Page 86 of Crimson Desires

Apparently, someone had taken a video of our impromptu encore performance in Charlotte and uploaded it to the internet. Since then, the song had blown up online—quickly becoming the most-watched Wicked Crimson song on YouTube.

Believe me, I was grateful for the free publicity. But I couldn’t help but laugh when I realized that contrary to all my father’s conventional wisdom about music marketing, the thing that had worked best for us was organic spontaneity.

After Aster had received no press. No pre-release hype. No marketing.

And yet, it was on track to dethroning some of my old pop hits.

When Ava realized that the songwas the very definition of lightning in a bottle, she insisted on getting us into the studio as fast as humanly possible. The guys and I would be sacrificing one of our few days off, but none of us minded. Not only was this session almost guaranteed to pay off—the guys and I were always psyched to be in the studio.

Work a job you love, you know?

Ava was a bit worried that she wouldn’t be able to find us a place to record, and was even prepared to set up an impromptu studio in the tour bus, but thankfully, Nashville offered a plethora of small studios that could be booked on short notice.

I’d wanted Aster to sit in for the session—to finally hear the song that I’d written for her—but it was her day off too, and she’d planned an outing with some of the other members of the crew.

“Chin up, Jack,” Kane said as we set up our gear in the small studio space. “She’ll hear it eventually.”

“And when she does, it won’t have been ruined by repetition,” Damien added. He screwed on his cymbals. Then, without warning, he struck them.

Axel jolted. “Dude! Warn us next time.”

“Never have, never will,” Damien said. He went to strike the cymbal again. Axel braced himself for the noise, but at the last second, Damien stopped himself.

“I’m going to strangle you, man,” Axel said, red-faced at having been faked out.

Ava’s voice came over the studio speakers. “Not until we track his drums, you aren’t.”

Damien held his sticks above his head victoriously. “Immunity!”

“Temporary immunity,” Ava corrected.

I took a seat on the brown leather couch at the back of the studio. I knew the razzing was all in good fun, but deep down, I could tell that we were all becoming a bit fatigued from the tour. I imagined that as soon as we finished our last few shows and returned to California, we’d all probably hole ourselves up in our houses like antisocial hermits to recoup before hitting the studio to record our album.

“Alright. We’re going to start with guitars. Then, we’ll track drums and vocals. Sound good, everybody?” I looked at Ava through the glass separating the mixing room and the studio. She seemed completely at ease; her fingers already settled on the soundboard’s faders.

We gave Ava a thumbs-up.

She grinned. “Great. Then let’s record a fucking song.”

***

After Aster was deceptively simple.

Stripped-back songs like this one always felt harder to produce than songs with more complex instrumentation. When you had a fuller backing track—more guitars, more synths, more bass—concealing tiny imperfections was a cinch.

Many of Wicked Crimson’s songs were like that: loud, powerful, and overstimulating. But this song wasn’t.

Every time Axel missed his down-strum by an eighth of a beat, Ava made him stop and re-track his part again. Kane’s bass buzzing, Zephyr accidentally whispering “fuck” when he’d struck a note wrong, Damien adding a fill that was too intense... they were all tiny infractions that we’d otherwise find a way to cover up.

But not this time.

Part of the issue was that we usually had more time to practice our songs before recording them. Kane was still working on modifying his bass line as he was recording it.

Even though the mistakes were eating at our studio time like caterpillars chomping away at leaves, I didn’t express my frustration. As Wicked Crimson’s lead singer, I had both the easiest and hardest job of us all.

I didn’t have to memorize any difficult riffs or rhythms—but on the flip side, I knew that my voice was going to be the first thing people focused on when they heard the song.

Of course, none of my bandmates saw it that way.

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