But for the following ninety minutes, Jase pushed Luke from his thoughts.
The performance, with his guitar in his hand, sucked him in so deep, he was surprised to realise the song he was singing was their last encore. He’d always loved singing, but suddenly, he felt like a musician, like a performer, and he’d earned his spot at the front of the stage.
The minutes had flown by.
“Fucking loved that oblique harmony you threw in on that last song,” Alex said, when they finally left the venue.
Jase shrugged. “Yeah. Just felt right, with you holding the line. Happy to switch.”
Alex shook his head. “Nah. More dramatic when you do it.”
“Are we going out or going back to the hotel?” Ben asked.
Jase did the mental time adjustment. If it was eleven here, it would be five for Cerys. Too early to call her yet. She’d still be at work, and while he was looking forward to talking to her, he wanted to respect her job. “Why don’t we do what we used to do? Grab pizza or kebabs on the way back to the hotel and hang out in someone’s room. It’s all been a bit fragmented since we got back from Detroit with all the press and media stuff.”
Luke huffed. “Boring fucker.”
Matt glanced at his best friend. “Don’t be a dick, mate. I think it’s a decent idea.”
“I’m game,” Ben said, walking to the driver’s side of the van. “I’m so starved, my stomach thinks my throat’s been cut.”
“Fine,” Luke grumbled.
Jase took the other front seat as the rest climbed in the back.
Alex yawned. “I’m beat. Long night, last night.”
“With?” Jase asked.
“Couple. Looking for a third.”
“A third?” Luke asked.
Alex raised an eyebrow. “Not rocket science, mate. A third person.”
“Too many limbs involved in that for me,” Matt said. “Call me dumb, but I can only focus on one thing at once.”
Alex laughed. “That’s because you’re a guitarist. Working percussion, you get used to handling lots of things to tempo.”
Ben burst out laughing. “Matt’s more of a deep focus kinda guy.”
“Fuck you all.” Matt’s words were light.
“Seriously. Don’t knock it until you try it. Variety is the spice of life,” Alex said.
Jase knew better than most just how much variety Alex liked. They’d shared a house with thin walls for years.
“Amen,” Luke chimed in from the back seat, the flicker of a smile passing his lips.
And as they sat in Ben’s room an hour later, drinking cans of beer they’d picked up from a corner shop and eating huge doner kebabs out of Styrofoam containers, it felt like while everything around them was changing, the five of them were still exactly the same.
Family.
“What do you think?” Jimmy asked her.
It had been his idea for the two of them to wait until the studio was empty to listen to the finished album.
Listening to the sound of Jase’s voice made her chest ache.
She missed him.
But she focused.
“I like what we did with Jase’s tracks. There’s so much chordal information in the way he sings. All his vocals were on one track, but I separated them out like you suggested so I could EQ and treat them separately.”
Jimmy nodded his head. “Yeah, the sound design stuff on ‘Am I Him?’ worked really well. I’m never happy to just pan stuff and let it sit. I want to hear the movement; I want to hear space in the song.”
Cerys nodded her head to the beat of the track. “His harmony is at the very heart of his sonics. And I think it helps that Matt can sing some of these lines live.”
“Yeah, and it was a surprise to hear Alex sing too. I’m guessing that’s not normally something he does, either.”
“No. If I hadn’t heard him singing along to one of the earlier tracks they’d recorded, we’d never have known. I also really liked the Teletronix LA-2A too. It really evened out the vocals.”
Jimmy grinned. “Yeah, it’s helpful for peak reduction where you don’t want it. I tend to set it between three and seven.”
The song came to an end.
Silence filled the studio.
“So, that’s it?” Cerys asked, turning her stool away from the desk to her father.
Jimmy leaned back in his chair and crossed one leg over the other. “That’s it. Sad Friday’s first major label album is finished. Well, our part of it at least.”
She leaned forward, ready to play “Next Time I Fall”. “Do you think that the claps Alex added are—?”
“Stop,” Jimmy said, reaching for her wrist gently. “It’s done. What was that phrase your mom always used to say? It was a baking thing. Something to do with puddings.”
“Are you trying to say I’m over egging the pudding?” Cerys laughed.
“It means going too far in embellishing something, right?”
“It does.”
“It’s done. Now you just have to give it a little blessing and send it on its way.”
Cerys studied him carefully. “Little blessing?”
“It’s probably going to sound totally stupid, but I always try to thank the equipment and the band and the rest of the team, and then tell the album it’s going to go out in the world and do amazing things.”
“And do they?”
Jimmy shrugged. “Not always. There are still a million ways the record label could fuck this up. Wrong release strategy, failure to give it the right budget or get it featured on the right media channels.”
She thought about Jase again, worried that, after all their hard work, it could still be screwed up.
“What’s this?” her father asked, picking up her notebook.
“Notes for my own studio.”
“When you called me, at the start of this, you said you’d been turned down for a loan.”
“I had. Because the bank wasn’t certain I had enough experience. But I haven’t given up on that dream. Being here helps boost my resume. Jase has said he’ll give me a reference. And I contacted Mitchell from Century Done, and he agreed to send me one, too. I’ll use all of that to get a job with a major studio back in the UK, then I’ll apply again.”
Jimmy handed her the notebook. “Tell me what you learned, being here.”
Cerys grinned. “Well, I’m taking no risks in echo and reverberation. From Studio Two, I saw the advantages of having both the acoustic foam and sound panels to really block that out. I might have gone with just the panels to keep the cost down, but if I’m setting up, I should do it right from the beginning. If you’d asked me a month ago, I would have had every singer use a pop filter on their microphone stand to prevent plosives. But some singers don’t need it. I like the way you cabled the studio to keep routers and other devices away from equipment to avoid radio frequency interference. But then there are the small things. Being in the dark all day like this isn’t for me. I need daylight. So, I’ll balance windowless spaces to avoid reverberation, with windowed practice spaces and offices. Oh, and I’m going to separate workspace from practice space and find a location where people can easily bring their own equipment in. Because I think while I’m building the production side of the business, I can offset costs by using empty studios for band rehearsals. And then I’m going to increase the offers. Like, if I can get experienced concert techs on the payroll and take a percent for each tour they support. Which also means—”