Chapter 11: From the Depths of History

Cypress, California

March 19, 1999

The mood was festive on this Friday afternoon as the sixteen young musicians of the Cypress High School orchestra along with two members of the high school paper’s staff (a photographer and a reporter), seven parents who would serve as chaperones, and Mary Kingsley, who would serve as the head chaperone, boarded the luxury charter bus about an hour after finishing their final rehearsal prior to going to work on the recording. Boarding with them was the Kingsley family, the Nerdly family, and Meghan Zachary, who would serve as the nanny for the two children while their parents were working. Though all of the alcohol had been removed from the bar area for this particular mission, there was a complete sandwich bar set up and the refrigerator was stocked to overfull with a variety of sodas and bottled water. The kids (and most of the parents) raided the sandwich bar first and foremost, most of them chewing contentedly away before the bus even left the parking lot for the ninety-minute drive to California’s capital city.

Caydee quickly became the darling of the bus. Though she was now almost sixteen months old, an age when most children were afflicted with severe cases of stranger anxiety, Caydee had not an iota of this trait. She had lived her entire life so far in situations where she was constantly meeting new people, being held by them, and having them adore her. She loved being a center of attention and she happily toddled around on the bus, going from person to person, smiling at them and asking to be held, and then entertaining them with her chatter or her singing. All of the girls in the orchestra and all of the mothers (there were only female chaperones on this trip) fell instantly in love with her. Not that the boys did not like her as well, but they were more focused on Caydee’s mother, who was smoking hot and had on a top that let them catch glimpses of her cleavage when she bent over to pick Caydee up.

“Did she just say the s-word?” one of the mothers whispered to Jake about halfway to their destination, a scandalized look on her face. “The s-word with ‘show’ at the end of it?”

“No,” Jake said, shaking his head, “of course not. We never use profanity in front of her. She’s saying ... uh...” He thought quickly. “She’s saying ‘Winslow’.”

“Winslow?” she asked, puzzled.

“Yeah,” Jake said. “You know, after the Eagles song? Standin’ on a corner? I sing that one to her at bedtime and she kind of picked up on the word. She just doesn’t say it very well yet.”

“Oh ... that’s very cute,” the mother beamed.

“Shitshow,” Caydee told her and then wandered on down the aisle to her next person to sit with.

Jake smiled at the mother. “Winslow,” he said with a smile. “I’ve never actually been there myself. I hear it’s a nice place though.”

Following behind the bus, unknown to any of the musicians or their parents, was Celia Valdez in a rented Lincoln Navigator. She would be staying in the Kingsley’s hotel room with them and they would use the vehicle to drive to the studio on the next two mornings. None of the kids had met Celia yet, but all had been told that she would be at the studio to help out with the recording. They, as well as the parents, were very excited to meet her.

The bus rolled into Sacramento just after seven o’clock and parked in the lot of the Sheraton Hotel. Everyone piled out and, while Mary led the kids and the other chaperones into the lobby so they could all get checked in and then enjoy a nice meal in the restaurant (the bill for which would be picked up by KVA Records), the Kingsleys and the Nerdlys and Meghan all piled into the Navigator, Jake behind the wheel, and made the drive to the Hilton just north of the downtown area. They checked in—Meghan and Caydee had their own suite, just like in New York, although Meghan’s suite was listed as belonging to Marie Vasquez—and then had their own dinner. After this, everyone retired to their respective rooms. Jake, Laura, and Celia spent an hour having sex with each other. The Nerdlys spent an hour working on their website while Kelvin worked on categorizing his Pokémon collection according to relative strengths and weaknesses. Meghan spent an hour watching cartoons with Caydee and then, once the little Kingsley was in bed, spent another forty minutes playing with herself in the suite’s jacuzzi tub (though she did not utilize the jets—she had learned her lesson about this method of self-pleasure quite well). Everyone got a good night’s sleep—all were veterans of sleeping away from home—and met for breakfast at eight o’clock the next morning. At nine o’clock, everyone except Meghan, Caydee, and Kelvin met at the Overdrive Studios in the unfashionable Del Paso Heights section of the city.

After Celia was introduced to everyone and they all had the chance to gush over her a bit, they got to work. They were assigned to Studio A, which was the largest of the three studios at Overdrive. Large, however, was a relative term. There were two isolation booths in addition to the main studio floor where the sound board was located. One of the booths was tiny, intended only for a single singer, maybe two, to record vocals in. The other was not much bigger, certainly not big enough to cram all of the strings and woodwind players into, let alone their music stands, their chairs, and their conductor.

“All right, here’s the deal,” Jake told everyone after he evaluated the situation. “We’ll have to send you in two or three at a time into the larger isolation booth and those will be the instruments we’ll actually be recording until we get the take we want. Those who are not recording will be playing in the main studio where the sound can’t bleed over.”

“We won’t be miking the individual instruments in the iso booth then?” asked Keven Kohler, the veteran studio tech who had been assigned to work on the project. Called KK, he was fortyish and had been working at Overdrive for seven years. He, like everyone else in the studio, was absolutely thrilled to be working with Jake Kingsley.

“No, that won’t work,” Jake said. “We’ll get bleed-over from instrument to instrument if we do that. We’ll use the overhead to make a single track out of each combo of instruments and then we’ll combine those tracks into a single analog at our studio once we’re done.”

“It would be far superior to individually microphone each individual instrument in the isolation booth,” said Nerdly, who had advanced this argument multiple times now.

“That is true,” Jake said, giving his counter to that argument that he had made multiple times now, “but we simply don’t have that kind of time. Whoever was on the mic would have to be almost perfect for every take in order for us to get it done in four sessions. We’re up against a deadline here so we’ll have to go for less than perfection.”

“The trick is going to be setting up so that the musicians inside the booth and out here in the studio providing the support are able to see me conduct them simultaneously,” Mary pointed out.

“Yeah,” Jake said, looking at the layout again. “That is going to be a little tricky.”

It was tricky, but not impossible. Fortunately, the larger iso booth was offset from the main soundboard by six feet. This allowed the kids that were not going to be recorded to set up in a cluster against the side wall near the main door, facing the open area just behind the sound board. Mary could then stand in that open area, just to the right of where the Nerdlys, KK, and the young Sacramento State audio engineering intern named Roland Myers sat. That way, the kids in the iso booth who were actually being recorded and the other musicians who were not being recorded, but who needed to play along so their sound could be played in the headsets that those being recorded (as well as in Mary Kingsley’s headset) would be able to keep in synch with each other. They ran through a quick rendition of Sunday just to make sure the system worked. It was a bit awkward, but feasible they found.

One problem solved, the next quickly reared its head. It was the Nerdlys who created it. They had been enthusiastic supporters of the project ever since first hearing the orchestra play, and had been kind and gracious to the kids during the initial workup and the tuning check upon arrival at the studio, but now that it was time to actually start laying down tracks, their true anal-retentiveness and unrealistic quest for audio perfection began to show. It started as soon as Jake told Jimmy Quarter, the guitar player for the orchestra, that he wanted him to play with the supporting musicians instead of having Jake himself do it.

“Really?” Jimmy beamed. “You want me to do it? To play your guitar parts?”

“That’s right,” Jake told him. “You’ve been rehearsing with them a lot more than I have. I know we won’t be recording your parts—my tracks have already been laid down for Sunday and Got Away—but you should be playing with the group because they’re used to you setting the primary.”

“Now wait just a minute here!” Nerdly suddenly spoke up, his voice firm and commanding in a way it only manifested in a recording studio or while setting up concert sound. He strode over like a general entering the war room. “I did not agree to let the non-recording members of the orchestra play on this project.”

Jake looked at his oldest friend pointedly. “This is not something I need you to agree to, Bill,” he said firmly. “Jimmy Q here has been playing with them through all their workups. He’ll play with them now to set the tone for those in the booth.”

“That makes no sense whatsoever,” said Sharon, who had strode up behind her husband like she was the general’s assistant. “We have the tracks of your guitar work and the percussion that we’ve already laid down at Blake Studios. We’ll play them through the headphones for the recording group. That will give us the best possible sound.”

“No,” Jake said simply. “I want Jimmy to play the guitar and Bart to play the drums, and Monica to play the piano just like they’ve been doing all along. That will give us the best sound at the end of the day because they’re part of the group and the group is used to working together.”

But Nerdly was shaking his head. “If we’re not going to use the prerecorded tracks for setting the tone, then you need to go into the iso booth and play the guitar while you sing, Jake. I must insist upon this.”

Jake was starting to get a little angry now. Out of the corner of his eye he could see both Jimmy and Bart the drummer blushing and looking shamed. “You insist upon nothing, Bill,” he said quietly. “This is my CD and I have ultimate veto power over everything. This is the way it’s going to be.”

“I agree with Jake,” said Celia. “Why did we even bring Jimmy and Bart and Monica if we’re not going to use them in this capacity.”

“Why indeed?” asked Sharon. “We have prerecorded tracks from actual professional musicians available. We should use them to our advantage.”

“It’s not just a matter of setting the timing,” Nerdly added in. “It’s a matter of three less instruments that could potentially make a mistake and derail a take. If we’re going to ... owww! What are you doing?”

Nerdly’s interruption had been caused by Mary Kingsley, who had been watching the exchange with growing alarm and anger. Once she reached her limit, she stepped forward and grabbed Bill by pinching the top of his ear between her two fingers and pulling him in the direction of the studio door. “William Archer!” she barked at him in her stern mom voice. “You come with me right this moment!”

“Mary!” Sharon said, alarmed. “What are you ... Owww! Stop that!”

Mary had grabbed Sharon’s ear in a similar manner with her other hand. “You come with me as well, young lady!” she told Bill’s wife. She began to drag both of them toward the doorway.

Holy shit, Jake thought in wonder and uncomfortable nostalgia. The grabbing by the ear thing had been the signature move of both Mary and Cindy when he and Bill had been little and one mom or the other wanted to move a child from one place to another to remove them from a certain situation. It was how they had removed them from grocery stores when they were throwing a tantrum, how they had dragged them into their rooms when they had been misbehaving, how they had pulled them away from the pitcher of milk they had just carelessly dropped and broken, how they had dragged them over to the Hot Wheels track so they could get their asses beaten. Neither mom had ever had any compunctions about using the technique on the other’s child when necessary. Jake had had his ear pulled by Cindy plenty of times and Bill had had his pulled by Mary plenty of times. He had not seen or felt this particular move in use in probably thirty years or more. He had forgotten it even existed. But his mother hadn’t.

“Jacob,” Mary said firmly as she continued to propel them to the door, “if you will join us?”

“Uh ... right, Mom,” Jake said. “Be right there.”

While the entire orchestra, the studio tech, the intern, Celia, and Laura watched, the two Nerdlys were dragged out the studio door and into the hallway. Jake followed them out and closed the door behind them. Only after the door was closed did Mary release her two captives.

“Jesus Christ, Mary,” Bill said, rubbing the top of his ear. “Uh ... I mean oy vey. That hurt!”

“What is the meaning of this?” asked Sharon, who was quite obviously incensed by this treatment. “I am not a child!”

“You are certainly behaving like one,” Mary told her. “And if you want to behave like a child, I will treat you like one!”

“Now wait a minute...” Sharon started.

“No, you wait a minute,” Mary said. “Do you have any idea how damaging your words are to those young musicians in there?”

“Damaging?” Nerdly said. “We were just trying to...”

“I do not care what you were trying to do,” Mary said. “Talking right in front of them about how you do not think they are good enough to participate in this project is unconscionable! It is damaging to their self-esteem and their sense of worth as musicians and I will not tolerate that kind of behavior!”

“We didn’t say they weren’t good enough,” Sharon protested. “We were just pointing out that...”

“I do not care what you were pointing out,” Mary said. “These are kids who are quite talented at what they do but who are still fragile and prone to suggestion, particularly by professional musicians and audio engineers they look up to. They need to be encouraged in their endeavors so they may flourish, not diminished by their heroes. You will not say another word about this. Jimmy will play the guitar, Bart will play the drums, and Monica will play the piano. That is the way it is going to be. You either live with that or I will withdraw my orchestra from this project immediately.”

“But...”

“No buts,” Jake put in. “You two were out of line in there. Jimmy and Bart and Monica have been helping the orchestra put this whole thing together for us. They’ve been setting the tone and supporting the musicians we’re actually after here. It’s bad enough that we’re not going to use those three on the recording itself. We need to use them for the process though. To not do so is a slap in the face to them.”

“Well put, Jacob,” said Mary, who was still red-faced with anger.

“Thanks,” Jake said. “Now then, are we in agreement here?”

The two Nerdlys nodded their agreement.

“All right then,” Mary said. “Let’s get to work.”

They got to work.

Roland Myers was twenty-one years old and a junior at California State University at Sacramento, colloquially known as Sac State, working on his Bachelor’s in Audio Engineering. For the past four months he had been doing an unpaid internship at Overdrive Studios as part of his education. A very bright though quite introverted young man, he had not found the assignment challenging or interesting since Overdrive primarily recorded music for local radio or television commercials. That changed, however, when Jake Kingsley rented studio time to record a high school orchestra for his next release and he, Roland, had been assigned to assist Kevin Kohler, the senior technician, in the project.

Roland, like most audio engineer students, was a big fan of music and music recording. He had been an Intemperance and Jake Kingsley fan since he had first learned to appreciate good music, and had been a worshiper of the husband and wife Nerdly team ever since he had learned to appreciate good audio engineering. He was quite awed, not just to meet them and interact with them, but to actually work with them on a project such as this. Being around them in the studio and watching them direct the recording process was an incredible experience and he was learning so much from it. True, he was so shy that he had hardly said more than ten words to Jake and the Nerdlys, and what conversation he did make with them had always been uninitiated by himself, but just being in the same building with them was thrilling.

Operating under a timeline, Jake, his mother Mary, and the Nerdlys directed the high school orchestra methodically through the process of recording their tracks over two days on the first weekend and then another two days on the second weekend. Mary would conduct the orchestra from her podium in the main room while whatever group of two or three musicians who were being recorded at the time played in the larger iso room while Jake sang in the smaller iso room and the non-recording musicians played in the main room. Everyone would have headsets on (one of his intern jobs had been to go to the local Radio Shack and purchase an additional twelve headsets at KVA expense just for this project) and they would go through take after take until the Nerdlys and Jake himself were satisfied that they had captured a recording quality track. Once everything was recorded, they would hand over all the recorded tracks which KVA would then use in Blake Studios to add to their final mix and master for the CD.

They progressed at a decent pace and were even able to finish up a bit early on the day of the fourth session. Roland could not wait until the CD actually came out so he could hear how the final mix and master came together. And, though he lusted after several of the high school girls in the orchestra, he was far too shy to even speak to them even though he had noticed a few of them giving him some flirty looks between sessions.

“All right,” Jake told everyone at 1:45 PM on Sunday, March 28, a full three hours and fifteen minutes before KVA’s rented studio time came to an end and only two minutes after Jake had finally convinced the Nerdlys that the last take was good enough, “I think we have a wrap here.”

There was a collective cheer from the assembled musicians. Though they had all been very enthusiastic and full of the natural energy that came with youth, all were a bit frazzled by the tediousness of the recording process. All had performed the same notes of the same two songs hundreds of times, starting, stopping, starting again, and then doing it all over in different configurations once they accomplished a goal.

“All right, here’s the deal,” Jake told everyone. “Mom, the orchestra, Celia, and the Nerdlys are going to climb on the bus and head over to Old Sacramento for a tour of the train museum and then an early dinner at the seafood place on the river. Laura and I will make sure we get the recordings packaged up and then go pick up the kids and meet you at the restaurant. Everyone should be back in Cypress by seven o’clock tonight.”

There was a collective cheer from the kids and the parents. They were looking forward to the Old Sac trip, particularly the crab shack restaurant which had recently opened there. And they were most definitely looking forward to getting home early on the night before another week of school.

Soon, everyone was gone except Jake and his wife Laura. KK went to collect all the reels that had KVA material on them from the vault. Roland found himself alone with the iconic (and notorious) singer/songwriter and his redheaded wife who was so cute that he had trouble even looking at her.

“Roland, that’s your name, right?” asked Jake once they were alone.

“Uh ... yes, that’s my name,” he said, his voice soft and barely audible.

“KK told me you’re studying audio engineering at Sac State,” Jake said.

“Yes,” he nearly whispered. “That’s right.”

“How is Sac State?” asked Laura brightly. “I’ve heard good things about their audio program.”

Again, he could not even look her in the eye. “It’s ... uh ... a good program,” he said, so quiet now that Laura could barely hear him. “Not as good as some of those in southern California of course, but I’m able to ... you know ... keep living with my parents while I’m studying.”

“That’s a benefit,” Laura said. “I went horribly into debt to get my education. My parents weren’t big believers in girls going to college. They didn’t pay a penny of my tuition or housing. And then they got in quite a tizzy when I moved in with a gay guy as a roommate to help keep expenses under control.”

“I’m not gay!” Roland nearly barked, his voice becoming louder than it had all day for this statement.

“Uh ... okay,” Laura said softly. “I wasn’t accusing you of it, just making idle chit-chat.”

“Oh ... I’m sorry,” Roland said, blushing now.

“Anyway,” Jake said, shaking his head a little, “I just wanted to thank you for helping out with this whole thing. You did some good work.”

“I did?” Roland asked. He did not remember doing any good work, just what he was asked to do.

“You did,” Jake said. “When do you graduate?”

“Uh ... I’ll have my Bachelor’s next June if things go as planned. I’ll probably start looking for a place to get my Master’s degree after that.”

“We’ll be opening up our own studio in San Luis Obispo County sometime soon,” Jake told him. “We’ve already made an offer on the property and a structure outside Atascadero. We’ll be looking for good help soon. Be sure to drop an application to us when that happens.”

“Really?” Roland asked, surprised. Was he really being offered a job with Jake Kingsley in his studio?

Not quite. “Well,” Kingsley said, “I’m not offering you a job just yet, but I’d love to have the Nerdlys interview you for it. Like I said, I like the work you did here with this project. If you can impress the Nerdlys, you’re in. And, if you’re in, we would make education allowances for you. Cal Poly is only twenty minutes away from where the studio will likely be. They have an impressive audio engineering department, I’m told.”

Roland was now blushing furiously, but he was quite animated. “Thank you, Mr. Kingsley,” he gushed. “I’ll do that.”

“Call me Jake,” Jake told him.

“Jake,” Roland said slowly, still unable to believe his good fortune. He was being asked to apply at KVA Records’ new studio, to be interviewed by the Nerdlys, to actually work with the Nerdlys if all worked out! Incredible! This good fortune served to drive away a little of his shyness. He decided to ask something that he had wondered about ever since first being told that Jake Kingsley would be recording here. “Tell me something ... uh ... Jake.”

“What’s that?” Jake asked.

“How did you end up here, in this studio, of all the places you could have recorded this ... you know ... this project.”

“Well,” Jake said, “mostly because it’s the closest studio to Cypress, where my mom’s orchestra is from.”

“Oh ... I guess that makes sense,” Roland said. He had been assuming that the explanation would be more complicated than that.

“I do have a history here though,” Jake added. “That’s how I knew this place even existed.”

“History?” Roland asked. “What kind of history?”

“This is where me and the rest of Intemperance recorded our first demo tape,” Jake told him.

Roland’s eyes opened a little wider. “Really?” he asked. “Here? In this studio?”

“That’s right,” Jake said with a chuckle. “That was a long time ago. Back in 1981. Back before anyone outside of the Heritage area even knew who Intemperance was. Our first agent—a guy named Ronald Shaver—had just signed us and needed us to cut a demo tape so he could introduce us to the record companies. He sent us here because it was close to Heritage and relatively cheap. We recorded six songs in this very studio. They made copies of the master and Shaver distributed them around and National Records ended up signing us for the first contract. Of course, we got screwed, blued, and tattooed by Shaver and National in that deal, but it’s what put us on the map. The rest is history, I suppose.”

“Wow,” Roland said in awe. “That’s an amazing story. I had no idea the first Intemperance demo was recorded here. I don’t think anyone else who works here knows that either.”

Jake simply shrugged. “It’s no big,” he said, and to him it obviously wasn’t. “Just an interesting bit of trivia to explain how we remembered this place when we needed a studio near the Heritage area.”

KK returned a minute later with a large manila envelope in his hands. It was bulging with eight-inch reel-to-reel tapes that contained the many recorded tracks of the instruments the high school orchestra had played for the two cuts. “These are the originals, Jake,” he told him. “We have copies stored in the vault in case anything happens to the originals. We’ll keep them for one year and then they’ll go on the purge list.”

“Sounds good,” Jake said, taking the package. “Thanks for all the time and effort you put into this.”

“It was my pleasure,” KK said.

The two of them shook hands. Roland noted that Jake did not invite KK to come interview for a job at his new studio. Interesting. Jake shook hands one last time with Roland and then he and his wife made their way to the exit and disappeared. The moment the door was closed, KK turned to his student. “God fucking damn, can you believe how hot Jake’s old lady is? You think she takes it up the ass?”

“Uh ... she is very pretty,” Roland said, blushing a bit. “But I wouldn’t know if she participates in that sort of activity.”

“I’m thinking she does,” KK speculated. “No way Jake would marry a bitch that don’t take it up the ass. I wonder if she lets him snort coke out of it?”

Roland blushed further and decided to change the subject. “Jake told me that Intemperance recorded their first demo tape in this studio.”

This got KK’s attention. “No shit?” he asked. “He told you that just now?”

Roland nodded. “I was asking him why he picked this studio and he told me they recorded six songs here back in 1981 when they first signed with an agent. It was a copy of that recording that got them signed to National.”

“Huh,” KK said thoughtfully. “I’ve heard stories about how Intemperance recorded here once, but I always assumed that was just bullshit.”

“It would seem the stories were true.”

“What the fuck do you know?” KK said in wonder. And then he changed the subject. “How many of those high school girls do you think Jake plowed?”

“How many?” Roland asked. “I would assume none of them. He’s married.”

KK snorted laughter. “Yeah, I’m sure Jake is all about the sanctity of marriage as an institution. I’m guessing he plowed them all—even that fat one. Why else would he sign a fuckin’ high school orchestra for his CD instead of hiring professionals?”

“His mother is the conductor of the orchestra,” Roland said.

This did not impress KK. “So? His mother raised a kid who grew up to snort coke out of a groupie’s ass-crack. You think she’s gonna give a shit if he plows her orchestra girls?”

“Uh ... she seemed rather protective over the orchestra actually.”

“Of course,” KK said. “That’s so no one but her son could plow them. Hell, he’s probably doing the boys as well. I heard a few years back that he’s fucked so many women he was getting bored with them and decided to try switch-hitting to break up the monotony.”

“Bisexuality doesn’t really work like that,” Roland pointed out.

KK scoffed again. “Says the guy who has never even been laid before. Anyway, it looks like we’ll get to cut out early today. I got some business I can take care of before I head home. You think you can get everything stowed away and lock up by yourself?”

Roland knew that the business that KK could take care of was a meeting with the chubby younger woman he was cheating on his wife with. Though he was not supposed to leave an intern unsupervised in the studio, it was something he routinely did so he could slip out early. “Yes,” he told the tech, “I can do that.”

“You’re all right, Rollie,” KK told him. “Even if you never have seen a pussy in the flesh. I’ve got the recordings of all the tracks for Jake catalogued, labeled, and in the canisters. You’ll just need to put them in the vault for me.”

“They’re sitting on your desk?”

“That’s right. Just put them in the slots that are written on the label. They’re already assigned in the computer.”

“Will do,” Roland promised.

Five minutes later, KK was out the door leaving Roland all alone in Overdrive studios. He went to work, putting away all the chairs and headsets that the orchestra had used. He then grabbed a broom and began sweeping up so the studio would be spotless for the commercial spots they would be working on in the morning.