Instead of old man pants, he’s wearing jeans and an Animals band shirt. We stand there for a moment, sizing each other up. He hums to himself before he starts to speak.
“So you’re the black boy who wants to play rock music, hmm?” He pauses, and I can’t tell if he’s actually expecting an answer before continues. “That’s what they always say, isn’t it? They ask you why you don’t play soul or funk—like all we know how to do is be goddamned funky. Do I look funky to you?”
He gives the floor a jab with his cane and spreads his free hand wide, inviting me to look for any traces of funkiness. I give him another once-over before I shake my head and clear my throat. The woman holding the door is still standing there with a resigned kind of patience that tells me my stay here is going to be filled with a lot of James Stepper’s ranting.
“Didn’t think so. You don’t look very funky to me either. Come on inside, then.”
I step over the threshold, and the woman reaches to take my bag from me.
“You don’t have to—” I start to protest, but James cuts me off.
“Camilla’s been looking forward to having someone else in the house all week. She’s going to be spoiling you whether you like it or not. You better just give in to her now. She always gets her way in the end.”
“Yes I do, Mr. Stepper, but you don’t make it easy for me,” Camilla shoots back before turning to me. “Let me take it up to your room for you. What was your name again, honey?”
“Cole,” I answer, as I hand the bag over and lean my bass against the entryway’s wall.
“Nice to meet you, Cole. Don’t let him push you around too much, okay?”
The cane smacks the floor again. “I’ll push him around as much as I want, Camilla!”
She just rolls her eyes and laughs before heading up to the second floor.
“She’s a good woman,” James comments, as soon as she’s out of earshot.
I don’t know what else to do besides nod. He doesn’t invite me further into the house. Instead, he goes back to staring at me while humming under his breath. He doesn’t seem to give a shit about it being rude or uncomfortable; he just keeps staring and staring like he’s searching for something only he knows how to find.
His fingers tap the handle of his cane, and I suddenly find myself hoping he’ll see whatever it is he’s seeking. Somehow, I already want to be enough for him, even though I’m not sure what that would mean.
“I read your letter,” he tells me. His lined face doesn’t give anything away. “Didn’t think many people these days even knew about The Whirlpools. You knowRolling Stonecalled us ‘The Most Influential Rock Band You’ve Never Heard Of.’ Funny how things work out. Just goes to show no matter how high you’re flying today, give it a few decades, and you can end up rotting in the Miami suburbs with no one but a housekeeper to check in and make sure you’re still alive.”
Well, fuck. That just got depressing as all hell.
“Lesson number one, Canadian boy: this world you’re part of can turn on you in a second. The people singing your songs are only singing them because the industry tells them to. They’ll be singing someone else’s tomorrow. Doesn’t matter how good you are, and youaregood. I listened to your albums. I watched some videos of you playing. You’re good, but I didn’t invite you here because you’re good.”
He narrows his eyes and braces his free hand on the wall so he can lift the cane to point it at me.
“I invited you here because you can be much, much better.”
* * *
I barely leavethe house for the next week. It turns out James has one of the biggest record collections I’ve ever seen; there are bookshelves and milk crates crammed with LPs stacked all over the house. Even the tops of the kitchen cabinets are used to hold limited edition copies of albums from bands like The Clash and Ramones. Most of it’s classic rock, but I find some blues recordings from as far back as the 1940s as well as a crate-load of releases from within the past year.
We spend our afternoons and evenings pulling down records and playing them on the surround-sound system in his living room. He has personal stories about half the bands we listen to. It’s the craziest fucking thing. HemetLed Zeppelin. Tom Petty once askedhimfor an autograph.
I wouldn’t say Sherbrooke Station is classic rock influenced, but I’ve always had respect for the greats.Onclemade sure of that. Just picturing his face if he ever got his hands on a collection like the one James has is enough to make me crack a smile.
My stay here hasn’t been all fond reminiscences by the record player, though. In the mornings, James has me play for hours straight every single day. He’s the hard-ass to end all hard-asses when it comes to teaching. I don’t think I’ve even made it all the way through a song yet; he always waves his cane to stop me a few bars in and tell me I’m doing it wrong.
Then we start over.
And over.
And over.
I don’t know what he’s trying to get out of me, but he sure as shit hasn’t found it yet, and it’s driving us both insane. On our seventh day of lessons, I’m sitting in the music room upstairs imaging how satisfying it would feel to snap that damn cane in half as he waves it around for the millionth time.
“Wrong again, Canadian boy!” he shouts over the dying echoes coming from the amp. He’s got surprising lung capacity for someone his age. “Wrong, wrong, wrong. It needsmore. I keep telling you that. It’s dead. It’s flat. It’s like we’re sitting in a morgue.”
