Run, Rose, Run(45)
And you’re the baffling one, she almost added. Last night Ruthanna had revealed an unimaginable grief, and now here she was, ready to work.
AnnieLee stumbled into the bathroom and turned on the shower, as hot as it would go. She guessed she was a little like that, too.
After a quick breakfast of scrambled eggs and an English muffin, AnnieLee descended to the studio, where the band was already gathered. Everyone was full of congratulations for AnnieLee; they’d all heard her song on WATC.
“Maybe just a little too often,” Stan admitted. “No offense. But that thing’s an earworm.”
“That’s a good thing, though, isn’t it?” AnnieLee laughed, but then she grew serious. “I couldn’t have done any of it without you,” she said. She glanced over at Ethan, who was tuning his guitar. Their eyes met and held until AnnieLee flushed and looked away. “Thank you for playing with me, you guys,” AnnieLee said, suddenly too moved to look at any of them. “I can’t tell you how grateful and honored I am. And I’m so happy to be here working with you again.”
Ruthanna’s voice came through the control room speakers. “Can we get started now? Or do we need to hold hands and have a dang gratitude circle? Maybe light a candle and write some thank-you notes?”
AnnieLee flushed again, but she wasn’t quite done yet. “I’m grateful to you, too, Ruthanna,” she called, and she thought she heard Ruthanna give a kind of harrumph of acknowledgment. “Okay,” AnnieLee said. “Now I’m ready to work.”
“So you better give us the tune, then,” Ethan said. “What are we learning today?”
Elrodd offered up a drumroll and Donna tossed off a goofy little walking bass line—they were all eager to get started. But AnnieLee didn’t answer because she didn’t actually know. Instead, she brought out a canvas tote bag and turned it upside down. Sheets of notebook paper, bar coasters, napkins, and Post-its went fluttering down to the floor, all of them covered with AnnieLee’s neat, tiny handwriting.
“What the hell is that?” Ruthanna demanded.
“Songs,” AnnieLee said simply. “Y’all want to help me pick some out?”
This was not how things were done, Ruthanna informed them as she came barreling out of the control room. This was disorganized and indecisive, not to mention downright messy, and in case AnnieLee hadn’t noticed, there wasn’t a speck of dust in the whole 9,312 square feet of Ruthanna’s house, and if AnnieLee didn’t clean up those papers right quick she’d find out she wasn’t too grown-up to have her skinny little fanny tanned.
AnnieLee let Ruthanna’s tirade wash over her. She wanted the musicians to find lines that spoke to them. She’d usually jotted down the chords along with the lyrics, so even a glance at a scrap of paper could give them a sense of what the song might become.
Donna squinted at the margins of a bar coaster. “I like the look of this one,” she said, and so AnnieLee played it for her while everyone listened carefully, critically.
Elrodd wanted something with a driving drumbeat, almost like a train, he said, and Ethan admitted he wouldn’t mind something with a spot for a hot-shit guitar solo. By midmorning, after much discussion and many friendly arguments, they’d settled on five new songs to record.
After that they met every day, early, and they worked until dinner; sometimes they’d work again afterward. “Woman Up (and Take It Like a Man)” took them three days to get right; “Dark Night, Bright Future” took less than eight hours.
“Does that mean it keeps getting easier?” AnnieLee said to Ethan as they walked through Ruthanna’s garden on one of their breaks.
“No,” Ethan said, “it just means we were lucky that time.”
After a couple of weeks, they had six songs ready to be mastered, which was enough for an EP. And that final night, after ten hours in the studio, Ruthanna, Ethan, and AnnieLee celebrated with take-out pizza by the pool. AnnieLee was barefoot, swinging her legs in the chilly water, while Ethan lounged on the deck with a beer.
Ruthanna, though, paced back and forth along the deep end. She was talking to Jack, her former manager, and AnnieLee could hear the laughter in her voice. She’d never met him, but Ethan said he was salt of the earth. “Played a killer slide, too, before he decided to become a suit.”
AnnieLee lay back so that she was staring up at the evening sky as swifts darted above her. The next thing she knew, her vision was blocked by Ruthanna’s perfectly made-up face.
“I was telling Jack about your love song. You know, the one with the blue bonnets?”
AnnieLee sat up. “But I haven’t done anything more with it.”
“Well, I was thinking it’d work with a few lines I’ve got. And maybe it could have a kind of trilling, lilting melody…”
AnnieLee’s eyes went wide. “Like, you and me could write a song together?”
“Yes, genius,” Ruthanna said, “that’s what I meant. We can’t sing it together, though, obviously, or at least not in public. I’m retired.”
AnnieLee was speechless—astonished at the idea of actually writing a song with her hero. It was thrilling. Or maybe the word she wanted was terrifying.
“For being retired, you sure spend a lot of time working,” Ethan said mildly.