“You’re up, kid,” Les told me. It was after hours again; it was actually almost nine at night, after everyone had gone to wherever they were going to camp out to celebrate finishing up the EP. I’d somehow managed to talk Les into staying late for the rest of the recording sessions, so Fran and I could work out the material we wanted to do together.
I’d also talked to Ron about the possibility of releasing it. “I don’t want it to be some bullshit thing of me going solo—that’s not what this is about,” I’d told him. “But it could be marketable, especially after the EP.” He’d said he’d look into it with the label once Fran and I had something to show for our after-hours sessions.
I’ve never thought of myself as much of a vocalist; Alex had joined the band so early on when we’d formed that there hadn’t been a point in even trying, apart from the occasional backing track for a song here and there. But Fran and I had been working on material together, and she’d insisted that for the song we’d started out with, she absolutely wanted me to contribute more than guitar. She wanted me to sing it with her.
I stood up and went into the vocal booth, right next to the control room. Fran had been working on vocals to one of my songs—a ballad, unlike anything I’d done with Molly Riot before—so she was still in place, headphones on, right in front of the mic. I took another quick breath and grabbed the extra set of headphones in the booth, putting them over my ears. “Let me see the lyric sheet again,” I told Fran. I still wasn’t sure what she had in mind was a good idea; but I was willing to go along with it. Fran had spent the day working on vocal tracks; she and Alex had done the last of them a couple of hours before, including a schlocky, gimmicky duet that we had decided on for the EP: it had involved all the members of both Juniper Woolf and Molly Riot, and it actually—at least in the rough—sounded good, in spite of the fact that we’d all been hamming it up.
I read over the lyrics again one last time, focusing on the parts that Fran had highlighted for me. “You’re sure you want to do this?” Fran had laid down a backing vocal a few days before, a guiding track that she was going to sing around while I did my parts. I thought it sounded perfectly fine that way—but she had her own vision of the song. I have to respect that, I guess, I thought wryly. If I expected her to pay attention to what I wanted for the songs I’d written, I could only go along with her on her stuff.
“Put up the playback, Les,” Fran said into the microphone. I grinned as she lit a cigarette quickly. She’d cut back during the week, to try and keep her voice as sharp and clear as possible, but we were just about done with all of the recording we were going to do for a while. I heard the count-in and then the melodic guitar-and-piano opening of the song, and finally the guiding vocal that Fran had laid down. She blew a plume of smoke away from the microphone and began to do her part around the original, adding a few flourishes here and there.
I came in on my first cue, in spite of the fact that I was pretty sure I was going to sound like a fucking toad. I plowed through it anyway, glancing at the lyric sheet every so often and then looking at Fran. She seemed pleased—but I thought mostly it was due to the fact of having actually made me do the vocal, rather than my performance itself. We switched off, me singing my part and her singing her bits, and by the time we came to the end of the track, I was actually starting to feel comfortable with the idea of singing.
“Running it again,” Les said through the headphones, and before I could do more than get my own cigarette lit and take a breath, I heard the intro to the song again. Once again, Fran took up her part and I did mine, a little more confidently the second time; at least I didn’t have to look at the lyrics sheet as many times.
We came to the end of the track and I stood there for a moment just staring at Fran, wondering what she thought. “It’s a fucking hit,” she said, half into the microphone and half to me. “Les, can you play it back for us?”
“Come in here and listen to it on the system,” Les suggested. I shrugged and took the headphones off; I still didn’t quite believe it was any good, but I wasn’t going to rain on Fran’s parade. She grabbed at my hand as we left the vocal booth, and I grinned at her.
“You’re really into this idea, aren’t you?”
“Why wouldn’t I be? It was my idea in the first place,” Fran told me tartly. “You’re not allowed to say you don’t want your vocals on the track until twenty-four hours from now, by the way. I want you to sleep on it.”
“You’re going to wait until it’s been twenty-two hours and then you’re going to have sex with me and make me think it’s awesome, aren’t you?” Fran snorted.
“I’m an open book to you, apparently.”
We went into the control room and sat down while Les finished calling up the track we’d just worked on. Even if it’s shit, don’t react until you see what she thinks. I knew that Fran’s part would be fine—but I was seriously doubtful at my own ability to hold up against her.
I heard the count in and sat back in my chair, determined to listen as objectively as possible. As the intro came up, I felt my muscles tensing, waiting for the sound of my own voice. But when I came in on cue, it actually fit the song. I stared at Fran in shock. We actually sounded good together—her soprano and my baritone worked. I shook my head as the song went on, not able to completely believe it, but not able to discredit it either.
“I told you,” she said, sticking her tongue out and reaching over me to grab a half-finished beer that she’d left behind to work on another vocal, “it’s a fucking hit.”
“I can send this off to Alex, to Ron, and to the label,” Les suggested. I shrugged.
“Let’s hold off on that, I think,” I said, glancing at Fran. “The EP has the priority right now.”
“It could go on the EP as a bonus,” Fran suggested.
“Let’s give it a day,” I insisted. But in spite of how cautious I was being—and the fact that I still doubted that the rest of the band would take me working with Fran the way that Alex had—I had to admit that I was actually excited about how good we sounded together. Ideas started to form in my head, and I pushed them aside. “Come on,” I told Fran, reaching for her hand. “We’re done for the night—right Les?”
“If you say so,” he said with a shrug. “Who am I to
argue?”