Blood And Guitars

Chapter 8

Chapter 8

Jonas and I were getting our guitars out when O’Shea walked into the studio. He waved to Karl, the studio engineer who sat on the other side of the glass in the control room, and then sauntered over to us.

“Chase coming?” He put a foot up on the couch next to me, leaning down to pick up Cowboy who was whining for his attention.

“Should be here soon,” I replied.

“Is it a good one?” He meant my song. I looked up to see the hopeful glint in his eye. I knew O’Shea well enough to know he was almost as hungry for new material as I was. Almost.

I nodded and he grinned, needing no more of a response than that. I’d brought my Ibanez along but once I’d reached the studio, I’d realized just how anxious I was to hear the song on my electric. So I went for Liza instead. We had our guitars tuned and ready to play when Chase walked in. I handed each of them a lyric sheet for “Midnight Poison” and a copy of the basic guitar chords I’d typed up. If nothing else, it would help everyone follow along. I knew O’Shea could take my basic melody and kick it into a higher gear in no time.

“What are we working on today?” Karl hollered from the next room. I put my guitar down and half-jogged out into the hallway to talk to him.

“It’s brand new,” I explained. “I just finished it so it’s still rough but if we could get a decent take and go from there that would be great.”

“You want some cans?” He gestured to several sets of headphones hanging on the wall nearby.

I nodded. “And Chase will need a metronome click in his,” I specified. “It’s an up-tempo song, but I won’t know the speed for sure until we get going.” I sang the chorus for him, clapping out the beat until he thought he’d found a good speed on his digital metronome. “Let’s start there and see how that feels.”

“You got it.” Karl was already unwinding the cords on the cans as I followed him back into the large sound room where he plugged them in and handed each of us a pair to put on.

“Give it to us,” O’Shea said once I had strapped the Fender Strat back on.

I was anxious and nervous all at once. The adrenaline rush that bringing out a new song always gave me was incredible, but it wouldn’t even register compared to the one I’d get from performing it live for the fans. Chase did a double on the kick drum and Cowboy whined, hurrying away from us and out into the hallway. I watched through the glass as he made his way into the lounge and saw Karl bend to pick him up. The dog was going to have to get used to studio life sooner or later.

“Okay. We should start out with just the rhythm guitar for the first verse, or maybe just the first half of the verse. I’m not sure.”

“We’ll try it both ways if we have to,” Jonas piped in. “Play it like you wrote it and we’ll go over it until we get it right.”

I nodded. Why was I so nervous? These were my boys. They had my back. We’d work it out just like we always did. They’d take care of my new and fragile song and it would soon become an entity of its own, belonging to all of us.

I strummed a power chord on Liza and took a deep breath, not bothering to check the lyric sheet in front of me. I knew the words by heart already. I strummed the first few intro chords and then sang the first verse. I paused after that, wanting to share an idea before I lost it. “I was thinking maybe you could double bass like a heartbeat during those last two lines,” I said to Chase, who nodded as he gazed at the lyric sheet, scribbling a note with his pen.

“You were right about just having the rhythm for the first verse,” O’Shea offered. “Jonas and I will come in with Chase after that.”

I nodded, happy with the decision, and then I went on to sing the chorus. “The chorus is a little different the second time around,” I pointed out, giving everyone a second to glance over their lyric sheets.