Nine Volt Heart (26 page)

JASON

W
E FINISHED THE NIGHT with
nothing new recorded that anyone would be happy with in the morning. Most
everyone was pissed at me and went off to find Thai food. I took a cheese
sandwich down to the basement and cruised the Internet to relax. My friend Chas
is as much of an insomniac as I’ve become, so he and I traded instant messaging
jokes and notes throughout the night.

 
Sebastian: What do you think most transformed American music in the twentieth
century?

Chas1933: It’s a toss-up between Rural Electrification and the
railroads.

Sebastian: That’s about the last answer I expected. Explain
please.

Chas1933: The first let everyone hear a wide world of music on
the radio, and the second let big bands and other acts tour every town in
America. And abetted the migration of the blues to Chicago. The world came to
people’s doorstep, and everyone got to stir the melting pot of music that
resulted.

Sebastian: OK, you convinced me. Rural Electrification also let
my hillbilly ancestors plug in their guitars.

Chas had almost repaired my mood when Ephraim called me.

“I heard the rehearsal cuts from the last few days, Jason.
Karl says that no one in the band wants his name on the album, yet it didn’t
seem to stop any of you from doing great work. This material needs you to
finish it. You need to sign your name to it.”

“You had no problem signing my name to your work on the last
album, Ephraim.”

“Because you left town and wouldn’t speak to anyone. This is
just a business proposal. I’m sure your attorney can show you your obligations
for this album, so you and I won’t discuss that. Let’s focus. You need to be
the named producer.”

“Since I’m not a member of Stoneway anymore, you can do
whatever you want, Ephraim.”

“I can’t produce her again if I want to keep peace in the
house and stay professional in the workplace.”

“You sleep with your client’s wife. What’s professional
about that?”

“As I understood it then, and do still, you were done with
Dominique by the time I met her.”

“She was done with me. Though we were still married.”

“You still are.”

“Dominique keeps dragging it out.”

“Because she wants you to apologize, Jason.”

“For what?”

“You hurt her feelings.”

“Hurt her feelings? I spent five effing days in jail because
of her. Now she won’t let me out of marriage jail because no offer ever
satisfies her.”

“You can make this be good for both of you. I can get her to
cooperate in the studio. Do the production and make this a good album.”

“Is this blackmail, Ephraim?”

“No, I’m considering every possible way to stop you from
sabotaging your own career.”

“It’s not sabotage to want my music played the way I
conceived it and performed by people I trust.”

“It’s definitely sabotage if you don’t also figure out how
to make money doing what you do. It’s not possible for everyone, but it is
possible for you, Jason. Work with me.”

“We must be living in parallel universes, Ephraim. What does
‘no’ mean in your universe?”

“That I will have to get up tomorrow and work on yet another
way to convince you.”

~

Karl met me at Lowell’s in the Pike Market, where you can see
the ferry coming in; best food with a view downtown. We’d met there at seven in
the morning since high school, when we had to pony up enough cash to split a
plate of eggs. That morning I pointed to that irony in comparison to our
current lives, but Karl was too ready to change the subject back to how fucked
up my life is.

“You know what’s comical?” Karl said. “You’re a rock star
who doesn’t do drugs, hasn’t had sex in a year, and his old fans hate him
because the last album doesn’t sound like rock-and-roll. Now that’s damn funny.
Maybe you can sell the options to your life’s story as a situation comedy. Then
you’d have to stop acting like your life is as much a tragedy as Hamlet’s.”

“Hamlet was sane until he foreswore doing the sweet thing
with Ophelia. That’s when he turned into a comic figure.”

“Dang, Jason, trust you to have a uniquely contrarian
viewpoint, even on Shakespeare.”

“Think about it, Karl. One could posit that it wasn’t his
father’s ghost but deprivation that put our buddy Hamlet over the edge.” His
father’s ghost. That was worth a laugh a minute. I changed the subject. “It
reminds me of when Arlo thought there wouldn’t be laugh tracks on TV anymore
when we read in the paper that the inventor died.”

“So is Arlo your stalker?”

“I can’t prove it, and he’s so disorganized, I don’t know
how he could pull it off. Maybe he gets Quentin Henderson to ghost-write his
blog posts. Can you find a job for Arlo this summer? He needs to be employed,
and I won’t let him come with us as guitar tech or roadie or anything else.”

“Perhaps Arlo can help Cynthia do your booking and publicity.”
Karl help up his cup to the waitperson, seeking a refill. “How much has she
lined up for you so far that doesn’t include Dominique? I mean besides the
benefit you’re playing this weekend. Oh, don’t sulk. I’m married. Pouty looks
mean nothing to me. Just more Seattle rain running down my neck.”

“Maybe that’s how I look every morning.”

“Ephraim is right. You need a real manager planning ahead
for you instead of a part-time attorney sweeping up behind you.”

“I have come this far doing business myself.”

“No, you haven’t. Beau did every lick of your business work,
until he was too sick to go on. Ephraim picked up half of it until you—”

“Does Ephraim pay you too, Karl? Every time I turn around,
he has my balls in a nutcracker over yet another demand.”

“Ian and I are your oldest friends, right? We both think—sit
still and listen, OK? Separate out Ephraim and business from whatever the hell
is going on in Dominique’s mind. He knows the business, and he has your best
interests at heart. What he proposes is not a different direction for your
music. It’s just business science, so that there’s an actual direction to your
decisions. You can’t call your winter of discontent in Europe a career move. It
was more like you put yourself in a corner for a timeout.”

“I created a lot of new material with Ian last winter. We’re
giving it strength and body in rehearsal now. We’ll make money from my
timeout.”

“You need to do exactly that. You want to sink money into
your girlfriend’s nonprofit rat-hole, which as your attorney I do not
recommend. You need to pay for the next few years of timeouts and new
directions. Ian needs an income-producing partner, not a petulant gambler.”

“Petulant? Karl, what the hell?”

“Look, Ian has big bills to pay for years to come. Cynthia’s
brother’s new care is not cheap. Keeping four grandparents on assisted
living—how does he pay those bills for God-alone-knows how many years? He set a
half-dozen cousins up in business. Yet he won’t do studio work for others,
because he’s so loyal to you. Meanwhile you want to walk away from a record
label that’s begging to re-sign you. Everyone else is supposed to go diddle
themselves while you reinvent your own private reality?”

“OK, I’m an effing asshole. You made your case. Where the
hell do I find a business manager? I’m not getting an agent who’ll talk me into
living a life I don’t want, just so he can take a huge percent of the money I
make.”

“I wish I could do it myself.” Karl seemed wistful.

“Why can’t you?”

“I’m married. I have a law practice. I have to be an adult.”

“This grownup stuff bites a big one.”

“Is it true you haven’t had sex for a year?”

“I made love with a goddess a couple of weeks ago.” I seemed
wistful.

“But that girl won’t sleep with you again?”

“She’s a woman, not a girl, and she’s still getting used to
me being someone else. Why are you asking me?”

“I was wondering if I gave up law and became your manager,
would I get more sex? Because if I quit law, my wife is bound to quit me. If she
doesn’t quit anyway, which she probably will.”

“Karl, you’re the great paragon of married bourgeois
virtue.”

“Except I think my wife hates me. She says I love my work
more than I love her.”

“Dominique used to say that to me, too. It was flat out
true.”

“Alas, it’s also true for me. My wife thinks that work is
just how you get money to buy things. The fact that she doesn’t understand how
important my work is just leaves me feeling lonely.”

“Now that bites worse than being a grownup. Sleeping by
someone and feeling lonely.”

“Don’t write any new songs about it, OK? I feel like you’re
a sneak thief, stealing scenes from my life. Speaking of sneaks, have you told
your girlfriend who you are?”

“She refuses to talk about the past, and I’m not hiding
much. She sees all of my everyday life, except for the recent crap that got
public attention. That will go away soon enough, once people forget about me.”

“What about your money, Jason?”

“She seems about as blind about money as she is about
popular culture, except for funding her institute. Are you paying for this bill
or am I?”

“Either way, you write the check in the end, because if I
pay, it’s a business expense. Or rather, Warren writes the check when he pays
your bills. Here, I’ll pay the bill. Don’t leave a separate tip. You tip too
much.”

“The waitress is in a folk duo that plays house concerts and
coffeehouses. She’s financing her heart’s work by pouring coffee and juggling
plates of eggs and hash browns.”

“Twenty percent is sufficient. You don’t make enough coin to
be the goddamn Musicians’ Aid Society of Greater Seattle. Worry about Ian and
Toby and whoever else you have riding your new band wagon.”

JASON

L
ATE IN THE AFTERNOON, Ian and
I took Zak to the gamelan shed and, as expected, it blew Zak’s mind. As I’d
planned with Paul Harris, we recorded the three hours we spent together,
working with members of the gamelan. It’s crude to say, but it felt like taping
a boy while he learned to make love. As I watched Zak, ecstatic in percussive
wonderland, it was as if you could see the fusing of his adolescent bones into
a grown man’s skeleton. While we’d been rehearsing all those long hours in the
past few weeks, he had beaten his way out of his chrysalis and begun shaking
his wings, getting ready to fly.

When Ian drove us back across town, I turned the
conversation back to business.

“Zak, you should listen to Bob Wills and Hank Williams.
We’re going honky-tonkin’ for the afternoon work. Now I need you in the morning
sessions too.”

“What about Johnnie?”

“He’s playing in another band.”

What I didn’t say: that Johnnie and I had a long talk that
morning about how it wasn’t working, though he already knew it and started the
conversation himself by saying he wanted to quit. Johnnie was good—four years
ago, I would have kept him—but he’s not the percussion genius Zak is, who’s
spoiling me with his excitement. I’d already found Johnnie a gig in another
band, having never promised anything more than a couple of weeks in the studio.
He knew it himself, but it bummed me, because the band was going exciting new
places and Johnnie didn’t have what it would take to be invited along. It
wasn’t as bad as saying, “I found a new lover”; it was worse: you’re good, but
I choose Zak.

Zak, however, said, “I don’t think I can do mornings. My
afternoon teachers, like Miss Neville, have been letting me slide, but I don’t
think my morning teachers will ignore when I skip. I can’t do it until
mid-June.”

“We have to be done by the second of June. I expect to be
back on the road soon after.”

Zak looked so glum that I realized what a total effing jerk
I am.

“Oh geez, Zak. I’m sorry. I did not mean this to be an
ultimatum.”

“No, it’s fine. I’ll be there. It is not like I might miss
anything at school. What time do you start?”

“Eight,” I said. “You’ll find me in the studio by
seven-thirty.”

“OK. I have to take the bus across town. But I’ll be there.”

“I need you in the morning because I’m trying something that
hasn’t been done before, so I need a virgin.”

“I’m not a virgin,” Zak said. Adamant.

“In the recording studio, dummy. Can I ask you a couple of
questions?”

“Shoot.”

“Why didn’t you tell me about the piano?”

Zak shrugged as if it were an irrelevant question: why
didn’t you tell me about your opposable thumb? “The piano is just another
percussion instrument. I’m planning a Hammond B3 surprise for you for the
reworked version of ‘White City Blues.’”

“Frickin’ hell, Zak. You could give me a heart attack with
any more of your surprises.”

“Next question?”

“How much do you work each day?”

“At least twelve hours. I have to get up by five-thirty
though, to get all the practice that I want. School eats too much of the day.”
He was biting his thumb in agitation. “I could quit school. I turn eighteen
next week. What happens if I quit school?”

“Shoot, you’re asking me? Talk it over with your folks.”

“We’ve been ‘talking it over’ all year, though the only
talking is them screaming at me about ruining my life. They want me to go to
college.”

“Is that what you want to do?”

“No, I want to work full time in a band—or two bands, or
three, if I have to. I don’t know what two more months of high school gets me.”

“I think you should ask Susi. She knows about stuff like
school.”

“Then I might as well quit. She told me yesterday that you
should never decide the future because of what someone else wants you to do.”

It was my job to apply caution, but I was the last person to
know what that might be. Before I could come up with some lame-ass
admonishment, Zak asked the hard question.

“Are you taking the band on the road with you? Or going
alone?”

From his place in the driver’s seat, Ian glanced over at me
for what seemed like too long while we barreled up I-5 at sixty-five miles an
hour.

“I haven’t got any gigs wired for the new band yet,” I said.
“Except the benefit that we’re playing this weekend. I’m behind with that
effort. So I can’t ask you to tie up your time, waiting for me to find us
work.”

As Ian turned his attention back to the road, the grinding
of his jaw pulled tension lines across his whole shaved head.

Yeah, the Musicians’ Aid Society. That’s me. Launch your
career with me. See if you can make enough spare change gigging for me to get
your teeth cleaned and your rent paid for a month. When we run low on cash,
I’ll share the extra guitar picks that have the band’s URL printed on them.

The sole solution I could see was for me to work harder.

This band was getting to be too good not to be heard.