Jake looked him up and down for a moment and then shook his head. “No,” he said. “I trust you.”
Matt nodded. He then patted his shirt pocket. “I do have a couple of doobs with me though. Is it cool if we burn once we’re up in the air?”
“No,” Jake said without hesitation. “It is not cool.”
“Aww, come on, dude,” he pleaded. “I won’t be a Bogart! There’s enough for everyone.”
“The FAA frowns upon the hotboxing of an aircraft in flight,” Jake said. “And Laura’s OB frowns upon her being in a hotboxed aircraft in flight.”
“Oh ... yeah, I guess,” Matt said with a frown. When had Jake turned into such a fucking stickler for rules? “Well, is there somewhere around here that Jim and I can burn before we go up? If I’m going to fly in a badass plane like this, I gotta be stoned.”
Jake sighed. “Let’s do the weigh-in and then you can go around behind the hangar complexes and light up,” he said. “But make it fast. And don’t let anyone see you.”
“Right,” Matt said, happy again. “You got it.”
They put their bags on the scale and then themselves. Jake wrote down the readings on a piece of paper on a little clipboard and then he opened up the cargo compartment at the front of the plane and began loading the baggage in. Matt offered to help but Jake declined, telling him it had to be put in in a specific way. Something about balance and shifting or some shit like that. He and Jim then took their walk, finding a secluded haven behind the hangar complexes. They burned one of the joints down to the roach, which Matt then popped in his mouth and swallowed. By the time they made it back to the airplane, both of them were cataclysmically stoned and ready for adventure.
They boarded the plane and Jake directed them to the two forward-facing seats just behind the cockpit. The Valdez bitch was sitting in the copilot’s seat and Kingsley’s bitch was sitting in one of the rear-facing seats behind Jim and Matt’s seats. This was a bit surprising.
“You know how to fly the plane?” Matt asked Celia.
“I do not,” she said, “but this is where I always sit when I fly with Jake.”
“I see,” Matt said slowly, though he did not. He turned to Laura. “Don’t you want to sit up here though, close to your old man?”
“It doesn’t matter where I sit,” she said. “I’ll be asleep before we even hit cruising altitude.”
“Really?” he asked.
“Really,” she said. “I always sleep on planes. It’s a good way to pass the time.”
And, sure enough, she was right. They roared into the sky fifteen minutes later, climbing steeply and heading north. And before they even cleared the mountains north of the San Fernando valley, Kingsley’s bitch was sound asleep in her seat, her hands resting on her swollen stomach, her head bobbing up and down in the turbulence.
It was a little bumpy until they got out over the San Joaquin valley and then the ride smoothed out. By that point, they were at cruising altitude, which Jake said was thirty-two thousand feet. Far below, Matt could see the agriculture fields and the little thin black line that was probably I-5. Pretty cool shit. And then something else occurred to him.
“Hey, Jake,” he said. “It’s okay to talk now, right?”
“Yeah,” Jake said. “We’re up above ten thousand and the autopilot has the plane. What’s up?”
“I noticed you have what appears to be a bar back there,” he said.
“Yes,” Jake said. “It’s one of the amenities that comes with a four point seven-five-million-dollar plane.”
“Damn,” Matt said, impressed. Four point seven-five million fucking bones? Jake really was doing well. “That’s some serious coin. Anyway, that bar ... is that for anyone?”
“Help yourself, Matt,” Jake said. “I had it stocked with fresh ice this morning with you in mind. Just be sure to re-secure the bottles after you pour.”
Matt smiled and unbuckled himself, happy once again. “You’re all right, Jake,” he said.
“I try,” Jake said.
As soon as Matt got up, Jim unbuckled and joined him.
The plan that Jake had come up with that would hopefully give the KVA/Matt Tisdale relationship the greatest chance of successfully making it through the grueling process of recording and mixing a CD was simple. They would keep Matt and his people as separated from Celia and her band as possible. They would work in two separate studios at Blake Studios, with Jake and the Nerdlys alternating days between them as necessary. And, most importantly, Matt and his band would stay in their own rental house in Coos Bay, miles away from where Jake, Celia, Laura, and the others were staying.
The house that KVA was renting for Matt, Steve, Austin, Corban, and Jim was a five bedroom that sat on beachfront property just north of the Coos Bay Bridge. It was not on a cliff, which meant there was a small danger of a tsunami washing it away, and the larger danger of one of the drunken and/or stoned bandmembers drowning in the ocean, but KVA and Matt decided to take their chances with this. The best feature was that it was isolated, butting up against state park territory, which meant the nearest neighbor was more than a quarter of a mile away. Though it was costing KVA twelve hundred dollars a week for them to stay there (and God only knew what kind of damages they were going to have to pay for when the fivesome eventually moved back out), Jake considered it money well-spent.
Austin, Steve, and Corban joined Matt at the rented house on Monday night after spending two days driving up in Austin’s Chevy Suburban. They would use that vehicle for transportation during their stay. On Tuesday afternoon, the five of them drove to the studio to tour it for the first time. Obie—who was recording his own new CD in the third studio (and would make occasional use of the Nerdlys himself as part of his agreement to allow Matt and Celia use of the other two simultaneously)—met them when they arrived.
“It’s good to meet you, Matt,” Obie greeted. “I’ve been an admirer of your guitar work for years.”
“Thanks,” Matt told him. “And I have to say, your music doesn’t suck ass as much as most country music does.”
Obie chuckled. “How often does a man get a compliment like that?” he asked.
Matt and the boys were quite impressed with the studio, which was still one of the most advanced in the world when it came to digital recording. They were also impressed with Obie, who took them out for a night of drinking on the town after the tour. All five of them were hungover and out of sorts when they reported for duty at 9:00 AM the next morning for their first session.
Naturally, the vast majority of that first day was taken up just setting up the equipment and the microphones and sound-checking and adjusting everything until it almost (but not quite) met the satisfaction of the Nerdlys, at which point Jake would step in and gently call an end to the adjustments. The most actual recording they got done that day was the first bass track of the first verse of the first tune out of the ten that had been picked for the project. And even that was just the preliminary recording, just enough to help set the drum track for the verses portion.
The next day, the Nerdlys went through the same process with Celia and her band while Jake worked with Matt and his band in the other studio. Under Jake’s direction, they managed to work their way through all of the bass tracks on the verses for the first tune and the barest beginnings of the drum tracks. His interaction with Matt remained professional and respectful and Matt returned that respect without argument or even vibes of resentment or discontent. But then again, they were only working on the rhythm tracks. If there was going to be issues, it was going to be during the recording of the vocals and the guitar tracks.
The studio days ended at 5:00 PM. Matt and his band would climb into the Suburban with Austin behind the wheel and then head back to their rental house. They would stop somewhere along the way and pick up a pizza, or some fast-food burgers. They would then eat and drink alcohol, smoke weed, and Matt would snort some cocaine from his stash. On Friday night, he promised them, they would go hit the town and pick up some Oregonian gash. They all looked forward to Friday night.