Bill Fitzhugh - Fender Benders (23 page)

33.

Eddie and Megan arrived at Big Bill’s house an hour before
the start of the recording session.
 
The three
of them sat in the six hundred square foot kitchen sipping sweet tea.
 
Megan was playing it cool, but she was agog
at the proportions of Big Bill’s Belle Meade estate.
 
This was exactly the sort of place Megan
could see herself living.
 
“I just love your
house,” she said.

Other than that, Eddie was doing most of the talking.
 
He was noticeably excited, and not just about
the recording session.
 
He had some good
news.
 
“Silicon and copper,” Eddie said
cryptically.
 
“Connects
the whole world.”
 
After a brief
rumination on the wonders of the microprocessor, Eddie gave Big Bill an update
on the Internet marketing scheme.
 
He had
explained the entire strategy to Herron and Peavy the night he signed his
contract.
 
Herron and Peavy had agreed to
fund the plan as long as the costs were as low as projected and only if Eddie
managed it.
 
They’d figure out later how
to make it recoupable against Eddie’s royalties, assuming he ever had any.

Meanwhile, Eddie had hired eight net-savvy Vanderbilt
undergraduates for minimum wage plus promotional copies of CDs from Herron and
Peavy’s stable of artists.
 
Their job was
to create buzz by spreading the word on the Frances Neagly website and the
search for the mysterious musician who had stirred her still heart with his
song ‘
It Wasn’t Supposed To
End That Way.’
 
The Vandy crew was in the process of visiting
every e-zine, bulletin board, and chat room related to pop music, country
music, or free downloadable music files.

“You can’t be serious.”
 
Big Bill was looking at a document Eddie had handed him. “You’re telling
me that more’n five thousand people’ve already heard the song?”

“Well, half of it, anyway,” Eddie said.
 
“And it could be two or three times that
many.
 
The only thing we can track is the
number of times it’s been downloaded from the site.
 
Once it’s downloaded, people can forward it
to others who can forward it and on and on.
 
It’s electronic word-of-mouth.
 
So
far we’ve left footprints at over two thousand sites on the web,” Eddie
said.
 
“Like I said, we can’t track how
many of those have started telling others who have told others—”

“It’s called mushrooming,” Megan said, just to participate.

Eddie nodded.
 
“Right.
 
But we know
that inquiries about the Frances Neagly website have started to pop up independently
on search engines and message boards.”

“That sounds like a good thing.”
 
Big Bill was clueless.

“It’s fantastic,” Megan said.
 
“It means people are talking about it.
 
Somebody’s even trying to sell it on
E-Bay!
 
Can you imagine trying to sell cassettes
of half a song?”

Big Bill nodded knowingly despite not knowing what an E-Bay
was.
 
“It sounds like
it’s
going good.”

“It’s going great,” Eddie said.
 
“These numbers are unreal.
 
If it keeps up like this…”
 
Eddie leaned back and put his hands behind
his head.
 
“. .
.we’re
talkin’ double platinum.”

Big Bill couldn’t resist the enthusiasm.
 
“Well, then,” he said, suddenly drumming his
hands on his belly.
 
“I guess we better
produce a goddamn record!”
 
He pushed
back from the table and stood up.
 
“Let’s
head on down to the studio.”
 
Bill led
the way through the cavernous house.
 
“Oh, by the way, Franklin
sends his regrets he can’t be here tonight.
 
He had to attend the Class of ‘89 Awards in Atlanta.
 
One of our clients got nominated for Best New
Hat Act, but he’ll be here tomorrow.
 
In
fact, he’s bringing our newest client with him, kid named Whitney Rankin, real
talented songwriter.
 
I think you’ll like
him.”

As they walked down a long hallway, Megan counted the gold
records on the wall.
 
“You know, Mr.
Herron, I just started working at WCMR FM, and like I told Eddie, when the
time’s right I’m going to work on the promotion director about running a
‘Where’s Eddie Long?’ contest or something to increase awareness within the
industry.”

Big Bill allowed as how he thought that was a good
idea.
 
“Never hurts having somebody in
radio on your side,” he said, turning to Eddie with a nudge.
 
“I’d hang on to her if I were you.”
 
       
They
arrived at a large, heavy door which Big Bill pushed open.
 
They stepped inside the studio.
 
It was warm and smelled faintly of
cedar.
 
“You can keep your silicon and
copper,” Big Bill said, gesturing at the bank of tubes that pushed his Pulltech
midrange EQs and his Teletronix leveling amp.
 
“Iron and gas are the things that connect me to the universe.”
 
He smiled.

“Wow,” Megan said as she laid her hands on the mixing
console.
 
“Is this whole room
analog?”
 
She couldn’t believe anyone
could be that much of a dinosaur.

Big Bill nodded.
 
“Damn right, and I don’t care what Don Cook says about all that fancy
digital crap.
 
I’ve done blind tests too
and, believe me, nothin’ sounds as good as analog, period.
 
End of story.”
 
He showed them around the studio.
 
It was a thing of beauty as well as a
technical wonder, though not in the modern Nashville
sense.
 
This was a working museum of
high-end vintage recording equipment.
 
“That’s an original Marshall
eighteen watt combo.”
 
He said this with
the sort of pride usually reserved for parents talking about their Harvard
graduated children.

Megan pointed at some equipment.
 
“What are those?”

“Those, my dear, modern, FM girl, are 1954 Fairchild
compressor/limiters that I bought from an AM radio station that went out of
business in 1969.
 
The transformers were
still in pretty good shape, but I had ‘em refurbished and had all the tubes
replaced.
 
Cost a small fortune, but
worth every damn cent.”
 
He showed off
his API console, his Neve EQs, and his Manly Vox Box.
 
“That’s a five way, class A, piece of gear,”
he said.
 

Eddie acted impressed, though he wasn’t sure what that
meant.
 
“Are those tube mics?”

“That’s a Neuman U47 and those’re AKG C-12s.
 
Better microphones have yet to be
built.”
 
Big Bill put his arm around his
client.
 
“Eddie, I’m telling you, this is
going to be a helluva record.
 
Nobody in
town can reproduce the sound you’re gonna get in these rooms.”

Behind the main board, the control room floor was elevated
and appointed with two plush sofas and matching overstuffed chairs.
 
The lighting was recessed and the bulbs were
soothing blues and grays.
 
The main
studio was a large room with mic stands and a Steinway D grand off to the
side.
 
Surrounding that were five
isolation rooms, all with perfect line of sight throughout the studio.
 
Big Bill’s only
concession
to modern studio design were
the acoustic treatments for the walls and
ceiling.
 
They were fixed with all manner
of fabric wall systems, diffusers, and absorbers.
 
By anyone’s standards, the room had some of
the best acoustics in the city.
 
And for
the better part of $600,000, it had better.

Over the next fifteen minutes, the session players began
drifting in, greeting Bill, Eddie, and Megan.
 
They were all middle aged men, all members of AFM Local 257,
all
accomplished pros.
 
They’d all been in earlier in the day to get sound for their
instruments.
 
The engineer for the
session was a Music City
veteran by the name of Ed Simmons who, for reasons even Ed couldn’t articulate,
was known as Porky Vic.

As the session guys were setting up Eddie overheard
the pedal steel player complaining to the keyboard guy.
 
“Hell,” he said, “I don’t know anybody in
town who’s making any money these days.”
 
It was an oft-repeated phrase and explained why all these guys were
here, working ‘off-the-card.’
 
Not too
many years ago they’d all been making double scale along with fancy catered
meals and other union negotiated perks.
 
But with the country music industry in its post-Garth tailspin, that
sort of gig had dried up for all but a few.
 
And since all these guys still had bills to pay, it was easy to find
top-flight players willing to work cheap.

Megan had expected a bunch of cowboy boot wearing good ole
boys, but instead they looked like balding ex-hippies — short pants, baseball
caps, Hawaiian shirts, Birkenstocks.
 
Not
a cowboy boot in the bunch.
 
Half of them
were reasonably trim for guys roughly the age of her own father, the other half
could have benefited from some sit ups and a fashion consultant.

Big Bill was talking to the bass player.
 
They were looking at Bill’s newest piece of
old equipment.
 
“It’s got a tube boost
with a passive cut.
 
It’s a nice little
box,” he said.
 
“You know how piano gets
all washed out in the middle?”
 
He
pointed at the device.
 
“This thing fills
it in, makes it sound like it’s all around you.”

The bass player nodded solemnly.
 
“Beautiful.”

Before Nashville
entered the digital age, a producer could get in and out of the studio with a
complete album in a couple of days.
 
One
reason was the playback equipment and the listening environments in the old
control rooms weren’t that great, so they couldn’t hear all the blemishes.
 
They recorded their songs then listened to
them.
 
If they sounded good, they moved
on.
 
But with the equipment available
now, producers and artists — and the consumers — could hear even the tiniest
mistake.
 
Coupled with the introduction
of computerized systems like ProTools which were capable of correcting pitch
errors and other flaws, the technology led everyone to believe perfection was
attainable.
 
As a result, producers and
artists tended to spend more and more time trying to achieve that goal, which
in turn ran up the cost of making a record.
 
What used to take a couple of days and a few thousand dollars now took
weeks and cost closer to a quarter million, all of which was charged against
the artist’s royalties and, whenever possible, cross-collateralized.

But Big Bill thought he had a way to get around Nashville’s
current economic model.
 
His recording
plan was as bold as Eddie’s marketing scheme and, if it all played out, Big
Bill would rise once again to the top of Nashville’s
Power 100.
 
Looking out from the control
room, Big Bill felt the time was right.
 
He nudged Porky Vic then took his seat behind the console and clapped
his hands.
“Hey now!
 
What say we get this show on the
road!
”

As Eddie turned to go into the studio Megan surprised him by
taking his hand.
 
She leaned toward him
and kissed his cheek.
 
“For luck,” she
said, lingering close.
 
Eddie breathed in
her scent and let her wild red hair brush his face.
 
“Now go make me some music.”

Like everything else in life, a recording session can go
good or it can go bad.
 
When it goes bad,
it’s as ugly a thing as exists in nature.
 
But when it goes good, it’s like dreaming out loud.
 
Now, there’s no way to control which way a
session goes, otherwise they’d all go smooth as a new stretch of blacktop.
 
It’s all about the chemistry between the
people involved.
 
Fortunately, Big Bill
had a knack for picking people who would mesh.
 
Earlier in the week Bill had introduced Eddie to the musicians and
they’d hit it off.
 
They rehearsed
Eddie’s songs and were ready to do it, as Big Bill said, the old fashioned
way.
 
Instead of having everyone lay down
tracks individually and then putting them together in post production, they
would record the songs as a band would perform them live.
 
It was either risky or downright nuts,
depending on your point of view, and they could have wasted a lot of time
waiting until they got it right, but, as everyone would later agree, the force
was with them.