
Matt stayed behind for a few more minutes, looking at the warehouse and the speakers and the amps which were just waiting for the instruments and the band members to arrive to plug in and start making music. He was excited about that part, could not wait to start introducing his new tunes.
But he was still wondering if he had sold his soul to the fuckin’ devil in order to make it happen.
Chapter 19: Keeping in Time
Santa Clarita, California
August 29, 1997
Jake and Laura Kingsley were back in the rhythm of making daily morning flights to Los Angeles, working all day in the KVA studio, and then flying back to San Luis Obispo at the end of the day. They had been doing this five days a week since the first week of August and, so far, were having no problem with the pace or the timing. With the Avanti and its twenty-five-minute flight time from airport to airport, they were actually spending less time commuting than many Los Angeles area nine-to-fivers—and the commute in question was considerably less stressful and soul-sucking. In fact, Jake found the actual flights to and from to be the highlight of each day.
It was just past noon on this final Friday before the final weekend of the month of August. Both of the Kingsleys were in the studio helping Celia Valdez work up the tunes for her next CD—which was tentatively titled Living in Limbo. The tune they had been working on all morning was called The End of the Journey. It was a mournful, sad piece about her divorce from Greg Oldfellow (though she did not name names in the lyrics—that would be uncouth). Jake, in particular, understood the meaning of the title quite intimately. It was the exact opposite of the title of the song he had written, composed, and performed at Celia and Greg’s wedding: The Start of the Journey (the similarity in title, Jake knew, was not coincidental).
Though Jake was committed to working with Matt Tisdale on his upcoming CD—his direct involvement in that project would start in earnest the following Monday when he would go to the rehearsal warehouse and evaluate the tunes Matt and his band had worked up so far—it had become obvious over the past month that he was going to have to involve himself quite heavily in Celia’s efforts as well if they were going to turn out to be all that they could be. Celia was an extraordinarily talented songwriter and composer of melodies, but she was nowhere near as talented as Jake when it came to shaping the basic tunes into complex musical compositions that would sound good on the radio and the CD. In addition, though Little Stevie was a talented guitarist, he was almost completely worthless when it came to composing riffs and solos. He could imitate to perfection anything that someone else had come up with—everything from simple acoustic pieces to full-blown Matt Tisdale riffs and solos—but he was incapable of coming up with anything original. Therefore, it would have to be Jake’s role to come up with the electric guitar parts, including the solos and riffs, and teach them to Little Stevie so he could reproduce them in the studio.
It was going to be a busy next few months. They were scheduled to enter the recording studio in Coos Bay on October 15th to begin laying down tracks for both Matt’s and Celia’s efforts. They had until January 30th to finish both projects. And, as if that wasn’t enough on Jake’s plate, Laura—who would be playing saxophone on at least six of the ten tunes on Celia’s CD—would be squirting out little Ziggy sometime near the end of November, well before there was any hope of having recorded all of her parts, let alone done the overdubs.
Jake was behind the sound board with the Nerdlys currently, a sheaf of musical score sheets before him, a pencil tucked behind his ear. They had already worked up the basic composition of Journey, as they called the tune, and were polishing it up now. Little Stevie was playing his high-end Brogan knockoff but Jake’s sunburst Les Paul was leaning against a wall and there was a secondary guitar cord leading to the amps that he could plug in with if further refinement of the guitar part seemed necessary. Nerdly, who had his own musical score sheet before him, was listening to the take through a set of headphones while Sharon was intently watching the levels on the board itself. Celia, her own 12-string guitar in hand, was sitting in a chair in front of her microphone. Laura, her belly now swollen and prominent with Ziggy’s third trimester of life, was standing, her alto sax in hand so she could blow out the secondary melody and the solo she had composed to go with the piece.
All in all, Jake thought the tune was coming along nicely. It would likely require only a few more changes to the instrumentation, most of which would be minor in nature. He was already thinking that Journey would be the first tune promoted when the CD was released.
A gentle elbow in his side took him out of his thoughts. It was Sharon, who was pointing at the phone mounted on the wall next to the door. A bright red light was flashing on the phone, indicating that someone—most likely Kayla, the latest KVA receptionist—was trying to reach them. For obvious reasons, the phone in the studio did not actually ring.
Jake got up and walked over to it. He picked up the receiver and put it to his ear. “It’s Jake,” he said into it.
Even though the volume of the earpiece was turned all the way up, Jake could barely hear over the music. He heard enough though. It was indeed Kayla. She was telling him that the catering service had just dropped off lunch.
“Got it,” he said. “I’ll be out in a few minutes to get it.”
She said something else that he could not make out, but it did not sound important. He hung up the phone and then waited until the group wound up Journey (Jake still thought the outro needed some more work—maybe a violin solo from Eric?) and fell silent. He then announced that lunch was here and it was time to take thirty or so and feed themselves.
Lunch today was hamburgers and French fries. Jake and Laura brought everything into the studio and everyone settled down in various places to eat. Celia sat with Jake and Laura on the edge of the drum platform. They balanced their paper plates on their laps and set their bottles of water and tea down next to them. Celia noticed that between bites Laura was rubbing her belly just above the belly button.