Road Rash (13 page)

It’s just so … primal. Imagine you’re dancing in a room full of people, only every time your foot hits the floor, the whole room goes
boom!
And every time you clap your hands, the room goes
pow!
And when you shake your ass, the room
shivers
. Everyone feels it and everyone moves with you. Drumming is exactly like that—you’re sitting at your instrument, dancing to the music. Only your dancing
makes
the music, instead of the other way around.

It’s the coolest thing ever.…

Brad stomped on a foot switch, and the stage was flooded with colored lights. “BOZEMAN, MON-FRICKIN’-TANA—
YEAH …!
” he boomed into the mic. Some cheers started up, but he didn’t wait. “We’re-Bad-Habit-and-we’re-from-California-hope-you-like-the-show!” Without missing a beat, Glenn fired up the grinding guitar intro to “So Far” and I started laying down a slammin’ pile-driver beat as Brad jumped into it.

And just like that we were off and running with our plan to take the Northern Rockies by storm. We followed that song with another strong one, and another. My nerves had vanished after the first thirty seconds, and we were in the pocket and rocking through song after song.
Except …

By the end of the first set—after a dozen-plus killer tunes—it was apparent from the lack of audience response that something was wrong. If we’d sucked, I could see it. But what are you supposed to do if you’re at the top of your game, really nailing it, and you
still
get a lukewarm response from the crowd …?

It was weird, like telling hilarious jokes to people who don’t speak your language. The others chalked it up to being the new guys in town, and we jumped on the second set after a short break, just going on down our set list. But by then I had a hunch about what was wrong, since the Sock Monkeys usually played to a less exclusive crowd than these guys did. We’d been like a mutt band, where Bad Habit was more of a purebred, and we’d had to do a little bit of everything to keep people happy. Well, looks like things hadn’t changed as much as I’d thought … but I was
way
too new here to start throwing my opinion around.

Luckily, someone else did it for me.…

“Hey, guys—Corey was right. You sound great.” Jake was talking to Brad and Glenn and me during our second break.

“Hell, you think
this
is good,” Brad said. “You should see—”

Glenn held up his hand. “But what?” he asked.

“Well …” Jake paused. “My feeling is, people pretty much like to hear what they’re familiar with. Especially when they go out to have a good time. If I had to guess, I’d say about three people in the room tonight have heard most of the songs you’ve played so far.”

“Hey, man,” Brad said, “these are pretty happening, for the most part. Good tunes. Don’t you guys listen to what’s goin’ on?”

I thought Jake was going to get pissed, but he seemed to take it in stride. “Sure we do. But it’s a big country—things might be a little different here than in California. I’m just saying.”

Glenn spoke up. “Can you give us some examples of what they might like to hear?”

“Hey, I’m just a glorified barkeep,” Jake said, “not a music expert.”

“Well, what do most bands play here?” I asked.

“Hell, I don’t know … I’ve heard a hundred bands play here, and they’re all different. But I can tell you one thing our best bands all have in common—when they play a song, you’ve probably heard it before, and you probably like it.” He took a sip from his coffee. “Look, guys. I’m not trying to be a pain or tell you how to do your job. Like I said, you sound real good. I just think you’d get more people out on the dance floor if you’d drag out some of the songs from your Saturday night set and mix them in. That’s all.”

“Uh,
Saturday night set
 …?” Brad asked. “What are you talking about?”

“Corey didn’t tell you about Saturdays here …?”

Glenn was shaking his head. “Nope, he didn’t mention anything special about it. What’s the deal?”

“Every Saturday during the summer season we host Club Classic. It’s a big thing around here—happy-hour prices all night and free snacks, and whatever band we have that week plays classic rock all night. We get a great turnout—probably more money comes in that night than the rest of the week.” He took in a deep breath and slowly let it out. “But from what I’m hearing, it seems like you guys won’t be able to cover it.”

“Yeah, classic rock … I don’t know—” Brad said.

Glenn interrupted him again. “We’ll make it happen.”

“Maybe I’d better try to book another band for that night instead,” Jake suggested. “Might be hard this late in the game, but I could probably scrounge someone up.”

“You won’t need to,” Glenn said. “We’ll do it, and we’ll do a good job.” He looked at Jake and nodded. “I promise.”

Jake looked at him for a minute, then finally nodded back. “Okay. But you let me know if you need anything.”

“That’s a deal. And thanks.” Then he added, “When’s the best time for us to get in here during the day without disturbing your customers?”

“Well, we open for lunch at noon, and the lunch crowd’s gone within a couple of hours at the latest. Then we open the bar when we start serving dinner at five.”

Glenn nodded. “Thanks.”

“No problem,” Jake said. “I’ve got to get back to work. You guys take care.”

After he left, Brad turned to Glenn. “Why’d you tell him we could do it?”

“I’ve never bailed on a gig in my life, and I’m not going to start now.”

“But it’s only one night, so why are we gonna kill ourselves over it? He said he could get someone else to cover it.”

“It’s not just one night—it’s the whole summer.”

“Huh?”

“You think these guys don’t talk? If we shit the bed on this, the first thing Jake’ll do is complain to Corey, who’s going to swear on a stack of
Billboard
magazines that he told us all about it. Then Jake’s going to call all the other managers on the circuit and let them know how ‘difficult’ we are to work with. Sounds like the perfect way to kill a tour—get your agent mad at you and get a bad rep with the other club owners before you even get started. No thanks.”

“So, how are we supposed to morph into a classic-rock band overnight?”

Glenn raised his eyebrows at me. “What do you think, Zach?”

I shrugged. Why me? “Well … I’d say get down here first thing and woodshed until they open for lunch,” I said to Brad, “then put in a few more hours in the afternoon. Same thing for Friday and Saturday, too. I’m up for it if everyone else is—it’s the only option I can see if we’re gonna cover this thing.” I felt a little weird telling him how to run what was supposedly his band, but that was how I saw it.

Brad thought about this for a minute, and you could almost see him switch hats. “Okay, that’ll work. We’ll meet at ten tomorrow morning. I’ll tell the others.” He looked at his watch. “Time to play.”

For the rest of the gig they dug out the most popular tunes they could recall from their overall repertoire and we worked them into the set. It was probably hardest on me—almost none of them were on the list I’d practiced, and many of them I’d never actually played before, period. I kept a close eye on Danny and he helped me out with cues, and I managed to get through it without causing a train wreck.

We even took a few requests along the way. At one point someone yelled out, “Play some Clapton!” Damn, I guess Jake was right—they really did go for the old stuff out here.…

I looked at Brad. “You know ‘Layla’?” I figured that was the ultimate Clapton song.

Brad looked up at the ceiling and nodded his head in time as he sang the words to himself. “Yeah, I know it.”

“Cool.” I looked at the others as I started tapping the tempo on my hi-hats. “We good with that?”

I was waiting for the opening riff when Glenn shook his head. I was surprised—I knew it wasn’t the easiest song on guitar but I would have bet my snare drum he could nail that thing in his sleep.

He let out a breath. “Sorry, man. Let’s do something else.” And without waiting he fired up the opening lines of “Crossroads.” Luckily, I’d heard it enough to fake my way through it.

I finally realized that if you don’t really know a tune too well, it only makes it worse if you approach it all careful-like. No matter
what, you have to play it like you freakin’
own
it. Sure, once in a while I guessed wrong or missed a cue or something, and if anyone was really paying attention, they probably noticed, but I learned to recover and just keep on driving, full speed ahead.

And the funny part was, Jake was right … at least partly. The songs we pulled out of the hat were the ones that got people out of their chairs in the first place. But I took pride in the fact that once we got them on the floor, we kept them there with our regular material by sheer force of groove, if nothing else.

It wasn’t exactly the most
relaxing
gig I’d ever played. But by the end of the last song—after the applause had stopped and Brad had said, “See you here tomorrow night, and bring your friends!”—I realized it might have been the most satisfying.