Only Rock and Roll — Finding It: Chapter 4

The following is a chapter from a novel in progress titled Finding It. Please let me know in your comments if you would like me to post further installments.

Darren and Rich lived with their mom, of course. She was a bartender who, over the years, had graduated from a barmaid. But despite her efforts, her luck with men hadn’t improved.

Darren and Rich’s father was an abusive, alcoholic, ne’er-do-well who went from one get-rich-quick scheme to another. After the divorce, he still hung around and abused her and his kids until she put a court order out on him and had him arrested for violating it. Still, he periodically violated it until Darren was old enough to defend his mom. Since he broke his father’s upper arm with a baseball bat, his father hadn’t been back.

According to Darren, his mom was working on her third attempt to replace “The Beast”, as he referred to his father. But the latest version of the man of her dreams had turned into another nightmare for her and the boys. Except, both Darren and Rich were old enough to take up for her, now, except that sometimes she told them to butt out.

Go figure the lack of self-esteem to put up with that crap.

I stayed out of the guys’ private lives if it didn’t impact the band. We practiced whenever their mom was at work, so we didn’t disturb her. And we didn’t turn our amps up too much because the neighbors would complain. Although we had practiced in Cam’s basement in fall and winter or his garage in the spring or summer, it was a hassle relocating all the equipment just for a few hours. For convenience, I kept one of my amps and speaker cabinets at Darren’s house. When we performed, I brought my other equipment from home and loaded everything into the back of my dad’s truck, including Darren’s and Cam’s amps and cabinets and Rich’s drum kit. Darren drove a van into which he loaded the lights and public address speakers and mixer board — our guitars and all the assorted distortion pedals and cables.

By the time I arrived at Darren’s, it was close to noon. That gave us a good solid six hours of rehearsal time before his mother got home. We started out working on the parts of the Rock opera that were more or less complete. And after a couple of hours of that, we took a break. We walked over to a neighborhood market for some pop — what I’ve since learned that people in other parts of the country call cokes or sodas — and snacks.

“It’s getting better,” I said. “I think we’ll be ready by January or February at the latest.”

“I don’t know, Brent. This is already October, damned near November. The transitions in your opera are too friggin’ hard,” Cam said.

Darren laughed. “Everything is too friggin’ hard until you learn how to do it.”

“I know, but sheesh, the tempo changes alone… nobody does that.”

“Pink Floyd does,” Darren said.

“We don’t play friggin’ Pink Floyd,” Cam said.

“Maybe we could if you got used to tempo changes,” Rich said.

“We might need to recruit a keyboard player, too,” I said. “I think the ‘Overture’ needs a piano or something, maybe an organ — a pipe organ.”

“Where are you going to get one of those, let alone someone to play it?”

“I’m just thinking out loud, mostly. I’ll make it happen, though.”

“I’d like to have a keyboard player,” Darren said. “It would be nice to sound more like Deep Purple when we’re covering one of their songs.”

“And less like a garage band doing mediocre covers,” Cam groused.

“Hey, we’re improving. We used to do horrible covers,” Rich said, causing all of us to laugh.

“Every band starts out like this,” I said. “You just have to never give up and keep practicing.”

“I’m all in favor of writing our own music. But the drum parts are not me, not my style at all,” Rich said.

“Because Bart plays jazz,” I said.

“Yeah. I’m not into that. I can do so much better freestyle. You know?”

“That’s what sucks about it. It’s not really Rock ’n’ Roll because we’re not playing variations,” Darren said.

“We can add in changes on the sheet music. But we need to play it like that the next time and at some point, we’re not going to be able to improvise anything else,” I explained. “So, don’t get used to doing it. Play it like it’s written.”

“And we’re trusting you to tell us how it’s gonna be?” Cam asked.

“Unless you want to write some of it. It isn’t all that hard.”

“It’s enough that we learned how to read the music! I just don’t get why having the sheet music so goddamned important?”

“Because I have to turn in the sheet music as well as the recording. The two gotta match.”

“Who’s going to know if they don’t?”

“I’ll know. And some of the people in my class who are in the music programs at school, they’ll know as we playback the recording. Anyway, I’m looking into publishing the music.”

Before returning to the house to go at it again, we ate our snacks and drank our drinks. Then we began rehearsing covers of hit songs we did whenever we played paying gigs, which happened but not often enough.

“It feels so much better to get back to playing something normal,” Cam said.

“What a narrow-minded asshole,” Carlos said, causing me to turn away as I suppressed a laugh.

Darren looked at me and I shrugged. I figured he felt the same way as Cam about playing covers. Hell, I did too. It’s always easier to rehearse something you already know.

Cam was good at playing guitar, just never great and he wasn’t improving. Years ago, he learned guitar before Darren and once Darren expressed the desire and had a cheap guitar of his own, he learned everything Cam knew over the course of about a year. But while Darren continued to improve, turning his interest in the guitar into a love affair and finally obsession, Cam stagnated. He claimed he was better than Darren, based on having taught him, but everyone knew otherwise. We had ears, after all. And eventually, because Cam excused himself from practices and sometimes even gigs, Darren and I mastered filling in the gaps, making the three of us sound more like four.

Darren had watched me play guitar. He knew that in a pinch I could handle the rhythm guitar parts of the Rock opera, for example. Almost a year before I’d performed an acoustic gig with Lee Anders Johnston, someone both Darren and I knew, who was — bar none — the best guitarist either of us knew. In preparation for that gig, Lee introduced me to Sammy, one of his mentors and the best Blues dobro player I had ever seen. Sammy also restored guitars and had a left-handed Martin D-28 that he made me a deal on because the guy he had been restoring it for had canceled the order. It was a beautiful instrument. And being ambidextrous, I already knew the basics that my dad taught me.

The reason I started out playing bass guitar in Thrush was the group needed a bassist. Since I already knew bass guitar and I was fairly good at it, it worked out perfectly. In fact, the more I played, the more I grew to love bass. But I learned on a right-handed Fender Precision. Later, I special ordered a black Rickenbacker 4001, like the one Roger Glover in Deep Purple played.

A lot of people who aren’t musicians think playing bass is kind of like playing arpeggios on a guitar, just that it has four fat strings tuned an octave lower than the four top strings on a guitar. But I learned to play bass properly, using my fingertips to pluck and thumb to thump. So, even though the adjustment from guitar to bass was a challenge, I thought of it as learning a completely new instrument that was only tangentially like a guitar.

I was packed up and just leaving as Darren and Rich’s mom pulled into the driveway. Cam’s mom had already picked him up. I said my goodbyes and got in my car to head home.

“You need to do something about Cam,” Carlos said.

“What?”

“He’s going to destroy the band, not to mention your Rock opera”.

“I don’t think it’s that serious.”

“You’ll see I’m right”

“’Cause you always are.”

“I was right about Dawn.”

“What’s that old saying about blind squirrels finding acorns?”

“You can’t wait to talk to her though.”

“I’m looking forward to it. I’m not gonna lie. I like talking to her.”

“She likes you, too.”

“I think she feels sorry for me.”

“That too. But there is some chemistry as well. It’s a wolfcat thing.”

After parking my car in the garage at home, I carried my bass into the house and back to my room. It was around seven-thirty, more than enough time to eat, and maybe listen to some music before camping out by the phone to wait for Dawn’s call.

Mom was just leaving the kitchen as I arrived. “I made some fresh cornbread. There’s some vegetable soup in the big pot on the stove.

“That sounds good, Mom.”

“How was practice.”

“We’re getting better.”

“Bruce and I were talkin’. I think after you are finished with this Rock opera thing, maybe you should quit playing with the band.”

“Why?”

“You run all over creation and don’t get paid enough to cover your expenses.”

“We’re still getting started, Mom.”

“You’ve been at it for a couple of years. You should be making money by now.”

“A lot of the problem is nobody is old enough to play the places that pay well.”

“Bars you mean. I’m not sure I want you playing in bars anyway.”

“We gotta play wherever we can get a gig. We have some parties coming up for the holidays. Some of those are going to pay well.”

“What do you call well?”

“We’ll make a hundred each.”

“I was talking to Homer Rivers.”

“Mom!”

“Now, before you go off, just listen. They’re looking for a bass player for Wednesday night, Sunday morning, and Sunday night. It pays $50 each time you play.”

“I can’t do that, Mom. First, I have wrestling practice starting in a few weeks. So, that blows Wednesday out of the water. Plus, I have all these other commitments with Thrush. Sunday, maybe I could do that, but I’m sure their band has to practice as well. I’d have to learn their songs.”

“That wouldn’t take long.”

“Yeah, but still, it takes time and effort. And then there’s the lingering issue that you don’t want me talking about. Homer told me never to come back. The last time I checked, never still means never.”

“Well, he forgives you.”

“I’m not sure I forgive him. He told me I was disrespecting the faith by wearing a denim suit. It wasn’t that the suit looked like I was wearing jeans or work clothes, it was just his perception based on what the cloth was made of. I’m sure that doesn’t matter in the larger scheme of things. We’re all born naked, after all. Well, you’ve heard it before. That’s why I don’t go to his church anymore. And there doesn’t seem to be all that many other options that you and Dad approve of, so I’d rather not go at all.”

“I told him I’d mention it to you.”

“Well, you did, and I said, no. So, there you go.”

“Sorry I brought it up,” she said, starting to turn toward the family room.

I reached out for her hand and, turned her back, opening my arms to hug her. “Goodnight, Mom.”

“Goodnight, honey.”

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