December 24th [COMPLETED]

8. The Live Take

The live take was Felix's idea. If all else failed, George could rest in that fact. If this wild idea of his crashed and burned, at least it was his idea. This fact wasn't as encouraging as George hoped it would be.

"I want to do a live take."

"A what?"

"A live take. You know, where you get the whole band together and play a song live and that's the last take."

"I know what a live take is, Felix."

"Well, I want to do one. And I want to do it for 'Phoenix'. I think it's the only way to do the song justice."

George set her sandwich down and used the excuse of wiping off her hands to keep her from answering right away. When she was done, she looked Felix straight in the eye to make sure he wasn't completely losing his mind.

"A live take is hard to do, Felix," she finally.

"I know but you're George Briggs! You can do anything!"

"That's sweet but that doesn't make a live take easy, babe."

"What do we need to make it happen?"

A long list immediately appeared in George's head. From her very very limited experiences with such an undertaking, the list grew fast and long and overwhelming in a second.

"Okay, well," George tried stalling to get her thoughts together.
"We would need to completely arrange the song ahead of time, for guitars, keyboards, vocals, everything."

"Okay. What else?"

George couldn't ignore the unbridled excitement and enthusiasm in Felix's voice and his eyes as he waited on her every word.

"We would also need a studio or something like it. A place where everyone could fit in one place and play at the same time. My hotel room isn't big enough to fit your entire band, which, by the way, isn't even enough musicians to pull this song off. We would need almost double that. And backup singers on top of that."

"We'll use Keller's."

George pressed her lips together. That was a good idea.

"And we'd need equipment. Lots of it. Way more than I have. We'd need enough microphones for everyone playing. We'd need a hard drive big enough to hold all the recordings in one place and a computer way bigger than mine to process that amount of information fast enough."

Felix bit down on his thumb and started pacing back and forth in front of George's hotel room coffee table. His eyebrows were close together and she gave him a moment to think.

"We could use Keller's band. I can even ask Reeve if she would be up for singing backup. Maybe she could rope her backup singers in as well for a fuller sound..."

He trailed off and then suddenly stopped, his head whipping up, his eyes going wide.

"Chicago," he said.

"What about Chicago?"

"We're in Chicago in a week. We're playing two nights. They don't have to tear the stage down after the show. We can record during sound check the second day."

He had George beat there. She couldn't deny it any longer. This crazy idea of his was possible. And she had to agree of his estimation of his song. It would sound amazing on a live take.

George took a deep breath as excitement started to well up in her chest. He was excited enough for the both of them and one of them needed to keep a level head.

"Felix, if we do this..."

His smile grew at the hint of possibility in her voice but he sat down at the serious tone with which she said it.