By eight pm Ziggy was still nowhere to be found, and I still hadn’t read the main part of the article. I sat in the basement with the Ovation in my lap noodling until Bart finally said “What’s wrong with you?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, what’s going on in your head, Daron?” He put his [...]
Christian woke me up the next morning knocking on my door. I’d slept maybe four hours and sat up in bed with all my clothes on, wondering if the house was on fire. “The mail’s here,” he was saying.
I pulled open the door and he thrust an oversize envelope into my hands. “What is it?”
“That’s [...]
The next day went about the same, except we noodled around half the time with Windfall and half the time with another one that had no lyrics and no title. I’d latched onto a riff with a flamenco feel but Bart and I weren’t quite nailing it. And while my fingers were trying to do [...]
Dim stars burned like distant pinpricks through a blacked out window. “If I had to put a label on it I’d guess… it’s yet another anti-establishment song about divorced parents fucking up your life.”
Bart drank some Yoo Hoo and looked at me. “I suppose that’s one way of looking at it.” He was still looking [...]
The first day all four of us actually got together to begin working on new material wasn’t until several days later. At three o’clock in the afternoon we gathered in the basement with my stack of cassettes and scribbled lyrics. I don’t know why I was surprised to find Ziggy there with a notebook. He’d [...]
We played until about one in the morning when Colin came down and said he had to get up for a temp job at 8am. Bart and Michelle went home and Christian and I watched half of a late night movie before he fell unconscious on the couch. Of our other two housemates, there was [...]
When I looked up in the fluorescent tube lights Ziggy was still sitting there, the beer in one hand resting between his legs, his eyes fixed on me. He lifted the bottle to his lips and tipped it back, his eyes never leaving mine as he took a swallow and returned the bottle to its [...]
We had our next business meeting in the kitchen at six o’clock on a Tuesday night. I’d have done it in the living room, but the thing in the forefront of my mind was Christian signing his contract, and it seemed right to have an actual table for that. Our kitchen was not a room [...]
A couple weeks later, Jonathan called one morning, early. “Did I wake you up?” he said.
“Oh, no,” I croaked, “I always get up ten hours before I have to do anything.” Fortunately, the phone was on a milk crate beside my bed and I lay down with the phone on my ear. Vague thoughts went [...]
John took me straight back to the hotel and put me in bed. He took my temperature again (normal), gave me some aspirin, and ordered room service. He looked at my throat, said it was a good thing I didn’t have to sing, and ordered me to stay in bed.
“I’ll be okay,” I said.
“Don’t push [...]
