They arrived at the warehouse and Matt went inside. His band was already there. He had kept Steve Calhoun as his drummer, but had chosen not to retain John Engle as his bass guitar player. Instead, he now had a guy named Austin Jefferson laying down the rhythm for him. Austin was a dark-skinned black man who had been raised by upper middle-class parents in an upper middle-class section of Simi Valley—his father a civil engineer for the county of Los Angeles, his mother an athletic trainer for USC’s women’s softball program. He looked very ghetto with his Jheri-curled hair and his gold chain and the tattoos of African tribal symbols on his well-muscled arms, but the truth was, Austin had never really been in the ghetto before, was not even sure how to get there. Still, he knew his way around a bass guitar.
The two musicians had met at a party a few months before when Austin had come up and introduced himself to Matt and then, after a little inane conversation, had told him he was a bassist. Matt had, of course, not taken him the least bit seriously at first. In the first place, people were always telling him they were guitar players or drummers when they met him, and most were nothing but hopeless hackers who could barely crank out Smoke on the Water or pound out the intro to Tom Sawyer. In the second place, Austin was not white and Matt, at the time, could not even conceive of a black bassist being able to play anything other than rap music or maybe some blues.
But as their conversation had gone on that night, Matt became more and more impressed with Austin’s knowledge of musical concepts that only a true musician would be able to speak of so easily. It was then that he learned of Austin’s upbringing and his musical resume, which included playing bass for two well-known local rock bands and doing some sessions on occasion down at Aristocrat’s studios.
“Where you working at now?” Matt asked him.
Austin chuckled. “My main gig, the one that pays the bills these days, is driving a forklift over at the Sears warehouse in Long Beach.”
“Yeah?” Matt asked, having no problem picturing that.
“Yeah,” Austin said. “I got me a master’s degree in Business Administration from USC, but it seems like, for some reason, I have a hard time getting past the first interview when I try to get a gig in that field.” He shrugged. “There must be something about me that makes them guys in suits think I wouldn’t be a good fit in their employ.”
“I can’t imagine what that might be,” Matt told him with a chuckle.
“The world is what the world is,” Austin said.
“Listen,” Matt then said. “I’m probably going to regret this, but why don’t you come to the warehouse I rehearse in sometime and show me what you got?”
Austin looked surprised. “You mean an audition?”
“An informal audition,” Matt amended. “You see, I’m not really happy with the guy I got slinging bass for me now and, well, if you can play like you say you can, maybe we can work something out.”
And so, two days later, Austin arrived at the warehouse, Brogan bass guitar in hand. Steve Calhoun had been invited to attend the audition. John Engle had not been. Matt and Steve found that Austin really did know what he was doing. He was damn good with his instrument. Not quite as good as that dick-smoking freak Charlie had been, but close. They were at least in the same league.
“I’m inclined to offer you the gig as my bass guitarist,” Matt had told him after the audition, “but there’s one thing I need to know first.”
“What’s that?” asked Austin.
“Are you now, or have you ever been, a dude who would put another dude’s schlong in your mouth?”
“Uh ... no,” Austin told him. “I’m into girls, always have been.” He looked at the two musicians carefully for a moment. “Is that okay?”
“It’s fuckin’ perfect,” Matt said. “You’re in.”
Austin was the first to greet him now, as he came into the warehouse to start the day’s session. “What is up, boss man?” he asked. “How are they hanging today?”
Matt shook his head a little. “You need to work on the ghetto talk a little more,” he told him. “It should be: ‘wassup, boss?’ and ‘how they hangin’?’ You’re letting your education show. Stop using some many fucking copulas when you talk.”
“Sorry, boss,” Austin said with a grin. “I’ll work on that shit.”
“You do that,” Matt said, giving a nod to Steve, who was sitting on his drum chair smoking a cigarette.
“Morning, Matt,” Steve greeted.
“It’s morning all right, and I fucking hate mornings. Let’s get in the proper mood for this shit.”
They got in the proper mood by smoking six bonghits apiece. Since it was not a rehearsal, but a jam session, getting stoned beforehand was mandatory. It was, as always, very good weed and it took them into the stratosphere quite easily.
They went to work, trying to put together Matt’s latest effort, a road song he had penned called: Time to Go. As had all of his solo works so far, it featured Matt’s grinding guitar riffs, multiple tempo changes, and multiple guitar solos between the verses. Matt liked how it was coming out, at least as far as the raw tune went, but he could not help but wonder what they were going to do with it in the studio now that he’d committed to letting the engineers get their greasy hands on his work. But at the same time, he also could not help but see the overt similarity that Go shared with his other work. The riffs and the solos were different, true, but what was there that would really distinguish the tune?
He didn’t know. All he could do was keep working and get the thing hashed out so they could move onto the next tune. All the same, however, as he tried to concentrate on what they were doing, tried to dial in Go, his mind kept drifting back to Jake Kingsley’s song he had heard this morning. What in the hell was up with that shit? Why was that mellow-ass shit laid down by a sellout stuck in his head? Why did he keep thinking about it?
They took a break just after one o’clock, all of them taking the opportunity to open a bottle of beer and quench their thirst a little. Matt sat on the edge of the drum platform and, after taking a few swigs, let the fingers of his right hand go to the wrist of his left arm, feeling for the pulse there. He did not have a watch on him at the moment, but he didn’t need it. By now, he could tell by simple feel about how fast his pulse was beating. So far, there had been no repeat of the SVT he’d had that night in Texas (why does so much bad shit happen in Texas? he wondered for perhaps the thousandth time), this despite the fact that he had not slowed down an iota on his cocaine consumption. This seemed to lend credence to his theory that it had been the meth that had put him in that rhythm that night. He had not touched any of that shit since. He still had the horridly clear memory of having electricity coursing through his body.
“Everything okay, Matt?” asked Steve, who got nervous whenever he saw the guitarist doing that.
“Ticking right along, just like it’s supposed to,” Matt said with a nod.
“Good to know,” said Steve, who was never going to forget that night in Houston either.
“Boss, did they really light you up with them paddles while you were still awake?” asked Austin, who had heard the tale.
“Like a fuckin’ Christmas tree,” Matt confirmed.
“I was there, dude,” Steve said. “It was some freaky shit, homey.”
“Did he, like fly up in the air off the table like in the movies?”
“Naw, just kinda jerked a little, but there was smoke coming up off his chest, and he screamed like a motherfucker, and the smell! It kinda smelled like...”
“Can we change the fuckin’ subject?” Matt asked, feeling the need to check his pulse again. It was still moving at an acceptable rate.