Warren Moore III is an academic, although the photo might fool you. A professor of English literature at South Carolina’s Newberry College, he’s a medievalist and a great fan of Samuel Johnson. I don’t know how many of Dr.Johnson’s enthusiasts are also aficionados of garage band rock, but Warren is; his blog posts more often than not conclude with a link to a rousing recording by some group he’d like to rescue from obscurity. He’s also a performer—a drummer, God help him—in a group that has performed regularly on and off the Newberry campus.
But Warren’s here because he’s first and foremost a writer, and Down & Out Books has recently rescued his novel from obscurity, reprinting Broken Glass Waltzes after a previous publisher did nothing with or for it; it has since amassed a veritable slew of raves on Amazon. It’s a strong novel, making good use of his musical background, but I’m even more impressed with Warren as a writer of short stories. I first published him in Dark City Lights, a collection of New York stories; his was a brutal and chilling story set in a subway, and I later learned Warren had never ridden the subway, and in fact had never been to New York. His contributions to subsequent anthologies of mine, In Sunlight or in Shadow and Alive in Shape and Color, are outstanding, and he has a third art-based story coming up later this year in From Sea to Stormy Sea, inspired by an abstract landscape painted by his late father. And here he is, showing himself very much At Home in the Dark with this story narrated by a musician—and a drummer at that.
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ROUGH MIX by Warren Moore
I was first at practice, as usual. Okay – as always. But we had played a gig the weekend before, and I hadn’t set my kit up since we brought it back to the practice space. So I spread the rug on the concrete floor to keep the bass drum from sliding, unbuckled my cases, and put my kit back together before Gary and Josh showed up. I turned the jam box on – the local dad-rock station was playing “Turn the Page”, and the Metallica version is even shittier than the original. So I switched it off and got back to work.
I had already worked up a pretty good sweat by the time I had finished tuning my snare drum. Not surprising. The “practice space” was a corrugated steel self-storage unit at the edge of the county, where an old dragstrip had been. Everything was concrete and metal. Air conditioning wasn’t in the picture – we even had power strips and cords plugged into an overhead light fixture, and if a fire broke out while I was behind the set, I was screwed – I’d be crisp before I made it to the door. But it was cheap and far enough from anyone who cared that the cops didn’t bother us when we played late. We did have a minifridge, and I got a Gatorade out and stood outside, hoping for a breeze to break the stillness of the South Carolina summer.
But there wasn’t a breeze coming, and until the sun moved a bit farther west, I might as well duck back into the space, which at least had places to sit. There were a couple of camp chairs and a love seat by the PA board. I picked my way between Gary’s bass amp and Josh’s stack to one of the chairs – the thought of the cloth-covered sofa gave me the creeps. There wasn’t enough Resolve in the world to clean that thing.
It’s not like I’m an innocent or anything; Mandy and I had used the space as an impromptu fuckpad ourselves from time to time. But that had been some time back. As had Mandy.
We had gone out a few times the year before, after hooking up at a friend’s field party – we weren’t even playing it. But I had seen her silhouetted in the headlights, and when I got closer, her hair was between blonde and brown, almost amber. So I grabbed an extra beer, and we talked a while, and she told me about an out-of-the-way tattoo, and well, you know.
And it was good for a while – really good, thinking-about-a-ring good, but then it just seemed to run out of gas. I didn’t know why, and she said she didn’t either, and it just kind of hung there, and I didn’t know what to say or do, so I let her go. And a few months after that, she started showing up at our gigs again, but it wasn’t until one night when I saw her between sets with Josh’s arm around her waist and her hand in his back pocket that I figured things out.
I was pissed – I mean, it’s not like this was some pass-along fuck from a one-nighter at the Brass Ass or something. I thought about quitting, but I liked Gary, and I was the one who started the band in the first place. Then I thought about firing Josh, but then I’d just be the guy who broke up a band over a girl. And even though Josh was an asshole, he could play, and he drew an audience. As I had learned. We had even started to get a little interest from A & R guys at a couple of labels. I wasn’t going to just walk away and leave that for him. I tried to shake the thoughts out of my head and got back to work.
The microphone stands were already set up, but I got the mics placed. Each one had colored tape on it so we’d know whose it was. I get blue, Gary gets red, and I was putting Josh’s mic with the yellow tape into its cradle when I heard a car roll up. It was Gary’s van, and he swung out of the driver’s door and banged on the sliding door. “Come on, you guys!”
I heard Josh’s voice: “Fuck off.” And I heard Mandy’s giggle. But they got out of the van and we all went back inside. Josh was working a rockabilly look today – a black, western-style shirt with fake mother-of-pearl buttons, along with tight jeans and boots. It was gonna be hot as hell when we got going, but I knew he’d make it look good. Some people can just do that. Then there’s me. I could drop a grand on wardrobe, but I’m still gonna look like Joe Shit the Rag Man. Mandy was wearing a pale blue tank-top and white denim shorts, and she scrunched herself into a corner of the love seat. Our eyes met for a moment, but then she looked away, back toward Josh.
Josh was talking to Gary about a new pickup he had installed in his Strat – he had changed one that came from the factory for something called a humbucker. I tried to look interested, but that wasn’t really my territory. Some guitarists are like custom car guys or mad scientists – they just like to take things apart and monkey with them. Guitars, amps; rewire this, replace it with that. Drums are easier, and it’s just as well – I’m no tech guy. The other guys barely trust me to roll up the cables when we’re loading in or out.
In fact, that was why Josh started putting tape on the microphones. I didn’t sing enough to need anything fancy, but he had hotrodded his and Gary’s mics, and he was really particular about it. I told him once that I couldn’t really hear a difference, and he got salty about it, “Oh, the fucking drummer doesn’t hear the difference.” Now I’m pretty sure the issue wasn’t me as much as it was that we were playing in a steel shed, but some folks are like that.
Besides, we – drummers, that is – get a lot of that kind of shit. There are a million drummer jokes out there, but they all boil down to this one: “What does it mean when the drummer drools from both corners of his mouth? The stage is level.” You get used to it, and you know people don’t really mean it, but people kind of take you for granted. “Would all the musicians – and the drummer – report to the stage?” Stuff like that. But you don’t want to be an asshole about it, so you just laugh it off…
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ROUGH MIX by Warren Moore is just one of 17 terrific stories in At Home in the Dark. NB: Ebook and paperback editions are on sale now for immediate delivery. DON’T try to order the hardcover, as it’s sold out at the publisher, and while Amazon is still taking orders they’ll be unable to deliver.
