Small Town Girl

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

It was quarter to two the next afternoon when they arrived at Sixteenth Avenue Sound, a converted bungalow not far from Music Row. Tess led Casey inside through a small, unimpressive reception area to a room with sofas, tables and chairs, but no windows. A Pepsi machine threw red light over the L that served as a canteen, and the coffee warmer sent out the smell of burned coffee. Country music played softly from some unseen speakers. A huge man with a receding hairline, flowing gray beard and streaked gray ponytail sat on one of the sofas extracting an electric bass from its case, whistling to the music.

"Hey, Leland! How ya doin'?" Tess greeted. "You've got to meet this pretty young thang who's gonna be doing harmony vocals for me today." Her intentional drawl made Leland smile. "This's Casey Kronek. Leland Smith."

While they were shaking hands a redheaded guy about thirty, with hair as trim as Johnny Carson's, dressed in neat blue jeans and a polo shirt, came out of the lavatory. He was the keyboardist, Dan Fontaineau, and he shook hands with Casey, too.

"Come on," Tess said, "I'll introduce you to Jack."

Jack Greaves was already in the control room at the con-sole, a fifteen-by-four-foot wedge of electronic wizardry with so many buttons, knobs and zinging orange lights it looked like the flight deck of a space shuttle. Beside him the sound engineer was deciding which of the fifty-six tracks he'd use, while the engineer's assistant sat nearby loading a tape machine. Through an immense window the recording studio was visible, a gray cube of subdued lighting where some studio musicians were warming up playing riffs, which came through the wall-mounted speakers along with their voices as a pleasant cacophony. A couple of the guys noticed Tess and gestured in greeting through the window. "Hey, Mac."

She leaned over, held a switch on the talk-back, and said, "Hey, guys."

Jack, a trim man of medium height with meticulously trimmed brown hair, beard and mustache, turned in his swivel chair. Though he smiled and kissed Tess's cheek, and shook hands when introduced to Casey, it was clear he had business on his mind, and little time to waste. As a record producer he controlled the session, which was costing Tess plenty. He himself earned some thirty thousand dollars per project plus a percentage of the royalties; the studio rental ran close to two thousand dollars a day; the sound engineer got eighty dollars an hour, his assistant twenty-five; the studio musicians-all of them double-scale caliber-commanded over five hundred dollars apiece for each three-hour session. Given that today they'd work for six hours, the cost of this day's session, even before mixing and mastering, would run over ten thousand dollars.

Jack Greaves had been in the business long enough to realize that each minute lost meant big bucks. He wasted little of Tess's money before asking Casey, "Did you sign your AFTRA card yet?"

Casey looked nonplussed, and replied, "Excuse me?"

"Union stuff," Tess explained. "American Federation of Television and Radio Artists insists that all singers' performances be documented." To Jack she said, "She doesn't need to today since it's her first time. She gets one free session, then she's got thirty-one days to join. Don't worry about it," she told Casey, "I'll have my secretary help you get in touch with the union later."

Jack went right on with business. "You want one box or two, Tess?"

"One, I think. Might be easier for Casey the first time."

"You get that, Carlos?" he inquired, turning to the sound engineer while Leland went into the studio and began tuning his bass.

Tess leaned over and whispered to Casey, "Never mind Jack. When he gets in here he's got a one-track mind. Come on, let's sit down and go over our parts."

A row of high-backed leather stools stood behind a desk facing the control board and window. They climbed onto two of them, and Casey whispered, "What's a box?"

"The recording booth-see?" Tess pointed through the window at a pair of doors leading to two tiny black-walled rooms off the left side of the studio. "Isolation booths to help keep the tracks from bleeding into one another. We can use one or two, but until we get used to each other I figure it's better if we just use one. You sometimes get better synergy with close eye contact."

Jack kept the talk-back on so the conversations were audible as they passed back and forth between the two rooms. The musicians kept tuning, occasionally breaking into spontaneous warmup music that would suddenly acquire harmony and rhythm and might run for sixteen or twenty bars, then be broken up by laughter. Conversation, when it happened, was spoken in a lexicon peculiar to musicians-short, brief colorful phrases that would make no sense away from the studio. Somebody said, "You hear that pork chop sizzling in Lee's bass?"

"Got us a buzz fly here."

"Try another track."

"Okay, I'm putting you on sixteen, Lee."

And after Leland ran a riff, "Hell, it's still there."

"Try another patch cord."

The assistant engineer left the room and appeared on the other side of the window to change the cord.

Leland played once more. "Better now," the engineer said.

The drummer put in an earplug, ran his sticks across his snares and tenors, hit the cymbals, and sampled a few thuds on the bass drum. Two guitarists were soundlessly tuning their instruments with electronic tuners. The piano player, behind a black grand facing the window, executed a quick smattering of Gershwin that segued into a few bars of boogie-woogie, followed by an arpeggio that took his fingers sailing off the end of the keys. Another guy on electronic keyboards had them sounding like bells. Leland, still monkeying with his bass guitar said, "The humidity's got my axe going sharp today. I can't keep it down." A saxophonist had set up his music stand in the hall between the two rooms and through the open doorway the sound of his bluesy wail added to the noise.

Jack said, "Somebody do the charts?"

"I did," the pianist said. "Got 'em right here."

"What do you say, should we look at 'em and give this demo a listen?"

Casey took it all in, mesmerized by her first experience in a recording session, still awestruck that she was actually a part of it. Staring at the lead guitarist, she whispered to Tess, "My gosh, that's Al Murphy. I've seen him on TNN. And Terry Solum on keyboards! He used to play with John Denver!"

"These guys have all been around awhile. You're gonna love what they do. The road musicians are essentially copyists-they can recreate the licks that are put on the albums. But these guys-the studio musicians-are the ones who have the originality to put them there in the first place. And we hire the best. Every one of these guys is a double-scale musician. Wait'll you hear them work."

"Double-scale?"

"They earn twice what the regular ones earn and twice what the union demands."

The musicians all came from the studio and crowded into the control room. Casey beamed with elation as she was introduced to all of them. The pianist passed out copies of the charts-a Nashville number system that transcribed chords onto paper, creating a crib sheet for sessions players who sometimes were unable to read music. The number system had been created in the fifties by a member of the Jordanaires and allowed for improvisation and immediate key change without rewriting the charts. Casey looked at the ranks of Is, 4s, Cs and Vs, and Tess pointed, giving a quick explanation. The assistant engineer ran the demo tape and it took less than half the song for the chart to make sense to Casey.

Keys were named. Numbers indicated how many lines would be done in that key. V indicated "verse," C indicated "chorus," and B meant "bridge." It was like looking at the frame of a house before the siding was put on: the structure of the song was all there waiting for the musicians to do it their way, with all the improvisation they pleased.

The demo ended and a bunch of musicians voiced approval. "Hey, nice song. You two wrote this together? You ought to collaborate some more. This thing is gonna cook. Lemme hear it again."

"What key are we doing it in, Tess?"

"F," she answered.

Everybody wrote F on the top of their charts and the guys took them back into the studio where they sat listening to the demo tape a bunch of times while noodling around on their instruments. At first they paid no attention to one another, turning within to find their own personal musical take on the song, but soon they became aware of the others, discussing licks, intros, runs. Talk and music. Music and talk. It sounded like a jumble.

Meanwhile, Tess and Casey huddled over a lyric sheet, writing in the margins who would sing which lines. Sometimes, from inside the studio, snatches of the song would resurrect in new form, pulling together as the guys got a handle on their individual parts.

"Come on," Tess said, "let's go in." She led the way through the studio into one of the recording booths. It had black walls of acoustic paneling, two music stands with lights on them, and two mikes in stands. A pair of headsets hung over each music stand. The engineer said, "Let's do a sound check," and the women clamped them on.

It took a while for the engineer to set the volume levels, then the women did some scratch vocals, working out their parts, annotating their pages here and there. After several minutes of sound and flurry Greaves took control and said into the talk-back, "Okay, everybody, why don't we do a run-through for nothing?"

Tess could see Casey getting nervous, and said, "Just relax and sing the way you did back at Momma's house. We'll do plenty of run-throughs before we record."

The drummer gave the standard downbeat and the intro began. Tess watched Casey's face light up as the mix of instruments came through her headset, filling her head with full-bodied sound. Wow, she mouthed, wide-eyed, and Tess smiled as she began singing.

Suddenly Jack's voice interrupted in her ear. "Oh-oh, what's the deal? We've got vocals in the sax. How can that be?"

The music fell away and the first engineer suggested, "Let's try taking the direct out of nineteen."

There was some scrambling around at the console and the problem got solved.

"Okay, let's go one more time," Jack said, and they began again with a new downbeat. Tess hit her cue, and when Casey came in it sounded sensational through the earphones. Their two very distinct vocal qualities blended like smooth chocolate and rough peanuts, coming out sweet to the ear, and Tess knew beyond a flicker of a doubt that she and Casey would do many, many songs together after this one.

Watching Casey's face as she sang for the first time with these extraordinarily talented pros made Tess smile. Hearing the song they'd composed coming to life was incredible. She remembered her own first time, and saw in Casey's radiant expression her own excitement, years ago, when she'd stepped into a recording studio as a beginner. The girl was good. She had a natural feel for which words to sing and which to drop; which harmony note would sound best; when to crescendo and when to hold back. Nashville had a clever, oft-repeated answer whenever an out-of-towner inquired if a musician could read music: Not enough to ruin the song. Casey was that way; Tess had recognized it back in Wintergreen and it was reinforced again today.

They finished their first run-through, and Casey exclaimed, "Far out! This is way too incredible, Mac! When did I die? 'Cause if this isn't heaven, I don't know what is!"

"It'll get better."

"Better! You're kidding! It don't get no better than this!"

Chuckling, Tess replied, "No, I mean the music. We've got some kinks to work out yet. I was thinking, here where we break into the bridge…" They dissected their parts while the musicians did the same.

Over the talk-back Jack said, "Sounding good, ladies. What would you think about running the last note of the second verse over onto Mick's solo for a couple beats, then fading?"

And so it went. Jack interacted with everyone, and everyone with him, and with each other, trying various spots in the song, experimenting with rhythm and technique. The quality of the talent in the studio made the work inventive and mercurial as the song started coming together. The blank audiotape alone for any project could cost some three thousand dollars, and Jack didn't want to waste it recording takes that were too unpolished, but after ten minutes of experimentation, and a second run-through, which sounded far smoother than the first, he said, "Okay, everybody, should we record one?"

Dan Fontaineau said, "Hell, yes, we're professional musicians. We can knock this thing."

"Okay, Tess, Casey?…"

"We're set."

Dan gave the downbeat and the second engineer started the tape running. The first engineer operated the board, and Jack concentrated on listening, one finger crossing his lips and a scowl on his eyebrows-his usual expression when he was concentrating. The music was sounding very smooth, but, unfortunately, halfway through the take Dan's earphone fell out of his ear and he stopped playing. The sound swooned and the song fell apart. Naturally, the guys-they had a great collective sense of humor-gave him some shit.

"Hey, way to go, Dan."

"Yeah, we're professional musicians," someone mimicked. "We can knock this thing."

"Knock that earphone into his head, you mean, so it'll stay there."

"Anybody got some Super Glue?"

Everybody laughed and relaxed as Jack, ever the overseer and prompter, got them back to business. "Let's save what we got and start again. Whenever you're ready, Dan."

This time they completed the song, got it on tape, and afterward everyone piled into the control room to give it a listen. The women sat on the leather stools, leaning forward with their elbows on the slanted desk. The men gathered around the control panel and while they listened some played air guitar, some studied the floor, some mouthed words. Everybody in the room had a knee, a foot, a head or a hand keeping time to the music.

The playback ended and chatter broke out.

"It's solid."

"What we've got here is a fresh ballad with a heart."

"Nice way to start a career, Casey."

Though they liked the start they'd made, they had a long way to go. Everybody exchanged ideas. "You think that solo was too Las Vegas?… In the fourth bar of the intro the sax is resolving too fast… I wonder if we should pull back the tempo a bit."

They worked this way for two and a half hours, back and forth between the studio and the control room. Record it again. Listen again. Record. Listen. Record. Listen. Finally one run-through seemed to ignite a specific spark in everyone. They'd got it: they all felt it simultaneously, and the charged atmosphere was palpable as the playback ended.

"This one's got the edge."

"We finally filled that deep pocket."

This was the best cut so far, and everyone felt the diminished tension and a sense of self-satisfaction.

"Time to break bread," Greaves said. "We'll pick up again at seven o'clock."

While they'd been recording, a caterer had come in and set up food buffet style on a large table in the lounge. As most of the group headed toward it, Mick Mulhall asked Jack, "Can I put a fix on that line where Tess sings, 'Say good-bye, mustn't cry'?"

He went back into the studio to rerecord the section while the other musicians wandered out into the lounge, put quarters into the Pepsi machine, loaded plates and sat around on the sofas talking mostly about the song in progress.

Casey was so fired up she found it hard to sit.

"Jeez, this is wild! I never had so much fun in my life!"

The others remembered what it was like to be breaking in, hearing yourself for the first time, and they humored her.

"Hey, Mac, you're gonna have to tie an anchor to this one's tail or she's gonna float right on outta here, she's so high."

Tess smiled, and said, "Better eat something, Casey. We've got three more hours of work before we call it a night."

Mick finished his fix and came back into the lounge area with Jack, who was so intense he didn't take time to eat. Instead, he told Tess, "We're still getting a little creep in the vocals. You want to come in tomorrow and lay down a new track, just in case?"

"Sure, if you think we need it. What about Casey?"

"Casey, too. I think we'll get a cleaner sound if we use two boxes. Okay with you, Casey?"

The girl's eyes were so wide and excited, she couldn't believe she was being asked to come back again. "Yeah, sure… heck, yes!"

Tess told Jack, "We'll be here."

They sat around eating grilled shrimp, rice pilaf, salad, green grapes and watermelon, all of it served in very utilitarian fashion: this was a work session, not a party: remaining in the studio was essential to keeping the musical urgency alive and pulsing. Leaving to eat elsewhere, they all knew, sometimes managed to subdue that drive. When that happened, the lifelessness came across on tape.

Jack barely ate. He remained in the control room, working with the first and second engineer on the tracks they'd already recorded, listening for anything that might possibly need fixes.

Tess left Casey visiting with the guys and went into the control room to speak privately with her producer.

"Can I talk to you a minute, Jack?"

"Sure," he said, turning from the control board on a rolling chair, hooking another with his foot and inviting her to sit.

The engineer and his assistant went out to catch some supper, leaving the two alone.

"I want your opinion, Jack," Tess said when the two had the control room to themselves.

He could tell from her demeanor that whatever she was going to ask was important.

"That's what I'm paid for."

"It's not about the album, it's about the tour. Carla's throat problem's not going to be straightened out anytime soon. I want to ask Casey to go on tour with me and sing backup vocals."

He considered for a moment, then said, "She's young."

"She's talented. And she knows my music. Jack, we were playing my old albums around the house yesterday and she's got the backup cues cold on every one. Every lick-exactly like the record! I know she's inexperienced, but we don't have much time left for rehearsals, and sometimes the hungry ones are willing to work even harder than the experienced ones. Besides that, I like her and we get along like two cats in a litter. What do you think?"

"Shouldn't you be talking to Ralph about this?"

As her road show producer, Ralph Thornleaf would have the final say. "I will, but I wanted your opinion, too. I just got the idea last night and I haven't had a chance to call him. So what do you think?"

"You know what I think. I trust your instincts, Tess. If I didn't I wouldn't be letting you coproduce your own albums. I like the girl's voice."

"'How do you think it would blend with Diane's?" Diane Abbington was one of Tess's other two backup singers.

"Her voice is actually a lot like Diane's. I think they might sound all right together."

"And Estelle?" Estelle Paglio was Tess's other harmony singer.

"Estelle can blend with anybody. Why don't I see if I can get those two in here tomorrow when you and Casey are coming in, and we can dream up some excuse to get the three of them singing together, then you'll know. If you want to, we could use them for a little additional backup vocal on "Old Souls." I've been thinking about it anyway, like maybe if we drop some three-part harmony into selected spots we could get a little deeper sound. What do you think?"

"I think it's a good idea. While we're at it, I'll see if Ralph can casually drop around, then we'll all know what the four of us sound like together. Be a good chance for him to meet Casey."

Tess returned to the lounge to join the others. The sax player went home and a fiddle player arrived to work on the next song- Everyone returned to the studio for the evening session. "Don't Leave Me High" was the last song, the spare one they'd record for the new album. The session followed the same pattern as the earlier one-charts, demo, working on parts, laying down tracks until finally, around nine o'clock, the last fixes were put on and Jack called the session over.

When they were driving home, Casey said, "That's the most fun I've ever had in my life."

Her adrenaline was still pumping, Tess could tell. Casey threw her head back and stretched herself out like a surf-board against the car seat. "I want to do this till I'm ninety."

Tess laughed. "You'll need some bionic parts if you do it till then. Like a larynx and lungs, for instance."

"I feel bionic right now! Like I could go all night! Tess, I love you!"

"Well, that's good. I love you, too."

"What can I ever do to pay you back?"

"The truth is you won't pay me back. Someday when you're forty years old and a superstar you'll give some other beginner a break and pass along the tradition. That's how all of us handle our paybacks."

"I'll remember that. I promise I will."

When they got home Casey called her dad immediately. She used the phone in the kitchen while Tess leafed through the mail that Maria had left on the counter.

"Jeez, Dad, it was so great! I mean, when I heard the sound coming through my earphones it was like, wow-I mean this really major rush, you know? And we recorded it again and again and again, and everybody was really nice to me. Dad, the studio musicians were guys who played with Ricky Nelson and Graham Nash and everybody you could think of! The best talent in town, and they treated me like…" Casey went on and on, filling her dad's ear while Tess moved in and out of the kitchen, to and from her office. After about ten minutes she heard Casey call, "Hey, Tess, Dad wants to talk to you!"

Tess was sitting in her office so she answered there.

"Hi." She grinned. "How's your ear?"

He laughed, and said, "That's one excited girl."

"Hey, I wish you could've been there. She did great. Our voices are really good together."

"I know. She told me. And told me and told me."

It was Tess's turn to laugh. In the living room Casey started a CD playing and the sound of Tess's voice spilled through the house at high volume. "Just a minute…" She swiveled around in her chair and turned it down on the wall speaker. "There, that's better. Your daughter likes her music loud, plus she's making herself right at home."

"Hey, if she's too-"

"No, don't worry," Tess interrupted. "Casey and I get along just fine."

"Well, thanks again for today, for everything you're doing for her."

"Kenny," she said, and tipped her chair forward, elbows to the desktop. "I'm going to try something tomorrow. We have to go back into the studio to lay down another vocal track and I'm going to have Casey sing along with two of my backup singers-I mean the two who go out on concert tour with me. There's a third one, Carla, but she's got a thyroid condition that's taking her out of commission for maybe as long as two years. The long and the short of it is, if Casey's voice blends as well as I think it will, I may be asking her to go on concert tour with me, starting at the end of June."

The line went silent.

Finally Tess asked, "Do you have any objections, Kenny?"

"You're moving kind of fast with her, aren't you?"

"Yes," she admitted honestly, and waited for his response.

"This scares me, Tess."

"I imagine it does."

"Too much too soon."

"She knows every word of every song I've ever recorded, and not only that, she knows the backup vocals to a T. The plain truth is, she'd be doing me a favor. I wouldn't have to go through all those tedious rehearsals to train a new girl. We could do it quite easily in a week or two."

Silence passed again, and she wisely let it.

After a long time, he released a pent-up breath… then nothing.

"We open the concert tour at Arrowhead Pond in Anaheim on June twenty-eighth. The first concert is already sold out, so we've agreed to do a second one on the twenty-ninth. Can you imagine your daughter singing in a place with eighteen thousand ticketholders filling the seats? I have this fantasy, Kenny," she went on, "it's of you, sitting in the front row of Arrowhead for Casey's first public performance, then coming backstage to hug her and congratulate her and drink champagne with us. What do you think?"

Again he let out a breath, then an uncertain laugh. "You've caught me so off guard here."

"Think about it. I'll send you tickets for the gold circle. Maybe you can bring Momma, too. She just might be persuaded to come, if she could travel with you and Faith."

"Faith, too? You want Faith to come?"

"Well… no, not especially, but how could I send tickets to you and not to her?"

"Tess, listen, it's… I don't know what to say. Besides, you haven't even heard Casey sing with the others."

"No, but I have an ear. I think I can tell what she'll sound like. Tell me yes, Kenny, so I can ask her with your blessing. It's important to me."

"All right, then, yes. Hell, what am I saying?"

Tess smiled. She knew when she'd see him again!

"All right, then!" she said with excitement in her voice. "Save June twenty-eighth and I'll see you in Anaheim!"

"Tess, wait!"

"What?"

"Call me tomorrow night. Tell me how it went in the studio."

"Of course. Do you want to talk to Casey again?"

"No, just tell her good night. And one more thing…"

"What's that?"

"I think I love you. Last night I was sure. Tonight I'm not so sure… depending on what happens to my daughter's life because of you."

She laughed, and said, "I'm not going to let anything happen to her. I love that girl."

"Oh, you love her but not me?"

"I didn't say that."

"So you love me, too?"

"I didn't say that either. Good night, Kenny."

"Good night, Tess."

She was smiling as she hung up. And, actually, she was pretty sure she loved him.