Chapter 23: Tennessee II

Ashley’s home recording studio comprised a large area in the lower level of her large home. The main studio was about thirty-by-forty feet – plenty of room for the band, back-up singers, and Ashley. Looking onto that room through a thick plate glass was the good-sized control room, with a digital mixer board that had fifty channels that could be finely tuned using multiple controls for each channel as it recorded or played back various songs. Several large computers also graced the room. Beside that was a green room, that had little green in it. The walls were white and decorated with some of the posters from various concerts Ashley had given around the United States and Canada.

Just after nine a.m., about twenty people arrived at the house in a caravan of cars and vans. Kyle greeted each of them by name, introduced them to Dave and for a few that didn’t know her, Marina, and waved them into the work area. Most had been at the house previously, so knew what to do as they went to work.

Ashely’s band members’ names flew by Dave so fast he didn’t have a chance to memorize them, like he usually did when meeting someone new: Robby, Mick, Jack, Ricardo, Randy, Ronnie, Floyd, Glenn, Paula, and Jan. Her backup singers were Ally, Bart, and Mike. There were three others that were so shy they avoided being introduced; they went right to work assembling the various band instruments, getting them wired into the mixing board, and tuning them so they were in key together.

Later, two of the group, who Dave learned were Jason and Annie, took over the main area of the ‘booth’ to record the various songs. They had all the electronics up and running, and were checking the electronic linkages to each instrument and microphone. The ‘board’, Dave learned, could record about fifty channels. Each could be adjusted after the fact to emphasize or deemphasize a particular channel, such as one instrument or one singer, on the digital playback.

Ashley showed up dressed in jeans, flats, and a white blouse. She had a wireless microphone clipped to her blouse and belt, but would be using a stand-up microphone with the spray shield as the main instrument in the middle of the studio.

Kyle was also sitting at the ‘big board’ with Annie going over a list of songs they wanted to record that day. Dave knew that Ashley had each of them in her repertoire of songs in her memory, but she still had a music stand and the sheet music for each one available. Dave noted that he and Annie also glanced over where he and Marina sat. Kyle gestured at them and they laughed, but went back to the sheet music.

Kyle called everyone together in the studio. Most had coffee cups from a large urn in the green room. He thanked everyone for being prompt and outlined the day. There were six songs they wanted to capture and he ran through then. Of course, the band had already been together the days before rehearsing the music, and working out how they wanted to shift between riffs, codas, stanzas, and the rest of the music for each song. While Dave had heard the terms, he wasn’t fully conversant with their meaning.

Dave and Marina leaned forward watching over the shoulders of Kyle, Jason and Annie as they worked the board and started on the first song; a new ballad called Country Angel Heaven. There were a few obvious hiccups, but everybody went through the whole song relatively well. Where there was a hiccup, Ashley or a band member would raise their hand. Immediately after the end of the song, there was a brief review between Ashley and the band, and then they did a version that sounded really smooth to Dave. They repeated the sequence thrice again.

They repeated the process several times for two more songs, and then took a break. Most of the conversations on the break were about the music and the songs: things to try, places where a pause would create a theatric effect, where a guitar riff could add something, where an isolated drum beat would have great impact, a repeated phrase, a different ending in a minor key, and more. The speed at which ideas were proffered and accepted or rejected amazed Dave.

Both Dave and Marina were captivated by Ashley’s singing, the emotion attached to the songs, the way the band and back-up singers blended into her singing, and the beat of some of the faster songs.

What impressed Dave most of all was he fell in love with Ashley all over again. This was a side of her he’d never seen except in more polished surrounds or in a small concert for the Circle or one of large concerts. She was taking a song someone else had written and making it her own. She molded it, kneaded it, massaged it, hammered on it, and slammed it hard against the wall until it was in the shape that she wanted. She was in command, aided by her troops – the band and backup singers.

Despite the seeming negotiations that took place in the debrief on each version of a song, he realized that her ideas persisted and were far better than any of the other suggestions. She was the leader – the general, the commander of the whole day, and consequently the whole operation. Everyone else were advisers and aides. She had the big picture and the strategic view of what the outcome would be.

After Ashley, the band, and the backup singers had done the second and third songs that were planned, the band took a break. Ashely got a second wind, and so had most of the band. She came bouncing up to Dave and Marina in the booth as the band listened to the playback, critiquing their work on the last song.

“Are you guys bored yet?”

Dave and Marina both shook their heads. He said, “I could watch this all day.”

Ashley said, “You know what Jim Mellon said at this point, right?”

Dave looked puzzled.

“He said, ‘Yes’, when Crystal asked him to sing with her. Oh, he resisted a little, but eventually he sang. I want you to come and sing with me. I know you know the words to a bunch of my songs, but just for a touch of nostalgia, let’s do Texas Dawn. The band knows it by heart, and so do the backup singers.”

Dave blanched, “You’re kidding. I can’t sing.”

“Jim Mellon didn’t think he could sing either. Come on. Just give it a try.” She pulled gently on his arm.

Martina pushed Dave up from his chair and nudged him to follow Ashley. He went with her into the main studio.

Ashley told of her intentions and the reasons why to the band. She said, “Gentlemen, here is my version of Jim Mellon. I give you Dave Prentiss, soon to be a country music star I’d be pleased to sing with anywhere. Let’s set up Texas Dawn.” She laughed, obviously believing her words to be humorous and not at all in touch with reality.

Dave shook his head and laughed along with some of the band members who knew he’d never sung before. He got situated on a tall chair in front of a second microphone. Ashley set up the sheet music on the music stand in front of him, and then stood beside him.

“You sing the male part. This sheet music is the duet version. Your lyrics are here, here, and here.” She slashed at the sheet music with a yellow highlighter that had been on the stand, indicating his parts of the song. Now, just sing the scales in this key with me. Follow my lead on tempo.

Ashley started just singing a simple scale and got Dave to sing along: “Do, Re, Mi, Fa, So, La, Ti, Do.” Up and down the scale about ten times. The band slowly joined in providing some drums and then a little lead guitar to jazz up the scales.

Ashley stopped and said, “Alright, now let’s try this.” She glanced in the control room, and so did Dave. Marina and Kyle were standing there with big grins on their face as they stood behind Jason and Annie. The got a sign to start.

Jason’s voice came over the studio speaker, “Five, four, three, two, one.” There was a five second silence and then the instrumental lead-in started. Dave leaned into the microphone and sang the opening line of the poem that had been turned into the song: “Texas dawn comes early when you’ve been awake all night.”

Ashley joined in with her lines, her crisp and distinctive female voice carrying the song forward. They shared a line or two, and then she took off with the main part of the song. Dave would join in on the refrains, and then the two of them sang the last verse and ending together: “So Darlin’ let me wake with you for all your Texas dawns; I promise that I’ll love you ... forever.”

The last tones of the guitar waned away in the studio until silence, and then there was applause as everyone turned to Dave, including Ashley. She threw herself in his arms. “YOU WERE WONDERFUL,” she screamed near the top of her lungs. There were a few cheers and applause from the band and back-up singers. Dave could see Kyle and Marina in the booth also applauding.

Kyle’s voice came over the intercom speakers in the room. “Have him do another.”

Ashley raced across the room to a haphazard pile of sheet music. She came back a minute later to where Dave stood. “This is the song that Johnny Cash and June Carter made famous called Jackson. You’ve heard this a thousand times.” She gave the band a few sheets of music and passed one to the singers. Everyone seemed juiced to do the old favorite.

The band struck up the lead refrain, and suddenly Dave was singing along with Ashley, “We got married in a fever, hotter than a pepper sprout...” They laughed their way through the lyrics, but got most of the song reasonably well done. There were a few whoops and hollers from the band as the song went along, especially when Ashley and Dave were singing at the same time in pretty decent harmony.

As the song ended, Dave started to walk back to the booth. Ashley screamed, “ONE MORE! WAIT!” She ran back to the pile and came back with a song Dave knew because John Stewart and later Roseanne Cash had sung it and it had been a favorite: Runaway Train. The band and singers got copies, and they started into the song cold.

Dave started on cue, “I’m worried about you, I’m worried about me, the curves around midnight aren’t easy to see, flashing red warnings, unseen in the rain...” Ashley joined in here and there throughout the song, but Dave stuck with the lyrics throughout the whole song, his eyes asking for forgiveness at all the goofs he was making.

At the end of the song everyone gathered in the studio. Ashley was hanging on Dave’s arm, “You were fantastic. You CAN sing! Who knew? You’ve been hiding this talent. You have what it takes. You’re going to sing with me – a lot, and I mean in public – in concert.” She prattled on about how good he was.

Dave wasn’t all that sure. When she ran out of steam he said, “I beg to differ with you, I was terrible. I lost the tempo, mumbled the lyrics, and more.”

“No, no. You don’t understand. I’ve sung those songs hundreds of times, and the band has played them at least that many times. We were well rehearsed although we needed a refresher here and there. That wasn’t what I was listening for. You have a unique voice and it even has a country music twang that’s just ... delicious!

“What I was hearing was the timber of your voice – its edginess, your slurs, color, your diction, accents, reverb in your chest, and more. You need to rehearse what you plan to sing before you give a concert; you just don’t go out and wing it in front of ten-thousand people like we pretended here. The voice you have is one that people will want to listen to over and over again.”

Kyle was standing nearby with Marina; they’d come out of the mixer room. He was nodding. Dave looked over at the older man.

Kyle said in a commanding tone, “Ashley’s right, Dave. You have what it takes. I’m a guy that would know, trust me. History was made here, today. A star is born and it’s you.” Marina was nodding beside him.

Marina added her comments, “I get paid a lot of money to help spot rising talent. I am pleased to have been here today at the start of what will be a great moment in music history. You can really sing. Don’t ever say you can’t again. You were great. Thank heavens we even recorded it for posterity.”

The recording session ended about five o’clock. Ashley went and shook everybody’s hand, kissed a lot of cheeks and lips, and thanked them for the great job they’d done that day, and then she ran off to check on Kendall and the babysitter.

Kyle, Dave, and Marina saw almost everyone out of the house by way of a side entrance that came directly from the driveway parking area into the studio area. To Dave’s surprise, Bart, Mike, and Ally stayed behind. In an aside, Kyle said, “They’re staying for dinner and after-dinner playtime.”

Ally was no slouch in the female department, but Dave had resisted gawking at her during the day since she was working and he didn’t want to pose a distraction to her if his interest became obvious.

As they went upstairs, Dave found Ashley and a young, high schoolish girl talking as the girl fed Kendall baby food. She was doing a much better and neater job of it than Dave had done the previous evening. The babysitter’s name was Coraline Howard, or Coral for short.