Page 38 of Shame Me
This time as we played, I kept the beat, but I gave it no energy. I was limp and dull, hitting the drums with as little force as I possibly could, displaying my lack of enthusiasm. We’d barely made it to the chorus when Zack stopped playing. “What the fuck, Dani?”
“I’m doing what you said. I’m playing it the way you wrote it.”
“I didn’t—”
Jeff, through the mic, said, “Yeah, that kind of soulless playing will translate into millions of sales.”
Zack ignored the sarcastic comment and said, “I need you to take this seriously.”
Cy muttered, “We’ll put it on your gravestone, boss:Sucked the fun out of rock.”
“Goddamn. Not you too.”
“I’m just being a smart ass,” Cy said. “Dani, it’s cool, but we’re burning money here. Let’s just get it done and move to the next song.”
Zack nodded, glad to have some back up. But then Braden spoke, shocking the hell out of me—and I think everyone else. Even though Braden was everyone’s friend, we all knew he was loyal to Zack and always took his side no matter what. Out of all of us, I’d never expected him to contradict Zack, especially now. “Why don’t you let her try it her way? It needs a little smoothing around the edges, but what she was trying was interesting.”
Wow.
“Yeah, and it would have been fine if she’d been trying that shit the past two years when we were playing this song every night. Right now is the worst time to do it. We practiced these songs all week to make sure we were tight and ready to go andnowyou want to be different? We had all this shit down.”
“And, to be fair,” Cy said, more invested in our band than ever before, “we had these songs pretty tight. How the hell are they supposed to edit with so many versions? This last take won’t match with anything else.”
“Exactly. We were supposed to come in, lay it all down, and be done.”
Jeff finally shouted into the mic—because we’d been ignoring him. “Guys, guys!” Once we all shut up, he said, “Why don’t we do two more takes?” His voice was calm and steady, like a spring breeze. “It’ll take ten minutes tops. Let’s do one the way Zack wrote it with no flair—but with enthusiasm,” he said, looking straight at me, “and then we’ll do another one with Dani improvising. Sound good?”
There was no denying by the tension in the air that Zack hated the idea—but he heard that ticking clock in his head like the clicks in my headphones and decided to go with Jeff’s suggestion. I knew it was simply a way to placate me because, during the editing process, they would do whatever the hell Zack wanted and not use any of my improvised stuff.
And I didn’t care…because I’d finally found my muse.
The first time, we played the song the way we’d played it hundreds of times before. This time, even though I didn’t want to, I went through the motions exactly as I’d learned them and tried to be respectful, playing them as I had for audiences in the past. When that take was done, I looked over at Zack, because I was hoping to get confirmation from his eyes that he was pleased with my performance.
Instead, I got a glimpseinsidemy friend.
He was staring at the floor, his left hand gripping the shaft of his guitar. At first, I thought it was because he was angry at me for being defiant and was avoiding eye contact. Although I couldn’t see his face, I began to realize it wasn’t that. There wassomething else going on…but could we get past all this bullshit so I could ask him?
When we went through the song a second time, I definitely improvised, but this time it was more subtle. Instead of shaking up the whole song, I isolated perfect spots where I could jazz things up. In the solo, I kept the double bass and, in third verse, I played the rhythm just a little off-beat to keep it interesting. At the end, I played the toms in a rolling thunder and threw in extra cymbal crashes to wind it all up.
This time, no one said a word when we were done.
And I didn’t know if I was happy about any of this.
From the control room, Jeff said, “Let’s call it a day, guys. Good job. We’ll comp from the best takes.”
Zack didn’t look too happy about that, knowing that some of my improvisation might make it into the final cut—but we all knew he would likely have the last say, regardless. I decided then and there that if that song wound up being a single, I’d play it onstage however I needed to in order to keep it from numbing my soul.
Even though I halfway got my way, I felt frustrated, knowing that I’d made it mine but it probably wouldn’t make it to the final cut. Braden at least gave me a short nod and half a smile, telling me he had my back. Cy, though, wouldn’t even look my way.
The ride home might have been awkward had we not all been so tired…but I felt like I’d had a little victory today.
And there would be no going back.
CHAPTER 12
After three long grueling days, we’d laid the foundational tracks—but, little did I know at the time, that was only the beginning. Next it was time to splice together the comp tracks, which was basically where we picked the best sections and slapped them all together. For that, Jeff worked with an engineer…and most of us. Braden and Cy worked their day jobs, having already taken time off, and my hours had already been cut to just a few hours here and there—and at the rate I kept demanding time off, I was probably not going to have my job for much longer.
It might have been easier if we would have let Jeff do his job by himself, but Zack was too much of a control freak to let our producer make all the decisions on his own as to what would stay or go in the final tracks.
