Chapter 31

“ ... and running down,” I sang, finishing the last verse of Velocity, playing the last running riff that closed out the song.

“Nailed it,” Tran said from the booth as he locked the recording. “That’s a wrap. I love it when they’re easy like that. Great job, all three of you.”

He wasn’t wrong; this song had gone incredibly smoothly. We’d only done four run-throughs of it, making a handful of small adjustments before Tran announced that we were trying it for real. Even then, it had only taken two tries to get it right, and the first one had been so close. Seth had dropped a beat in the last verse, so we’d had to redo it once, but we got it on the second go.

I couldn’t really say why Seth’s song had gone so much smoother than everything else, but I was happy about it. Even with a week that went fairly smoothly, it was still tiring and I was ready to call it a day because we hadn’t just been polishing and recording songs.

We’d also been working on the album as a whole since Hal had us on a crazy aggressive timeline, with the production of it beginning well ahead of even our studio time. He’d already started marketing it before we had a team in place, and they were doing final sound mixes and digitizing as we finished each song, with a goal of having the album released in just over two weeks.

It seemed crazy to me, but Hal wanted the album in people’s hands a full month before the tour. No one at ARC thought it was going to be much of a problem, though. I guess already having the long EP out, and this just being an extension, meant they could accelerate the timeline. I assumed Hal knew what he was doing.

In the end, we’d decided on a track list starting with Appalachia Wanderer and then getting progressively more rock, slowing it down in the middle for Crossroads Heartache, and then picking it back up again, ending with Dirty Little Secrets. This worked well for the pacing, but it also spread out the stuff that had already come out on the EP, so people who’d got that wouldn’t just have to sit through a rerun of it in the middle of the album.

We filed out to the recording booth to hear what he had. Tran ran Velocity through, and it really was a different experience hearing it balanced and played back as an entire piece, rather than just what I heard when playing it live.

“Yeah, I like it,” I said, slapping Seth on the shoulder.

He was still a little gun-shy about the song. As we listened to it, I looked out toward the lobby area, where I could see Jean standing near the window, staring out.

She’d been on high alert ever since Monday, not that I blamed her. It had freaked me out, and I’d spent the next day being kind of jumpy, which was maybe why Tuesday had been our hardest session, going way over the time it should have taken us.

Then ... nothing happened. By the time we got to Friday, I was ready to believe I’d misread the situation, or the guy had gotten bored and gone home. Jean, however, was still taking it incredibly seriously, and I was still on official lockdown for the time being.

“So, I have an idea,” Tran said after we listened through a second time.

“Okay?” I said, trying not to be skeptical.

He’d come through for us this week and we’d all worked together well, but still, I knew he had a tendency to try to take things in specific, preconceived directions, so I was a little wary.

“I was thinking it would be interesting if we did a fourteenth track. I’m not sure if it should be secret and we just not mention it, or if we list it and say nothing, but how do you feel about a reprise of Appalachia Wanderer?”