First ten pages of my as-yet-unpublished novel, DAWN. www.johnyohe.com
— Dude, wanna start a band?
She was new our senior year and not the kind of girl most people would notice in high school, though I had. Her locker had magazine cutouts of Iron Maiden and Black Sabbath and bands I didn’t even know. No white blouses with bras showing, no dresses, ever, no make up, no hairspray. In fact, she looked like me: jeans and a black band t-shirts with pentagrams and upsidedown crosses and ümlauts over vowels. Her Chuck Taylors purple, mine black, but both of us in jean jackets, but no more than that, because even though we lived in Michigan, metalheads did not wear more than a jean jacket, even in blizzard. That would not be cool. Even our hair was mostly the same too: shoulder-length brown, though she had bangs.
She made eye contact. And smiled. — You play bass, right?
I nodded and finally managed, — Yeah.
— Yeah dude, I seen you at a party once. You opened up for Die Fast that one time.
I put my history book in my locker and nodded again. — Yeah.
She pointed at her chest. — I’m a singer.
I looked at her chest, then looked away quickly so she wouldn’t see I was staring at her chest. — Oh.
Despite my monosyllableism, she kept talking to me. — You’re into metal, right?
I was wearing my Iron Maiden t-shirt, so that was kind of obvious, but for a third time, I said, — Yeah.
Bodies streamed past us, laughing and yelling. Someone bumped into me. I received inspiration from somewhere, and was able to ask, — What kind of stuff are you into?
She did what I later learned was her kinda-laugh, more like a snicker. — Dude, I mean, lots of stuff. I mean like, yeah, Iron Maiden. Are you like into Venom? Or Celtic Frost?
Wow, those were obscure European death metal bands that I knew of, and had maybe heard at some point, but I was like, — Yeah.
— You know anybody that’s into stuff like that? Like a drummer and a guitar player and shit?
— I think so, yeah.
— Well let me give you my number and maybe we can get something together.
The halls had emptied. She scribbled out something in a notebook and tore out the whole page, which is how I learned her name: Dawn.
I knew some social etiquette to at least look at her and say, — My name’s John.
She smiled. — Yeah dude, I know who you are!
— Do you have like a PA?
— Nah dude, do you?
— No but we could maybe play at my house.
The bell for sixth period rang. We should have already been in class. — Cool dude! Well give me a call tonight or sometime and we can talk about it! Later dude!
She gave me a wave and walked off.
A girl had given me her number. But, she was serious, she actually was a singer, or wanted to be, and was just trying to get in a band, talking to me just as a musician, not a boy she was attracted to — wanting me to take her seriously and not try to get in her pants. Still, I didn’t know that it was generally known by anyone in my high school that I was a musician, much less a bass player. At least she recognized my existence, I though. Nobody cares about bass players.
I’d been in bands since I was fourteen, playing parties, and one-set shows opening for ‘real’, older bands, in bars or in rented halls around Jackson. I’d always been the young one, the guys in my bands who’d gone to Jackson High School were a couple years older than me. Any other friends I had back then were Dungeons & Dragons nerds I’d played with back in middle school, though we, or I, had grown out of that, and they’d drifted into Drama Club.
I didn’t think anyone ever noticed me: I didn’t go out, I didn’t drink, not back then, not at first. I just stayed at home and played my bass, and worked part-time Friday Saturday Sunday at a party store up the road.
Dawn lived over on the east side, which in Jackson was the ‘bad’ side of town, where the blacks and poor whites lived (though each in their separate areas, of course). We didn’t have any of the same classes: my mom made sure I took college-prep classes, which was fine, they were mostly as easy as showing up. Dawn was in the ‘regular’ classes, meaning all those who didn’t plan on college, or couldn’t conceive of it, the kinds where all the teachers were alcoholic smokers and fell asleep in classes.
High school a joke anyways, something to get through, sleep through. For other kids it was the high point of their lives, which is sad, though they had friends, groups, cliques to belong to, because being in orchestra or band or marching band or drama club or the football team or the basketball team or the girls volleyball team gave them a purpose and a tribe and a reason to exclude others. Those were all the people going to college. For the rest of us, high school was nothing but something to put on your McDonald’s application. I was technically from a middle class family, my dad still was anyways, with my mom barely earning enough to survive while she taught part-time at two different community colleges. Without my dad’s child support money she couldn’t have been able to keep the house.
One of the blessings of having a middle class family, at least when I was younger, was having books around the house. My mom read a lot, and even my dad used to before he settled into watching tv all the time. I started off reading comic books, and then Dungeons & Dragons lead into fantasy and science fiction books, so that by high school, a mythology class or an English class reading Julius Caeser was at least vaguely interesting. Homework was never a big deal if you were content with getting Bs and Cs. Maybe somehow somewhere if I’d been asked to play in the orchestra, a big double bass or the cello, life would have been different, but I got an electric bass instead, after seeing pictures in Hit Parader magazine of bass players, and basses, which were bigger, with those thick strings, and the low evil percussive sound. My dad bought me a cheap one, with an amp, for my thirteenth birthday and I was playing in bands almost immediately because bass players are always in short supply
In the meantime, I floated though classes, eating a Snickers bar and Pepsi for lunch every day, everyone in lunch hall sitting with the same crowd they’d been sitting with since elementary school: all the black kids at their own tables, the middle class popular preppy white kids at others, the band nerds and drama nerds together. My old friends the Dungeons & Dragons crowd, who I still said hi to. I sat with the metalheads, middle-class and dirtbag, with a few girls who may or may not have been metalheads — hard to tell since girls adapted to whatever boy they were with.
After school, before I had my bass, I’d come home and watch tv, afternoon cartoons like G.I. Joe (in love with Lady Jane) or old Starblazers reruns off Channel 41 out of Kalamazoo, or the Monster Week Godzilla movies on Channel 7 out of Detroit, then dinner with or without my mom, usually pizza she’d bring home on the way back from Lansing or making myself spaghetti, watching MASH reruns, then retreat to my room to read science fiction and fantasy books, or X-Men and Daredevil comic books, jerking off to my dad’s Penthouse magazines. Once I got my bass, I started reading Guitar and Guitar Player magazines, figuring out basic bass lines, like “Paranoid” by Black Sabbath, getting a compendium of tablature for the first four Iron Maiden albums, for guitar, but figuring out, gradually, the bass lines from that. Listening to and playing with albums, two or three a night after a while, having them memorized and learning others, like Dio and Kill ’em All by Metallica when it came out, including Cliff Burton’s bass solo “Breaking Teeth.” Still watching tv sometimes, a lot of times, but sitting with my bass noodling, picking up commercial jinglie melodies just because. Still reading at night, still jerking off to glossy older confident women who would smile at me unlike the girls at school.
I called Dawn that night. My mom was gone, teaching a class up at Lansing Community College. She taught part-time at both LCC and JCC. My sister had moved out two years ago to live with my dad and stepmom, so I usually had the house to myself. Fortunately Dawn answered the phone and not, like, her mom or something, where I would have had to be embarrassed (or even more embarrassed than I already was) to ask for her. — Hey dude, what’s up? Thanks for calling.
We did the usual back-and-forth between musicians, trying to see what was in the middle of our Venn Diagram. You like Iron Maiden? Yeah dude they’re cool. You like Judas Priest? They’re alright. Oh dude, have you heard their Unleased In The East album? “Victim of Changes,” dude. Metallica? Ride The Lightning, dude.
None of the bands we talked about had female singers, much less female musicians. The most I could think of was Joan Jett, but she wasn’t quite metal, more like rock with a side of punk, and Dawn was like, — Dude, I mean, she’s cool, but that’s not what I’m into.
Usual procedure was to get a few cover songs together, something the singer could pull off, and then maybe try originals, so I was trying to get a possible list I could tell other guys we could do. — So what kind of songs would you want to sing? Like, do you know any Metallica? Or do you like Dio?
— Dude, I actually love Dio, but I really want to do originals. I’ve been writing stuff, lyrics, like in my journal.
— Cool. Like what kind of style is it? Is it like rock or —
— Metal! I want to do heavy shit!
— So like Slayer?
— Maybe. But not so super fast maybe.
— Like not the chainsaw guitar?
— Maybe dude. I don’t know. Let’s see what happens. You know anybody?
I actually did. This really good guitar player that I’d been in a band with, briefly: Larry. And there was this drummer, Donny, maybe the best in Jackson. He was older, but I didn’t think he was playing with anybody right then.
— Cool dude. What about gigs? Can you get us gigs? Not parties, but like clubs? Like Detroit or something?
— Um, yeah.
I wasn’t sure about that, but something about her enthusiasm made me want to say yes. Surely it was possible. I wanted to make her happy.
The hard part was going to be getting Larry and Donny to go along with having a girl singer. I called Larry first.
— A girl?! No way! What are we gonna do, play fucking Heart?
— Dude she’s like into fucking Celtic Frost and shit.
— No way.
— Way. Plus she wants to do originals.
— Can she sing?
— Um. yeah. She’s a girl, most girls can sing decent.
— Grr. Alright. What songs are we gonna do?
— I don’t know, she wants to do originals. She likes Metallica, maybe we could do “Creeping Death” or “For Whom The Bell Tolls.” She likes Dio too.
— Fuck Dio.
— Larry, I know you know “The Last In Line.”
— Alright….
Donny had a large Tama kit, black, with double bass drums, and could actually play double-bass parts in songs. I never knew him through school, I think he went to East Jackson anyways, just from seeing him in bands in places kids under eighteen could get into, but I knew he’d played in cover bands too, so had made money as a musician. I actually didn’t have his number, I had to call an older bandmember to get another guitarist’s number, to get Donny’s, but I finally did. I wasn’t even sure he’d remember me, but he did. — Oh yeah dude, you’re that good bass player. Quick fingers. Hey man, what’s happening?
— Well, I was wondering if you might want to play in a band I’m getting together.
— Maybe, man. Who else you got?
— Remember Larry? Guitarist?
— That mexican guy? Yeah I think so. He’s good.
— Yeah, and so there’s this girl I go to school with, Dawn. She’s the singer.
— A chick? I’m not really into Pat Benatar or anything like that.
— No, she says she’s into Metallica and Judas Priest. And like, Celtic Frost.
— Really? How old is she?
— I think she’s like my age, so like seventeen. How old are you anyways?
He laughed. — Twenty-two. I’m an old man!
Actually, he looked older. The drugs and booze.
— I don’t know, man. Yeah, I’ll try it. You got a place to play?
— Yeah, my basement. Hey do you happen to have a PA?
He did, though it was a shitty Radio Shack special, the kind more for a church auction or something, hooked up to an old refrigerator thing, like a black couch with speakers. One microphone, no mic stand, with a mic chord that shorted out sometimes. So, a typical garage band set-up.
I had to do a round of calls to everyone, setting up a practice for that next Saturday afternoon. It was cool with my mom. She liked me having friends over. She liked that I even had friends, since I spent so much time alone. She said she’d be gone all day, doing something with some of her friends.
My basement musty and dirty. Whoever originally built it had some plan to make it a recreation area, with a fireplace, and a bar, like to serve drinks at. But Michigan is a peninsula surrounded by the Great Lakes, with lakes and rivers all over, so basically a big swamp, and most winters it sometimes flooded about an inch of water. But in the warmer months it was a large enough space to set up drums and amps. The cement floor and wood-panel walls weren’t the best for sound-proofing, and the neighbors could hear us, though we never got any complaints. Not that we would have heard the phone or even anyone knocking on the door.
Larry didn’t have a ride, didn’t have a license as far as I knew, so Donny picked him up, and we helped unload Donny’s drums and the PA from his van while he set them up in the basement. Dawn arrived right on time. Some guy who I later learned was one of her brothers dropped her off, but he didn’t stay. I introduced her. Neither one of the guys shook her hand or anything, busy noodling on their instruments but they said hey (or, what’s up). I gotta admit, I was impressed that she’d come alone to a strange house with three dudes she didn’t know. I handed her the mic. She smiled and lowered her mouth to it. — Check check. I don’t hear anything, dude.
I checked it and turned on the on switch. Larry rolled his eyes and shook his head, looking over at Donny.
— Check check! Oh, there I am.
High-pitched feedback screamed through the speakers.
She held the mic away from her, which caused it to feed back more. — Fuck dude!
I turned the master volume down and had her move away from the speakers. From there I adjusted the levels, though basically just cranked it as loud as it would go, and as long as she didn’t stand right in front of the leather refrigerator it didn’t feedback. Much.
I’d already told her about the three cover songs we all kind of knew, that we’d try. I’m not sure she was exactly happy with that, but she had brought a notebook and had the lyrics written out. I suggested we try “The Last In Line,” the Dio song, because it seemed easiest, the slowest and the least amount of parts. Larry started out the clean guitar intro and Dawn came in, We’re a ship without a storm / cold without a warm / light inside the darkness that it means, yeah.
The three of us looked at each other, eyebrows raised. She could sing! And when the heavy part started, when the drums and bass come in, and there’s that throaty Dio growl, she did that too. And when the verse came in, she belted it out: We’re off the witch! / We may never never never come home! /But the magic that we feel is worth a lifetime!
Singing, but with power. Donny was smiling and I knew even Larry was into it because even though he always mostly just stared at the floor, I saw his head bob.
Dawn occasionally consulted the lyrics, but mostly just stared into air, or the floor, facing us so the four of us formed a circle. I caught her eye though and smiled and she smiled back. — We’re the last in line! See how we shine!
We got through it on the first go, the magic of good musicians getting together, when everyone has their shit together. After we finished, Donny put his sticks down and clapped, smiling at Dawn. — Right on! Good job on the vocals!
Dawn beaming. — Dudes, that was so cool!
Larry only joked when he was having a really good time, he was usually shy like me. But he did his jokey radio DJ voice. — Would you like to try some…Metallica?
We went into “For Whom The Bell Tolls,” which I liked because there’s a bass solo in the beginning. It was good to play with Donny, he was solid. Again, Dawn belted it out. Singing, but almost yelling too. We got through that one pretty much, a couple flubs. Then we ripped through another Metallica song, “Creeping Death,” though without another microphone I couldn’t help out with the “Die Die Die” backup vocals in the middle section.
After that, I was kind of wondering what we’d do, if we’d go through the three songs again, or if we could figure out if we all knew any other songs, but Dawn actually spoke up, into the mic to get over Donny’s cybal crashes. — You dudes got any original stuff? Like guitar parts or something?
I looked at Larry. He shrugged. We had some stuff from our previous band, a couple riffs thrown together. He started the main riff, an evil doomy thing in E once through. Donny listened, bobbing his head, looked at me, and we came in the next time around. Repeated that part four times, then Larry and I nodded to each other and moved into the second part, in F#. Dawn nodding along, notebook open in her left hand. She looked at me to make sure we were coming back to the E part and when we did, she sang. Again, more on the power side, belting it out, though not quite all monotone either. I don’t know what the lyrics were, but by the F# part she was singing, screaming really, some kind of chorus, repeating the words love is dark! / love is dark! / love is dark!
I knew Larry was going to go into a solo on the third time through the E part so, looking at Donny, I changed it and added a new part, still starting in E, but laying down an eight-note groove, a chord progression, and Donny changed up the drum groove a little. Out of nowhere, while Larry was wailing, Dawn came in with her own wail. No words, just a high-pitched scream. It was fucking cool. After the fourth time through that progression I looked at Donny and pushed my bass neck down to hopefully signal to stop, which we did, him ringing the symbols and me letting the low E string ring. When Larry and Dawn had finished their improv squeals, underneath the noise, I started up the first E riff again, two times through, then Donny and Larry came back in. Two more times through and Dawn came back in with another verse, or maybe repeating the first verse again, didn’t matter. After the last chorus we kind of flubbed, not knowing how to really end it, but we were excited! We’d written an original song!
Larry tended to talk out of the side of his mouth when he wanted to come off as joking but was kind of serious. — It needs more parts.
Dawn kept talking into the mic. — Yeah dudes, I have this other little section of words.
Donny had the idea to change up the tempo after the second chorus, to break it down into a ‘dum-dump, dum-dump’ war drum kind of part, the time when the mosh pit would start in the audience. Then go into the E solo part. We tried that, and after a couple tries figured out how long we needed to go to fit Dawn’s lyrics in there, which worked really well.
We worked that song out, and with a half hour left (we’d said we’d play for two hours) we played the three cover songs again. It was a fucking good practice.
While Donny and Larry started breaking down the equipment and carrying it up, I took Dawn up to the kitchen so she could call her brother to come pick her up. After she hung up, she gave me the devil’s horn fist-with-two fingers-extended salute. — Dude, that fucking rocked!
— Dawn, you were great.
— Thanks! It just felt right, you know?
I finished helping Donny get his stuff in his van. He gave Dawn a fist bump. — Right on. That was cool.
We arranged to have another practice, same time, same place, and to bring more parts, for more songs. I said I’d call everyone later in the week.
Donny and Larry took off with a honk. I waited out in the driveway with Dawn for her brother to come. — So you’ve got more lyrics?
— Yeah dude, I write poetry all the time.
She opened her notebook and flipped through pages of words and words scribbled out in chicken scratch, along with some of demons or devils.
Her brother showed up. She smiled at me one last time. — Thanks John! This was awesome. Can’t wait to do it next week! See ya at school!
That next Monday she found me in the halls. — Dude! How long you think before we could play a gig somewhere?
— Um, well, we’d need to get maybe forty-five minutes to an hour of stuff, to maybe open up for some one. I’m not sure if there’s any metal nights going on in Jackson anytime soon.
— Dude, fuck Jackson. I wanna play Detroit. Can you get us a gig in Detroit?
— Um, I think so. Let’s make sure we’re ready.
— Dude, I’m so ready. I was writing some more lyrics last night.
I would see her at school, between classes. We didn’t have the same lunch, and she would just leave and/or skip sometimes. When we did see each other, we’d talk about the band, or the next practice. I’d ask what other covers she might want to do, though she was always, always, more interested in just doing original stuff. I called her a couple nights, Larry and Donny too, making sure everyone could still make it, but with her just to talk.
Next practice, we warmed up with the cover songs we knew, then worked our way through “Love Is Dark,” first trying it straight off, but flubbing it, and stopping and talking it through, but then getting it. I’d talked her into trying another cover, and she’d finally chosen another Dio song, “Holy Diver,” which she sang great on. Holy Diver, you’ve been down too long in the midnight sea / oh what’s becoming of me?
But as soon as we’d tried it once, Dawn was like, — What kinds of stuff do you guys got? Like, riffs?
Larry did have some, and I had an Iron Maiden-ish solo section, with a galloping bass line. Donny was happy because, the song worked great with a drum intro, which was actually Dawn’s idea. That one was called, “Kill Love.” Dawn just screaming those two words over and over for the chorus. Larry raised his eyebrows and nodded the first time she did that, with Donny’s double-bass going underneath. Pretty fucking powerful, and I think even then I realized that this was the female perspective, or a female perspective on metal. I don’t think a guy, or ‘dude,’ would ever write an angry metal song about killing love, or about love, period.
We ran through everything a second time. At that point, the band already felt like a step up, I think for everybody. Maybe not for Donny, but the last band Larry and I had been in had practices more days a week and got through less songs, if we even had a singer, which mostly we didn’t. It was a combination of getting good musicians together and something else, I think. Having a singer, a good one. A motivated one. Dawn made us feel more real.
And at the end, Dawn talked to me still speaking into the mic. — Dude, I want to play a show! A gig!
Donny and Larry both nodded. We had five songs, maybe six. That was enough though. It was up to me.
Bio
Born in Puerto Rico, John Yohe grew up in Michigan, spent years in Oregon, and now lives in Colorado. He has worked as a wildland firefighter, bike messenger, wilderness ranger and fire lookout. Fiction Editor for Deep Wild Journal. www.johnyohe.com
