He walked out the solo and the silence afterward was broken only by the low buzz from our amps and the distant crunching of a car slowly coming down our gravel drive.
“Good timing,” I said, taking my guitar off and setting it in one of the stands around the circle. “Sounds like they’re here. What made you pick that one?”
“I miss playing with Grandpa,” Eric said, his eyes downcast to the worn floorboards.
We’d lost my father the summer before. He’d had a stroke, then a bigger stroke, then the biggest and final one, all in the space of a week. Dad had been a classic rock fiend. He’d almost refuse to play anything else, except on rare occasions. But Eric had been game his whole life, anytime Dad wanted to jam. They’d spent hours in the barn together, and Eric had learned every song Dad had ever thrown at him.
“Me too, bud.” I put my arm around his shoulders and gave him a squeeze. It was a reach. The kid was taller than me, and gaining fast on Jill.
I looked out the barn door, and across the field to the big oak tree at the edge of our property. I couldn’t see from this distance, but I knew where the two headstones were for my mom and dad in the protective shade of the old tree’s mighty branches. I gave a wistful smile. Still miss you both, I thought towards them.
“Better get Layla in her case,” Jill said as we heard the car park outside the barn and car doors opening. “You have extra strings? Your pedal case?”
“Yes, Mom,” he said in that tone only teenagers can manage. He pulled Layla’s battered travel case out from the stack in the corner and gently laid her inside, just as a tall, gangly African-American boy the same age as Eric sprinted into the barn, trailed by his mom, dad and sister.
“Ready dude?” The boy asked.
“Heck yeah, LJ! We’re gonna kick some butt!” Eric said with enthusiasm as they high-fived.
“Hey Larry, Suze,” I said.
“Thanks for taking them, Larry,” Jill said. “Jo and I haven’t had a weekend to ourselves in months.”
“You owe me, grasshopper,” said Larry Lawrence, Senior. “A weekend at a junior Battle of the Bands is going to leave me with a headache I’m sure.”
“We’ll take the kids some weekend this summer when you guys want a break,” I said.
“Yes!” Larry’s wife Suzanne gave an exaggerated fist pump, drawing noises of protest from her kids, which prompted laughter from the adults.
“S’up, Suze?” I asked Suzanne. We exchanged our usual greeting, a complex series of hand slaps, finger snaps, and fist bumps, then spinning around and bumping butts. We still loved doing it after three decades, mainly because it never failed to make our son’s eyes roll.
“How you doing, Esme?” Jill asked the teenage girl who had trailed Larry Jr. into the barn.
“Good, Aunt Jill.”
“You ready to keep these bozos on the beat?” I asked her.
“Hey!” Eric and LJ said together.
“You know it, Aunt Jill! Everyone knows the bass is the real rhythm driver!”
“Says you!” Larry Jr., snapped.
I was teasing, LJ was quite the drummer.
“Save it for the car ride to Reston you two,” I said with a grin.
“Thanks a lot, Jo!” Larry complained.
“What’s y’all’s plan?” I asked.
“Gonna try and get to the venue by two, check it out, see if we can get a quick sound check. Then we’re having dinner with Liz and Addison. They’re meeting their friends Megan and Kat at the Lost Dog and invited us to crash the party.”
“Nice. Tell ’em we said ‘hi’.”
“Man, we gotta win guys,” Eric said. “This could be our big break!”
The winner of the battle of the bands contest our kids were entering won a full day in a professional recording studio. The kids had been talking about it for a month, arguing about what songs of theirs they’d want to record to cut their first official demo.
“Settle down kiddos,” Jill said. “Don’t count chickens. Just make sure you have fun on stage. Let the rest take care of itself.”
“What she said,” I agreed. “Now go on, get outta here. Us moms gotta get some practice in.”
Jill, Suzanne and I walked the kids and Larry out to his SUV, helped them load up then watched them drive away until they turned onto the road leading back to town.
“Let’s get to work, ladies. I want to get that Keiko Matsui song down for tonight,” Jill said.
“Let’s do it!” Suzanne said.
We walked back into the barn and I picked up my SG again, while Suzanne got the spare bass she kept in the cabinet, an old black fretless Fender. Jill sat at the piano and we started a run through of Falcon’s Wing, a song by the Japanese jazz piano artist Jill had picked out.
The rock band, The Rotors, that we’d all been in along with Larry and my brother Steve, had petered out, mostly due to the time pressures of kids and careers. We still did a reunion concert every summer in Arlington, and usually managed to pack the house with the group of friends and fans we’d made over the years.
Awhile back I’d had myself a mid-life crisis, getting into a funk that lasted a few months, until Jill had figured out that I was unhappy about not getting to perform anymore. That’s how things usually worked between us, Jill figured out what was wrong with me before I did.
One day I’d been noodling around in the barn with a Rippingtons song, Before Sunrise. Jill had joined me, improvising on her keyboard. That night at dinner, she’d mentioned there was a jazz festival in Manassas in a few months. She talked me into recording a demo, one song each by Russ Freeman, Larry Carlton and Lee Ritenour. We’d also done one piano song by David Benoit to show off her skills.
Jill submitted our demo, and to my surprise they invited us to play a thirty minute set on the opening day of the festival. (For minimal pay.) We’d recruited Suzanne to make a trio and worked up a half-dozen songs. On the smallest stage and as the first act of the day, we hadn’t expected to make a splash, but by the end of our set we’d drawn a fair sized crowd. We’d been a hit, and since then had gotten moderately successful. We’d played the same festival every year since, plus a couple others. Last year they’d moved us to Saturday night to the main stage to open for the featured performer.
We’d also scored a regular gig at the fancy brew pub in downtown Front Royal last year. They’d started having a regular jazz night on the third Saturday of every month featuring us truly, a departure from their usual rock or folk live musical acts. We didn’t draw quite as many people, but the manager told us the crowd we did pull in spent a lot more on fancy cocktails and wine, so financially it was a wash for them. We even played at a jazz club in Georgetown, D.C. three or four times a year when they were hard up for an act.
“That was tight, Jill,” Suzanne said after we wrapped up our third play-through of Falcon’s Wing, “I think that’s songs ready.”
“For sure, let’s lead off the second set with it tonight,” I agreed.
“You think? Feels a little rough in the second half,” Jill said.
“Nah, you got it babe. You’re better in front of a crowd anyway.”
It was true. When Jill first started playing with The Rotors she’d been so self conscious. But after a few years she’d become a natural performer. She was always better with a crowd than in rehearsal. I was so proud of her.