Road Rash (23 page)

He just walked over and sat down, without asking or saying a word.

“Hey, guys, how’s it hangin’?” he said after he’d seated himself. “I’m Corey Lankenship.”

We looked at him blankly for a second. I guess we were tired.

“Uh, you know, your agent …?”

He was younger than I would have expected. Maybe Glenn’s age. But he was trying hard to be a whole lot older, like a kid dressing up in his dad’s suit or something.

“Sure, I remember,” Glenn said, putting out his hand. “I’m Glenn Taylor. We spoke a few times on the phone.” Glenn introduced the rest of us, then said, “So what brings you out here? You guys are based out of Spokane, right?”

“Sure are. But I swing out this way every few weeks to check in with our clients. I was over in Missoula today, so I figured I’d do a drive-by to see how things are going. It’s only a couple of hours.”

“Do you know the Dog and Pony in Bozeman?” Danny asked.

“They’re only one of our best accounts. I saw Jake last week. He told me you guys were awesome—he can’t wait to have you back.”

“Cool,” Danny said. “We liked them, too. But there’s something new going on there that you might want to know about.
On Saturdays they’ve started this old-school classic-rock night. I figured you might want to tell your other bands so they don’t get, like … caught unexpectedly?” He cleared his throat. “Just looking out for you, bro.”

“Umm, thanks. Yeah, it’s not usually my job. Uh … Brooke—back in Spokane—is usually the band liaison … yeah … but I’ll pass the word to her. Hey, sorry if you were taken by surprise.”

“
Hey
, no problem,” Danny replied. It wasn’t a full-on mock and I doubt if Corey even caught it, but I was having a hard time not busting up.

Corey looked like he’d just remembered something. “I thought you guys were a five-piece.” He turned to Amber. “You’re not in the band, right? I thought there was only one girl.…”

“One of our guys isn’t feeling so good, so he’s taking the night off,” Glenn said. That was it—no apology, no detailed explanation … and no lie. Technically speaking.

To be honest, I was expecting to catch some grief over it. Of all the nights for our agent to drop in on us …

But he said, “Okay, I guess I can understand that. And hey, don’t sweat it. You guys totally rock.” He took out his wallet and started handing out his business card, giving one to each of us, including Amber. “Seriously, you’re good. Next time we have you come out, we’ll get you into some of our bigger venues.” He looked at his watch. “Which reminds me—I’ve gotta get rolling. My Beemer’s parked out front and this place can be a war zone after midnight. Say hi to Alex for me.” He got up. “Hey, check you later.” And he was gone.

We just looked at each other, doing that shake-your-head-and-chuckle
thing. Finally, Danny said, “Somewhere there’s a sales office at a car dealership with his name on it.”

“Hey, guys, here’s a little story from K’s Choice,” Jamie was saying to the crowd. Glenn and Danny were still tuning and plugging in, and she was just tap-dancing for a minute until they were ready. “It’s about being in a band on the road. And take it from me, this is no exaggeration.”

She had a piano sound going and she played a few chords that sounded familiar, then she sang softly:

Without thinking, I joined in on backing vocals with the tagline:
Something’s wrong
.

She looked over at me and smiled before the next line.

And again:

By the time she got to the next verse, the other guys were good to go and they’d started singing the
something’s wrong
parts along with me and Jamie. Danny waved Amber up, too, and all three of them were standing around Glenn’s mic, singing.
Danny and Amber don’t really sing, but you get enough people together and—as long as some of them can carry a tune—it’ll work, at least in a sing-along fashion. And on some level I guess it did, because the crowd really seemed to enjoy it.

Glenn had his Strat on after this, so I called him and Danny over and said, “Let’s do the original. ‘Every Day.’ ”

Glenn was hesitant, but Danny leaned on him. “C’mon, GT. It’s a killer tune, and I’ve heard it enough to get through it. What is it, A to E to D on the verse?”

“Yeah, with a G at the top of the chorus. Got that, JD?” Jamie nodded back.

“Cool,” Danny went on. “Let’s fire it up and see what happens. Who’s gonna care, tonight?”

Glenn shrugged, but that was good enough for me. I said into my mic, “This is one of our original tunes, written by our guitar player, Glenn ‘GT’ Taylor. Hope you enjoy it as much as we do.”

Glenn turned to me and kind of made a face, but I just pulled an Alicia and stuck out my tongue. Then I started clicking my sticks in time and counted it off. He had no choice—he started playing.

It’s funny. I’d heard that thing a million times during the production process, but this was the first time I’d actually played it with a band. Hell, this was the first time the song had ever really been
played
, period. And it felt even better than the recording. Way better.

The intro drove hard, with me pounding the kick and snare and Danny doing a much better job with the bass line than I ever could have. Then we pulled way back for the vocals.

And hearing him sing it—the raw emotion in his voice—I got chills. Seriously.

I sang the
every day
parts, like I had on the recording, and Jamie joined in with me in unison, strengthening the line.

By the time we got to the solo, we were burning. I heard something that made me look up, and I had to smile. Amber was standing next to Danny, whacking the crap out of the tambourine on the backbeats and making my snare sound even stronger.

I kept the energy level up through the repeat chorus and all the way to the end, never letting up until we got to the big crash ending. And the crowd loved it. One guy even yelled out, “That was bitchin’, man! You got any more originals like that?”

“Not yet,” Glenn admitted. “But here’s one you’ll like.” We ended up doing “Bad Luck”—which I thought was pretty appropriate for me tonight—then followed it up with a bunch of other strong tunes.

Near the end of the set—as we finished up “Naive,” by the Kooks—Glenn broke a string. He started to go for his backup guitar, which is what you’d normally do at a gig until your next break, but this wasn’t a normal gig and there weren’t any more breaks—we were close to being done. Plus, I knew he’d way rather be playing Blackie. So I stopped him.

“Just change your string, we’ll cover.” I was thinking that Danny, Jamie, and I would jam for a minute, but then I remembered how much the audience had liked “Something’s Wrong.” It only had a few simple chords, and I knew them.

I strapped on Glenn’s acoustic and stepped up to his microphone. Damn, it felt like I was naked. I’d never sung onstage without the comfort of being behind my drumset, but this was the perfect night for it. “We’re going to do a little sing-along,” I said into the mic. There were a few grumbles, so I said, “This is so easy you can do it if you’re hammered. In fact, it’ll probably sound
better
if you’re hammered!” That brought a few laughs. “It goes like this—we sing a line, then you sing
something’s wrong
. Easy money, honey.” Then I strummed the opening chord and jumped into one of the verses.

Every time I got to
something’s wrong
, I pointed to the crowd and they sang it. Okay, they more like drunkenly shouted it, but at least they went along with it. I looked over my shoulder—Glenn wasn’t quite done yet. So I went to the front of the stage and held the mic out and let people make up their own first lines, then everyone would join in on the refrain. Some of them were lame, of course, but some were pretty damn funny. One girl obviously needed a change in her relationship status:

And then this came from the grizzled old guy next to her, who sang back at her:

I don’t know if he was a popular local dude or what, but the crowd totally cracked up at him. Either way, I figured I should quit while I was ahead, so I wrapped it up.

By then Glenn was good to go. “Thanks, man,” he said to me. “That was some first-rate tap-dancing.”

Then Jamie sang the hell out of “Can’t Getcha Out of My Mind,” by Deep Dark Robot, her voice almost cracking on the line
I’m feelin’ like a junkie that’s jonesin’ for a broken heart.…
When that was over, we realized we were just about done. We were debating what to do for our last song when someone shouted out, “Clapton!” Then other people started joining in. “Yeah, play some Clapton!” Man, these guys loved their oldies.…

I figured we’d do “Crossroads,” like last time, or one of the old barroom standards, like “Cocaine” or maybe even “Bell
Bottom Blues.” I looked over at Glenn for some direction, but he was messing with his amp. Then he walked to the front of the stage and just stood there, looking down. I couldn’t be sure from where I was sitting, but I had the impression his eyes were closed. Then he looked up toward the ceiling and, without checking with us or anything, whipped out the signature riff from “Layla.”

That’s all he played at first, just those half dozen opening notes, and he let the last one sustain. The crowd recognized it immediately and went crazy. Glenn milked that one note until it built into a howl of feedback from his cranked-up Marshall combo, then he did one of those dive-bomb-down-the-guitar-neck things and went into the main groove of the song.

I caught Danny’s attention and held one finger to my lips and twirled my other finger in the air—
Wait and let it build a little
. I let Glenn go through that part four times—instead of twice, like it usually goes—before I came in on full drumset, and during the third and fourth times Danny and I built up pounding eighth notes all the way through, starting from nothing and slowly adding tension, so that when we finally exploded and joined Glenn in the groove, it was this massive release.

I kinda channeled Steve Gadd’s take on it and played just a hair behind the beat. It’s hard to explain, but it makes it sound more … profound or something. And I definitely got my money’s worth—I sat there and took it all in, even as I played. And what a show it was.…

Glenn absolutely nailed the song, guitar
and
vocals, and that’s not an easy thing to do with that tune—usually one guy plays the soaring guitar melody while someone else sings. And
halfway through it I realized I wasn’t hearing any keys. I glanced over at Jamie but she was just sitting there, not moving, watching Glenn. He came out of the first chorus and went into the next verse.

I couldn’t blame her—this was a perfect example of what I was always trying to tell the guys in the Sock Monkeys about emotion overriding perfection. Yeah, I’m sure Brad could have sung it technically better, and yeah, it would have been nice to have another guitar playing, but none of that mattered—this had that real-deal thing going on that made everything else trivial.

Anyway, we made it to the end of the rock part of the song and I figured we’d probably wrap things up right there, but as my cymbal swells were starting to fade away and the applause started, Jamie began playing the slow piano coda that builds into the instrumental second movement of the whole thing. Man, that’s got to be one of the prettiest pieces of music ever written.

I let her get through it by herself once, then I came in with a simple ride-cymbal accompaniment and Danny started playing that real smooth bass line. Glenn did this thing where he’d back off his volume pedal, pick the string silently, then step on the pedal and let the note swell. It totally changed the attack
of the note, making it sound more like a violin than a guitar. If Kimber were here, she would have called it “ethereal.”

We went through that cycle several times, each time getting a little bigger and a little fuller until we were freakin’
soaring
. My strongest memory of the evening is gazing out over the crowd and seeing all these faces looking up at us, just listening and swaying in time to the music. As far as I was concerned, it could have gone on forever.…

We didn’t have to be anywhere until Tuesday, when we started at West Yellowstone, so we were going to meet at noon on Sunday and strike everything and load up our gear like usual. But I ended up staying to tear down and pack up all my gear after the other guys disappeared. It wasn’t my incredible work ethic—I just had way too many things swirling through my head to go to sleep. But when I was halfway done taking my set apart, I saw Jamie walk up to the bar and get a cup of coffee. All of a sudden coffee sounded good.

The place had just about emptied out as I sat on the stool next to her. “How’s it going?”