They hit it, making their way to the front of the auditorium floor and then walking up a set of steps onto the stage. A stagehand and a security guard met them up there and led them back behind the red curtain that was blocking the view of the primary stage where the various acts that were performing had their equipment set up. This part of the stage was divided into two halves so that one act’s gear could be removed and another’s set up while yet another group was performing on the other half of the stage. And since everyone’s performance for this ceremony had been prerecorded the day before so it could be played over the speakers and lip-synched to, there was no need for sound checks, power-ups, echo checks, or even wires to connect the equipment to the sound system.
The rest of the band was already backstage and in position when Gordon and Jake were led in. Rickie Mack, G’s DJ, stood behind a table with three turntables on it. The lead bass player, James Witlock, (who played the acoustic guitar parts for Step Inside when G was out on the road) stood just to the right of him. The two drummers, Evan Jackson and Lucky Powel, had their sets side by side in the rear, and the secondary bass player, Fro Allen was set up back between them. G’s microphone stand, with its dead microphone clipped into it, was at front and center of the stage. Jake had no microphone because he would not be singing, but he knew from rehearsal that his place would be just behind and to the right of G’s microphone stand.
“Here you go, Jake,” said Bobby Core, the lead production manager for entertainment at the ceremony. He held Jake’s Fender Grand Concert guitar in his hands. It had been highly polished with Pledge and smelled of it. There was no cord plugged into its receiver.
“Thanks, Bobby,” Jake told him, taking the instrument and slinging it over his shoulder. He walked over to his position and pulled a pick from the inlay. Instinctively, he strummed the strings a few times, listening to the tuning, before remembering that it didn’t matter if the thing was in tune or not. No one was going to hear it.
“All right,” Bobby told them. “I’ve got twenty-five seconds until we’re back from commercial break. After that, Johnny is going to do the intro for you and the curtain is going to come up. Remember the rule of sham performing. Play like you’re really doing it and keep in synch with the recording. Look into the cameras, particularly the ones in the rear of the venue. Pretend like you’re not pretending. Everyone dig?”
Everyone dug. All of them had been through variations of this before.
“All right,” Bobby said. “Kick some ass, homies!” He then trotted off into the backstage area.
The large clock on the wall in the stage left area clicked down to zero and then began to count back up again. The sound of Johnny Gill’s voice began to boom out of the sound system all around them.
“Notorious rapper Bigg G, known for his hard-hitting lyrics and relevant topics about growing up and living in the inner city as an African-American, decided to go a little experimental on his latest album, Bring It. He hooked up with Jake Kingsley, former lead singer for the heavy metal rock group Intemperance, a man who has more than a little notoriety of his own, if you can dig what I’m saying...” Johnny sniffed loudly a few times, causing the audience to break out into laughter and a little applause.
“Jesus Christ,” Jake said with a laugh of his own, shaking his head.
“Now, aside from having some questionable ideas about where he should be putting his nose,” Gill went on, “Jake is also one of the finest acoustic guitar players to ever put a pick to strings, and Bigg G knew that. So, he recruited him for this next song, a fusion of hip hop and progressive rock that is unlike anything that has ever been done before. This song spent nine weeks at the number one position on the popular music charts, sixteen weeks at number one on the R&B charts, and, incredibly enough, six weeks at number one on the progressive rock charts. It has helped propel Bigg G’s album, Bring It, to triple Platinum status and nomination for the category of Best Rap Album here tonight.
“That song is called Step Inside, and it has been nominated for Song of the Year. Bigg G is here to perform that song for you tonight and he brought along Jake Kingsley to play the acoustic guitar for him. Let’s give them a warm, Soul Train Music Awards welcome.”
Applause rippled across the venue and the curtain before them rose up and disappeared. The spotlights clicked on and Jake found himself staring out into the dimness of a live audience once again. He looked over at Bobby, who was just leaning out of the stage door, out of the view of the audience. Since the song opened with Jake’s guitar picking out the melody, it was Jake who needed to know when to start playing in order for everyone to synch properly.
Bobby counted down from five with his fingers. When the last finger disappeared, Jake began to play. At that same moment in time, the recording began to play the intro as well. The timing matched exactly.
Step Inside was four minutes, nineteen seconds in length on the CD. It was four-fifty-eight on the recording they had done yesterday for this performance, that extra time being taken up by an extension to Jake’s solo and to G and Ricky’s outro. Jake remained firmly rooted to his spot on the stage, his fingers playing the strings to match the recording. G sang into his microphone on the stand for the first verse and then pulled the microphone free and began to wander around the stage for the remainder of the song. Everyone acted as if they were really performing the tune and when it was done, the audience cheered loudly with what seemed genuine appreciation. The seven of them stepped to the front of the stage, linked arms, and took a few bows as the curtain came back down, blocking them once again from view.
Johnny Gill’s voice boomed out once again, telling them when they returned from the commercial break, they were going to announce the winner of the Best R&B/Soul Album Female.
“All right,” G said, nodding in satisfaction. “I guess that’s that then.”
“Yep,” agreed Rickie. He turned to Jake. “Not bad for a white boy,” he told him.
“Thanks,” Jake said. “Can we start drinking now?”
Gordon did not win either of the awards he was nominated for. Best Rap Album went to Onyx. And Song of the Year went, of course, to Whitney Houston for I Will Always Love You. G and his band were not terribly disappointed. They were mostly just glad that the endless ceremony was finally over and they could go home.
“What you two gonna do now?” G asked them as they waited in the limo queue after the show.
Jake shrugged. “I guess we’ll just go home,” he said.
“Home?” G said, appalled. “It’s only ten-thirty on a Saturday motherfuckin’ night. You can’t be going home this early.”
“We can’t?” Jake asked.
“Hell no, homey!” G said. “We need to drink some booze, smoke some shit, have a good time.”
“We do?”
“We do,” he confirmed, turning to Laura. “You up for some good time, Teach?”
“Always,” she said with a giggle. She had consumed more than a few glasses of complimentary champagne during the ceremony.
“And what about you, Neesh?” G asked his fiancé. “You down with some good time?”
“As long as I can get out of this dress first,” she said. “It’s making my tits sore.”
“Fair enough,” G said. “How about we party at our place? The bar is stocked and I got some premium fuckin’ weed from Humboldt County in my stash box. We’ll throw on some tunes, smoke some bud, maybe order a pizza to munch on.”
“What about our clothes?” Jake asked. “I don’t want to do all that in a tux.”
“And I really don’t want to get pizza sauce on this dress,” Laura added.
“Stop by your pad first,” G suggested. “It’s on the way to my pad ... kind of.”