it slide and see what happens tomorrow? Where the hell are those files I was supposed to be sent two hours ago? Etcetera. And if it all goes to shit, basically, it all lands on me. So there’s not a ton of room for things to go too far sideways, or my life goes to shit.”
“Well, holy shit,” Taylor said. “I had no idea.” I studied her thoughtful, mildly amazed look. “Right about now, I’m feeling pretty bad about handing over all those edibles to the band…”
“Don’t,” I said. It had annoyed me, at first, but I also appreciated that she had that side of her that didn’t worry about the consequences of things like that too much. “This is rock ’n’ roll, Taylor. I’m sure the band appreciated the gift. And I’m definitely way more uptight about that kind of thing than I need to be.”
“But you need to be,” she said. “Basically, there’s a ton of pressure on you.”
“Sure, but there’s pressure on the band, too. They’re more the public face of this thing, and if the album is no good, it’s not the producer the fans and even the critics are looking to tear apart. Most people don’t listen to a song and say, ‘This producer sucks,’ or ‘The record label really got this wrong.’ They say, ‘This band sucks. I’m not buying their next album. I’m not going to the show.’”
“True.” She sipped her coffee, studying me. “So, how did you get into producing? Was it natural, after you’d already established yourself as a musician?” She smiled. “I’m sorry, I feel like I’m interviewing you for a music magazine. But I’m just so curious.”
“I don’t mind.” I really didn’t. I could talk to this girl all day.
If I didn’t eventually have work to do… I probably would.
“I think about that sometimes,” I told her. “There’s a part of me that feels like maybe this was always where I was meant to be. In the studio, rather than out onstage. I kinda hated touring, at least some aspects of it, but I loved it, too. And I miss it, sometimes. Other times I’m glad I’ll never have to do it again. It’s strange. I don’t regret anything I did professionally with Alive or other bands before that. But I belong in here, for sure. I think Gabe understood that better than I did, and earlier than I did. He always said I would’ve been the one who called Merry Clayton into the room on ‘Gimme Shelter,’ that kind of thing. Taking a good or great song we were writing and elevating it to outstanding, that was my thing. I found my place in the studio, so to speak, much easier than I did onstage. Gabe saw it, and he was always a huge voice for me producing our music. I didn’t produce Alive’s album, Stand and Fall. I probably wasn’t ready yet. Or at least, I thought I wasn’t. But now we’ll never know, will we?”
“That’s too bad,” she said gently.
“Yeah. I guess I always kind of regretted that part. That we didn’t give ourselves a chance, Gabe and I, to produce together. We planned to, but we just ran out of time.” I went silent for a minute, absorbing that. I didn’t like to think about it, and it had been a long while since I’d talked about it. “After Alive broke up, and I eventually got back to work… I went into producing because I guess I was trying to believe in whatever good shit he saw in me.”
“That’s amazing, Cary. He saw you as a producer even before you were one.”
“Yeah. He just knew the things I was capable of better than I did. I don’t know how he did that. He just always saw the best in me before I did, I guess.”
She smiled at me softly. “It’s probably out of line for me to say this. But… I think I love Gabe already.”
“He was pretty easy to love.”
Maybe that was why I had to fill every moment of my life with the thing I loved the most—music. Because without music, I just felt the emptiness in the recording studio, the void of him, when he wasn’t here.
He was supposed to be here, but he wasn’t.
That was the part that was always the hardest for me to accept.
Somehow, Taylor filled that void. It was hard to say why, since she wasn’t a musician. But when she was in the room, it didn’t feel