Chapter 2: New Tools

It was Janell that really put things into words for them, "I don't know how we can ever thank you for putting us together. I know for me, it's been three years of kick ass fun and I've really learned to play my drums rather than just beating on them."

"Yes you have young lady," Bob smiled. "If you'll look over there, behind my pile of amps, you'll find the drums you'll play tomorrow. Sorry, but you'll have to set them all up and tune them to your liking."

Janell moved around him slightly and looked behind the huge stack of Marshal amplifiers. Her mouth came open and her eyes found Bob's shining orbs watching, and loving her surprise.

"I told Chelly already, but I really want to hear you all play on top notch, best there is, equipment," he said looking at each shocked face with a grin.

"Now, let's hit it. We have a lot of work to do before sunrise!"

Unpacking and setup took well over 4 hours, so when they were all finished with their particular pile of new toys they stood back to admire their handy work. In front of them was a complete, and I mean complete, setup that would make any professional band drool. The garage was really over stuffed this time.

Michelle had two new Korgs and a new Roland, a Kurzweil. There was more to come.

Maryanne had a few additions, but most of her stuff was her own, only because Bob didn't know what to equip her with. He pulled her aside and let her know that if she wanted, on Sunday, they'd go for a shopping trip to upgrade some of her instruments, and that he already had some ideas.

Janell had a shiny new, bright yellow, set of the best drums that Yamaha produced. Not only that but there were about four times what she was used to, with Zildjian cymbals of every size and tone you could think of. She was totally speechless when she started to set up the new drums. She was crying softly as she moved them around. Her tears didn't go unnoticed.

Bob walked over to her and gently put his arm around her shoulders. Making eye contact he asked softly, "You ok, Sweetie?"

Janell looked up at him with bleary teary eyes and just nodded her head. She was totally overwhelmed at having the opportunity to play a set of drums that there is no way in the world she could have ever afforded.

Stopping her for a moment and making sure there was still good eye contact, Bob expressed softly, "If you play this set tomorrow with the same fervor and quality that I heard on that demo tape, I'll be very proud to present this set to you. Someone that plays as well as you do deserves to work with the best tools available."

Her eyes grew to double their size. Janell put her arms around Bob's neck and hugged him tightly, whispering softly, "Thank you so much Bob. I promise, I'll do the very best I can."

She moved back to looking in his eyes.

Looking back with a smile he quietly assured her, "I know you will dahlin', and I can't wait to hear it!"

"How can I ever repay you for this," she whispered searching his face?

"Play them sweetheart, just play them," he said softly with a loving smile. "That will more than repay my faith in your ability."

He let her go so that she could continue to set up the drums to her liking. She had a lot more to think about because they had to be in the right order, for the right sound, at the right time, with the least movement for the smoothest strokes, and she just wasn't used to having this many drums to hit, or cymbals for that matter.

It would take Janell some time and continuous movement before she had them placed where she really wanted them. They had time! After her brief talk with Bob, her whole demeanor changed. She was cheery, animated and continually talking to herself while she finished her work.

For Heather it was a bit more interesting because most accomplished guitar players prefer to play an instrument they know, but when she saw the two Stratocasters and the Gibsons in electric along with the Washburn and Taylor acoustics, she fingered the necks grinning like a Cheshire cat. One of the Strat's was a custom "Eric Clapton" signature model in black and white. For a minute it looked like she was going to make love to the guitar. She shook her head and blushing, looked around the room to see if anyone had been watching. Her eyes met with Bob's, he was nodding to her and grinning knowingly. She turned a couple more shades of red.

All of the girls had smiles as big as the universe, and each made sure she came to Bob and not only thanked him profusely but gave him a strong hug and a soft grateful kiss. He was flabbergasted when Janell came over and hugged him for a long time, then kissed him very sensuously. This girl is gay?

While the girls were unpacking Bob had been setting up all the microphones, the mixing board, and the new fangled digital recorder so when it was time they would have a dual 32-track, stereo recording to mix from. He'd already contacted a close friend who just happened to be a sound engineer and producer. He wanted Bill to hear them to see if there was any interest on his part. Bob hoped that Bill would hear the same potential he had and agree to produce for him. Bill was already more involved than anyone knew but that's because Bill and Bob had worked together many times in the past. There was a lot of mutual respect between the two. Besides, Bob had a big checkbook; anything else was up to Billy.

Oh, did I mention the Marshall concert amps for all of the guitars? Maybe I did, because that's where all the drums were "hidden" when the girls arrived. Bob figured since that was what he'd used in so many live performances that he couldn't settle for any less than that for the girls. It was truly difficult to get all of the equipment into the garage and set up.

Bob's setup alone was eight 4x10 speaker cabinets, with a custom-built 2500W head with tubes. He'd left the concert sub-woofer at the ranch; it would literally break windows in the neighborhood. Every piece of equipment that he could find which was tube technology rather than transistors, he picked it up. It was usually about 2x the cost, but it was 10x the sound quality.

They were going to be shakin' enough walls tomorrow, well later today. He figured that broken windows wouldn't go over very well. The neighbors were very tolerant of the music, but breaking their windows might sour the mood.

He continued to look around and watched with a contented smile as the girls ran their hands over the new instruments that they couldn't play until later in the morning. Since it was already late, rather early, it wasn't fair to rattle the neighbor's windows, and even at the lowest volume it wouldn't be very quiet. Heather was jamming quietly with Maryanne. Heather had picked up the Washburn acoustic and Maryanne was picking on the Taylor. Bob sat in awe as the two played a few acoustic numbers. When either Maryanne or Heather started to sing along with the guitars, Janell and Chelly would join in the vocals, in perfect harmony. All Bob could do was sit and shake his head thinking to himself, "My god these girls have talent."

Janell could keep everyone awake all by herself, even with the silencing pads that had been in one of the boxes. She was placing, tapping, moving, tapping again, until she thought it was right. Then she'd move on to the next drum doing the same thing. A few times Bob noticed that she'd just throw herself back on to the throne with a pout and utter an almost silent "godammit", then move one or more a quarter of an inch, and go through the whole routine again. She not only played the drums masterfully, but she was a total perfectionist as well. Bob smiled and nodded to himself.

She looked over to Chelly and Judy and asked if they had four pillows that she could use for the session. She apologized and said that she'd bring hers the next time, but Chelly had told her to leave her stuff at home.

Judy went into the house and in a few minutes came out with a pile of pillows for Jan. There were more than the four she'd asked for, but Judy had known what they were for so brought some extras.

Jan climbed off the throne and walked around to the front of her setup and picked up a couple of the pillows stuffing them into the front of one of the bass drums, then repeated the process with the other. The pillows would serve to dampen the reverberations from those two drums. In a garage setting they would be far too loud without the pillows. She could tune them by adding or removing pillows, but that would have to wait for later in the day.

The only one that really had a large curve to overcome was Michelle. She had one full Roland Keyboard, a Kurzweil production station, a Kurzweil Stage piano, and 3 of the highest quality Korg synthesizers made that she was going to have to program and play. There were already a lot of effects in the can, and she already knew some of the sound programming, so she was a bit ahead of the curve, but not that far. She also knew what did what, and what things would sound like when she did them, but she also knew she'd be able to do nearly anything with these toys.

Bob thought about it for a while, and kicked himself for not picking up at least one other synth and a straight keyboard for Maryanne. There were going to be some times where Michelle was going to need three hands anyway, so while she was making the full symphony orchestra happen, Maryanne could provide other keyboard pieces.

Moody Blues music came immediately to mind. He had already heard Chelly do very nicely with some of the orchestration on the older synth equipment that she already had. She was going to be able to do amazing things with the newer equipment and just needed a little time and plenty of encouragement.

Bob thought to himself, "Maybe a couple units by Moog. Bob Moog was a fucking genius and there's nothing to really compare with those old analog synth units. The Minimoog Voyager Electric Blue Edition is only like $3500 and that's peanuts compared to the music it will make. Hell, maybe a theremin for Maryanne. Another call to Mr. Bill." He chuckled out loud when he thought about the girl's reaction to more new goodies. He was going to force them to push the envelope, and he had no doubts that they were fully capable of the task.

He just wanted to avoid having anything "pre-recorded" like all of the specials "The Who" had on the "Who's Next" album and tour. They had put a tape deck on the stage and fed all the keyboards and synths into the "system" while they played the bass, drums and lead parts on their usual instruments. Come on, it was "The Who", you can't tell me they couldn't afford to hire a keyboard player to do it live? Granted, Pete Townsend had done all the synth work in the studio, but it wasn't rocket science, it was simple shit - hell, Chelly had it down in like three minutes or less. Hire a keyboard player. Had to give them a "Bogus" vote for that tour.

When he mentioned to them that there were a few things he'd forgotten, they agreed but told him that it was no big thing. He'd done plenty already. Bob just gave them a knowing smile. He had some other tricks up his sleeve. Time to give Mr. Bill a call.

When they started to really look around to see everything that was there, chuckling at Janell for still being in "set up" mode, it dawned on them, this was some of the finest musical equipment that could be had. This was a lot of money that Bob had tied up so they could play top-notch instruments.

It was Michelle that broached the subject. She must have figured she knew him best, so it was most appropriate for her to query. "Bobby," she said, waiting for him to acknowledge he was listening, "I don't mean to rain on anything, but this is some expensive stuff. How much did you have to front out to do all of this?"

He looked to her and said softly, "Chelly, that's not important, it's only money. What's important is that you four are some of the finest young musicians that I've ever had the pleasure to listen to -- even if it was a fairly crappy recording on cassette tape. You can't imagine how much I'm looking forward to playing with the four of you tomorrow."

All of their faces went to the large round eyes of shock, but looked past him and finally noticed that he'd set up a complete concert complement for playing the bass. What he had just said started to sink in.

Maryanne spoke quietly, "Is that why you said I didn't need to bring my bass?"

Bob smiled and said, "Yes ma'am. It will be my distinct pleasure to join you four in the morning for a little fun."

Judy finally decided to put in her two cents worth as well.

"Girls," she said tentatively. "I asked Bob to listen to your tape because I honestly thought you were becoming very accomplished musically, but you're just kind of drifting without any real direction or organization. You get together regularly and you all practice constantly and you are all very good at everything you do, but where are you taking it? I hoped that Bob could come down, listen to you and come up with a direction for you to pursue. I had no idea that he was going to do all of this. Believe me, I'm as shocked as you are."

Bob started closing and locking the trailer, and then lowered the garage door while shooing all the women towards the house. Judy offered and then brought everyone drinks while they had a chat in the living room.

Bob figured he should probably fill them in on where his head was. He'd obviously tied up a lot of money in instruments, and they were just a "garage band" so where was this trail leading?

"Ok ladies, I'm sure that by now you're all wondering 'Why'," which got highly animated nods from everyone.

He chuckled, "To be totally honest, I was really glad to receive the demo that Judy sent. I was sitting around on my ass, getting fat, feeling sorry for myself with nothing to do." He looked around the room and continued, "God knows, I don't need money. I just love playing and making music. I hate sitting around on my ass trying to find something on the TV to keep my interest for more than a few minutes," then with a loud chuckle, "I'm sure you all are aware that Television is a vast wasteland of nothingness."

He saw nodding heads and heard loud laughter with his observation.

"I was playing with myself but, trust me on this, there was not a lot of cerebral stimulation, if you know what I mean." again receiving nods and grins from all the girls who had obviously chosen to ignore the innuendos in his statement.

"When I heard you playing on that low quality tape and sounding so damned good, I wanted to hear a recording that was done professionally, but not only that, I wanted to hear you all play on the best equipment that I could find on the spur of the moment. Don't take that wrong, what I brought is top-notch equipment, but it is all I could find in a few hours. We'll upgrade it as we can. Some stuff I'll probably have to special order, but Billy can take care of that for us."