Alex Bledsoe - Wisp of a Thing

Then Page, along with the drummer and upright bass player, joined in on the final verse. The addition of these male voices added a last, sepulchral aura to the song.

The other musicians built to a crescendo, then dropped off sharply, leaving only the long, wailing violin note quivering in the silence. Page snapped it off like a gunshot, and there was a moment of total, dead silence before the crowd began applauding and whooping its appreciation.

Rob was flabbergasted. The music being played here, by these people, was on a par with the best stuff he’d heard anywhere. It was the kind of music he wanted to play, the cosmic antithesis of the shallow, technique-oriented reality show crap that had inundated him. These were world-class players, and here they were in a barn in the middle of the Smoky Mountains playing for the sheer hell of it.

Below him, a big man packed into a too-small lawn chair looked up at Rob and smiled. “Want a beer?” he said, offering a can.

Remembering his promise, Rob shook his head. “No, thanks. Makes me act stupid.”

“Drink is the curse of the workin’ man,” he said. “Course, work is the curse of the drinking man.”

“And drink is the work of the cursing man?” Rob deadpanned. The big man howled in laughter, until Bliss’s voice again came through the speakers.

“Thanks, y’all. I got kind of a surprise of my own for you, a friend of mine from the flatlands who’s a heckuva picker. Rob, come on down. Rob Quillen, ladies and gentlemen!”

Rob hopped off the hay bleachers and followed Bliss’s trail to the stage. If anyone recognized him, it didn’t interfere with their enthusiasm; he saw no whispered asides or pointing fingers. Amazingly, he also felt no qualms, just an eagerness to join these players.

A teenage boy, shirtless beneath overalls and sporting a scraggly soul patch, stepped in front of him just before he reached his instrument. “I think you’ll be wanting to use this instead.” He held up an electric guitar.

Rob said, “No, I’ve got my own.”

The boy smiled. “You can’t rock the hills with a whisper, son.”

Rob took the instrument to avoid any trouble, but as he put the strap over his head, he felt more complete than he had in months. The instrument felt amazing in his hands, perfectly balanced and as comfortable as if he’d been playing it for years. It was a first-generation Telecaster Esquire, with the finish worn in places by years of playing. He looked for a cord to plug into the jack, then realized there was a wireless unit taped to the strap. The boy who’d given him the ax turned on an amplifier, which buzzed and chirped when Rob touched the strings. He gave Rob a thumbs-up, then disappeared into the crowd.

Rob stepped onstage next to Bliss and Page, grinning. “What are we playing?”

The drummer pointed a stick at him. “One of yours.”

“Mine? You don’t know any of—”

“Tell us the changes, we’ll be fine,” one of the others assured him. It was a woman in her thirties, with tight jeans and short hair. Rob swore she hadn’t been there a moment ago, but now she was, holding an electric bass.

At once he knew exactly what song to play, one that was musically simple enough the band could easily get it and run with it. “Changes are one-three-five, Bo Diddley style.”

A wiry man with leathery skin and an eye patch carried a banjo onstage. “Care if I join in?”

“You ever played Chuck Berry on that thing?” Rob asked.

“Once. Down in Louisiana, close to New Orleans.”

“Hop onboard, then. Everybody else clear?”

They all nodded as if playing a brand-new song off the tops of their heads happened every day.

Rob stepped to the microphone. “I’d like to thank everyone for making me feel so welcome. This is one of my own songs; hope you like it.”

He began to play, and the others listened as he strummed the first stanza in full before he began to sing:

The drummer caught the beat after the first few bars, and then the bassist and one-eyed banjo picker followed. After only the briefest disharmony, they sounded like they’d played the song a thousand times. Grinning like an idiot, Rob charged into the chorus.

When he paused after the chorus, Page contributed a long, heartrending fiddle riff that caught him so by surprise that he almost missed the cue to begin singing again.

This time he nodded for Bliss to harmonize with him on the chorus, and she did, taking the high end and adding just enough Joplin-y growl to really accent the song’s grit. She sang as if she could read his mind.

Rob jumped into the air, came down with his feet spread wide and tore into a solo. He wasn’t a show-off, he believed in sacrificing everything for the sake of the overall song, but this time the music burned out of him. He felt sweat run down his cheeks and nose as he huddled over his guitar, and he finished with a flourish and a full 360 spin. The reaction was ecstatic.

The banjo player stepped forward and took the next solo. It brought a spontaneous cheer from the crowd; Rob couldn’t blame them.

When he stepped to the microphone again, he decided to really see how good these guys were at following him.

“Wait a minute!” he cried, and waved his arm for the band to stop. They did, right on cue, except for the steady rumble of the bass and the tapping on the drummer’s hi-hat, just as Rob imagined it.

The crowd, smiling and clapping, waited to see what he’d say. He felt as if they hung on his every word, that he could do no wrong, and that the musicians behind him would accurately anticipate his every move, on a song they’d never even heard before. He never wanted this moment to end.

“You folks would call this a love song, wouldn’t you?” he asked the crowd, and was rewarded with cheers. “Well, I’ve learned a lot about love songs over the past couple of days. This song used to have a happy ending, where the guy runs off with the girl, but that doesn’t seem right, does it?”

The crowd booed and shouted “No!” and “Uh-uh!”

“Yeah, I agree. I mean, the guy is cheating on his wife, and in your love songs, he wouldn’t get away with that, would he? So I’ve kinda made up a new verse just now, to end it differently. Tell me what you think.”

He turned to the band and shouted a four-count before launching into the final verse.