Read Finding Abbey Road Online
Authors: Kevin Emerson
Finding Abbey Road (21 page)
“Ready, Summer?”
But that will have to wait.
I turn and say, “Just a sec.” I type a quick message to Caleb on my phone.
Summer: Another amazing set. Vocals on Transistor = better
than ever. Tempo on Starlight still tricky. Sight of you on stage = still all I need.
Caleb: Thanks. Sight of you not here = bummer.
Summer: I know. Seventeen days!
Caleb: Seventeen days nine hours and 34 minutes!
Summer: xoxoxoxoxxxxo.
On the laptop screen I see Caleb kneeling by his pedal board, texting me with one hand while he unplugs cables with the other. His hair is flopping in his eyes, the perfect curve of his chin beneath that. He's wearing his Poor Skeletons T-shirt, the light brown one that fits him so well, thin muscular arms beneath, and it's annoying that there will be girls there, so much closer to him, probably getting all crushy . . . far more annoying that I can't touch him, hold him . . .
A world away, connected by a satellite . . .
He stands up, throws his guitar case over his shoulder, looks out across the dispersing crowd like a cowboy about to ride to the next town. . . .
And then I close the laptop.
I head out of the lounge and down a quiet hallway, to a door marked “C” with a red light on above it.
“How was the set?” Susan asks me when I walk in.
“Really solid,” I say. “By the time they get over here, they should be super tight.”
Dangerheart is going on tour in the UK and across Europe with the Poor Skeletons next month, after Insanity
is over. The first show is in London.
Where I'll be waiting.
Berwick Street Studios, a sister to the record store, is no Abbey Road, but it is still a real, professional recording space. Susan and her partner started it fifteen years ago, and their goal is not just to record the music of the hottest new up-and-coming bands in the British scene, but to help mold them, shape them, prepare them for a career in music.
I am their first ever production and management intern, paid in room, board, and airfare.
I sit down at the console. I look through a similar rectangle glass window as the one at Abbey Road, only into a much smaller studio, and see the members of My Sith Dilemma. All-girl, three-piece, edgy rock band. Thick eyeliner, torn retro acid-washed jeans, jean jackets and white tank tops.
“Ready for the next take?” I say into the mic.
“Yeah,” says Tara, their lead singer, cold-eyed and severe like Val.
“Remember,” I say, “on the bridge justâ”
“I know,” Tara mutters. “Let them in.”
Val is actually one of the reasons I feel like I get this band. In my notebook, on the page reserved for Sith notes, is a recurring theme: show us that heart inside. I know that isn't easy for Tara and the band, they're so edgy and aggressive, and yet I feel like if they were willing to show a glimpse of the pain behind it, then they could be having a
conversation with so many different people.
They burst into their song, drums slamming, bass tunneling, guitar swirling, vocals attacking.
As they play, my fingers glide over the board, tweaking faders, adjusting knobs, checking tones and levels. Susan and I play with different combinations of microphone volumes on the drums. We talk about whether the guitar stays out of the way of the vocal. We listen and think and lose ourselves and the hours go by.
It's nearly eleven when we finish, and as is our ritual, we stop at the pub just down the block from the studio for a late dinner and a pint. British pubs mostly close by midnight. It all seems so civilized compared to the States. And yes, I realize that I probably sound like the classic teen-studying-abroad cliché right now, but hey, that's what I am! And it's true.
Susan and I talk about My Sith Dilemma for a bit. We both think a song called “Eat Your Pie” is clearly their first single, but the band doesn't agree. It never ends, the struggle to see ourselves from the outside. Susan tells me more stories from the late seventies, when she was working with a band called Halsey's Butterpies, and the crazy tour they had in Italy. She was dating the guitarist at the time. I finally tell her the story of Ethan Myers. It's funny now. Feels like ancient history.
When we're done, we part ways at the Tube station, Susan grabbing a train. I have a fifteen-minute walk in the
London dark, chilled with a light fog, back to the room I'm renting in a flat with two other college-age girls.
I consider the time and do the math in my head, and make a call.
“Hi, Mom,” I say, “it's Summer.”
“Hey,” she says. “Hold on, let me get your dad. . . .”
I huff a little at this to myself. Of course it's nice to talk to them both, but there's something about it that makes the call feel like a big deal, an
event,
and it is those things that remind me that I'm far away. No longer home.
I tell myself that even if I were still in Mount Hope, I'd be leaving in a matter of weeks. This distance would be happening either way. But still, it just emphasizes that I made a choice, to leave them.
Because I got into Stanford . . .
And deferred. Also got into Pomona, and in a late upset, got denied by Colorado College.
It wasn't easy. There was more yelling when I got back from London. Actually, at first there was eerie quiet. I think everyone was just stunned for a couple days. But then the Stanford acceptance came, and I told them what I truly wanted to do.
“Hi, honey,” says Dad, picking up the other line. “How's your week been?”
Amazing, magical, a nonstop meteor shower of epiphanies . . .
“Really great,” I just say. These are still the little lies, by increment, that I hope to someday get past. They
should know that I think it's amazing here, and yet I worry that it will hurt them. “We're recording a pretty cool band. Today Susan taught me about limiters. There was math and stuff.”
“Get to any new sights in London?” Mom asks. Mom likes the idea of this internship more when she rationalizes that what I really wanted was to spend some time abroad.
I let it slide.
“Been too busy this week,” I say, “but Sunday I'm going to go out to the cliffs of Dover with Janice, one of the studio assistants. That should be pretty cool.”
There is a moment of silence. A flurry of black taxis roar past me, racing to beat a yellow light. I picture my parents in their quiet house.
“Your registration materials came from Thornton.”
The Thornton School of Music at USC is the top sound engineering and music industry program in southern California. They literally fell over themselves to get me. Apparently, “female” is not a box that gets checked super often in their applications.
“How long does that last again?” Mom asks.
Most of our conversations feel like this: businesslike. Like all we have in common anymore is our adherence to the Roman calendar.
“Till December,” I say. And I sort of don't breathe because I know what's coming next.
First a pause . . .
Then Dad: “Any idea what you'll do after that?”
I smile and yet I am starting to tear up. “I don't, yet. Don't be disappointed, okay?”
Silence again. It doesn't seem to matter how far I get, we still end up back at this impasse, like we are speaking to one another from opposite sides of a canyon.
Finally, my dad says, “We're not disappointed.”
I almost stop him right there. Yes they are. Of course they are.
“We're just worried. That's all.”
“Dad . . .” It makes me so mad! Haven't I proved that I'm not a failure, over and over again? “You have to trust meâ”
“Honey,” says Mom, “we do trust you. That's not it. We just . . . this path you're on. . . . We can't see down it the way you can. The fact that we worry about you isn't a sign that you've failed. It's us. We're rooting for you, but we know it's your choice. I don't know how to explain that we can worry while still having faith.”
I wipe at my eyes. “I get that.”
Actually, I totally do.
I change the subject, ask about their work, their upcoming cruise, my brother's visit next week. I tell them about Dangerheart coming over and us going on tour, and they listen quietly, Mom offering a
that sounds like an adventure.
And then I tell them I have to go. I'm at my flat and it's late.
We say good-bye.
I tell them I love them. They say it back. I hang up, but don't go inside just yet. First, I drift in the hollow place that their calls create, a sea of loss, I think, for how it used to be, I don't even know when anymore. Then there's the confusion that comes with these mixed signals, hope and worry, approval and doubt. . . .
It takes a minute or two for my eyes to dry out.
Then a double-decker bus whizzes by in the twilight and I look up and remember that I am in freakin' London. And I remember how. And I remember why.
So, now what, then?
My father asked me, not a year ago.
Now I am living my dream.
And I don't know what comes next.
And I don't know how it will turn out.
But there's an electricity in the unknowing.
In the possibility.
And there is something amazing about that.
Thanks to the fabulous Katherine Tegen and everyone at KT Books and HarperCollins and to Patrick Carman. Thanks to Erica Silverman and Caitlin McDonald at Sterling Lord Literistic, and to my dear, departed agent, George Nicholson, whom I will always miss. Thanks to my friends and family, and to the authors, booksellers, and librarians I am so lucky to know. Finally, a special thanks to all the band mates I've shared stages with for over two decades now. Looking back, every one of those nights was kind of amazing.
