It was well after they ate their catered lunch before the Nerdlys were reasonably satisfied with the sound and tuning of the instruments and microphones and they were able to actually do some work. Jake introduced Winter Frost to the group.
“This is a melody I used to play for Caydee when she was still in Laura’s womb,” he told them. “She used to kick to the cadence of the melody, which is how she got her name. After she was born, she still loved the tune and I still strum it out for her pretty regularly during guitar and sing time. Gradually, I came up with the lyrics, which are a reflection of my feelings for my daughter.”
“It’s a beautiful song,” Laura said. “I get choked up when I hear him play it.”
Jake began to strum the melody on his Ibanez. “I’ll play it for you as it stands now,” he told them. “And I’m already sure that I want to keep it acoustic on the primary melody, with maybe some piano chords accompanying. Right now, the tempo is ninety and the key is G-major.”
Everyone nodded and he began to sing the lyrics. They did indeed get choked up as they listened to his intonement of love for the little life he helped construct and take care of. And then they started to work on it. Ted and Ben set a little rhythm. Nerdly got on the piano and chimed in behind Jake. It was rough and Jake knew that it needed a lot of work, but they were underway.
It felt really good to be underway.
August gave way and September rolled in. Jake and the members of V-tach and the Nerdlys continued to immerse themselves in their work and soon fell into a good, productive rhythm. Much to Jake’s delight, Lenny had penned some impressive tunes for their next effort. If anything, the band had improved since their last CD, become more mature and sophisticated. Jake took their raw material and helped shape and polish it into something more technical and pleasing to the ear. The band, who had greatly benefitted from such shaping and polishing on their last CD, eagerly did whatever Jake suggested and never argued about it. They knew that Jake was a master at production.
Jake’s own material began to shape up as well, though they were a bit more behind the eight ball in this endeavor since they had started from scratch. Lenny and Phil both proved very helpful when it came to playing secondary guitars on the tunes or doing backup singing. And, as had been the case back in the Celia and Jake days, the musicians had no problems shifting back and forth between genres and styles every other day. Laura would always accompany Jake on Jake days—and he did indeed have sax parts, including a solo, planned for two songs—but she usually stayed home on V-tach days. There really was not much for her to do on V-tach days since there was no place for a saxophone in their material. This gave Meghan more time off, though they did continue to pay her for the days Laura stayed home, just as they continued to pay Elsa when they were gone for extended amounts of time. It was only fair.
On September 1st, a Tuesday and thus a V-tach day in the studio, Jake cut out of rehearsal just after eating lunch. He had a meeting with Crow and Doolittle in the National Records building. It was time to issue some more promotion instructions. He could have done it over the phone, but he preferred to deliver such directives in person to avoid any misunderstandings.
Both of KVA’s latest projects were doing well. Matt Tisdale’s Faithless CD, in the two months since its release, had sold almost three hundred thousand copies. Faithless the song was still getting a lot of airplay, but not quite saturation level anymore. And Celia Valdez’s Living in Limbo CD had breached Gold the previous week when the five hundred thousandth copy was sold. Her song The End of the Journey, had spent four weeks at number one and was still charting in the Top 40. There was already talk about it taking a Grammy award next year. In addition, both tours were still selling out every venue as soon as the tickets were released for sale. Tour income was pouring into the coffers over at National Records and Jake was rather looking forward to seeing the next quarterly report in mid-October.
“All right,” Jake told Crow and Doolittle once the preliminaries were complete. “For Matt, we need to get Dethroned on the radio this next weekend.” Dethroned was one of the more harder-driving tunes on the CD, more in-line with classic Matt Tisdale, with two grinding guitars and a solid, intense backbeat. The lyrics concerned the brutal fall from grace of someone who had been in a position of power over others and then been “dethroned” by fate and circumstance and the turning of the tables. It was one of Matt’s more profound and angry pieces.
“Dethroned, right,” said Crow, nodding wisely. “Good choice for next up.”
“It’s more in line with Matt’s earlier work,” Jake explained. “After hearing Faithless, with the mellow guitar work and the more technical engineering, his old fans will be happy to hear Dethroned, and his new fans that he picked up with Faithless will appreciate the energy.”
“Right!” Crow said. “Makes perfect sense.”
“Perfect sense!” echoed Doolittle.
“Like before,” Jake told them, “I want it played only at the beginning of the sets for the first four weeks. Make sure the DJs always intro it. I know the hard rock stations will play the shit out of it, but I’m guessing we won’t get any airplay on the pops or even the alt-rocks. Dethroned is a little too hard of a tune for them. That’s okay though. Our CD sales for Faithless are coming from the hard rock demographic anyway.”
“Understood,” Crow said. “I trust you have this all written down though?”
“It’s written down,” Jake assured him. “Now, for Celia, I want the title cut promoted next. Living in Limbo, the song.”
“A good tune,” Crow said.
Jake wondered if he was even the least bit familiar with the tune. He was still not convinced that Crow and Doolittle had even listened to the CD after their initial preliminary playing of it. They still did not give much of a rat’s ass about the CD sales, especially since National was only getting twenty percent royalties on those sales. They were all about the touring income, and were very excited about those numbers.
“It is a good tune,” Jake agreed. “It’s also the hardest rocker on the CD. It’s not heavy metal by any means, but it does have distorted guitars playing out the riffs and a pretty blistering solo. It’s friendly enough for the pop stations and they will love it, but it will also play well on the alt-rocks and even the hard rocks. On the pops and the alt-rocks, I want the tune introduced at the beginnings of the sets. On the hard rocks, however, I want it played at the end of the sets with no intro at all, but with the DJs telling the listeners that they heard the latest from Celia Valdez after the song plays. I don’t expect this one to chart as well as Journey did, but once we get saturation airplay of the tune, I expect the CD sales will start going through the roof.”
“Whatever you say, Jake,” Doolittle told him. “Just give us the instructions and we’ll make sure it happens.”