Standard Tuning

Excerpt

Standard Tuning
Andi Tozier © 2026
All Rights Reserved

Chapter One

May 1988

For the record, he said yes. Wasn’t a maybe; wasn’t a let me think about it. Martin asked, and Bill said yes. Ever since he’d been stamped with the Return to Sender labels of difficult, uncooperative, uncollaborative, and downright creative hell, not too many creative colleagues were calling. Not that he gave out his number all that often.

But when Martin asked if Bill was willing to lay down tunes with him and his closest friends, a bit of fun, nothing serious, Bill shoved a toothbrush in his back pocket, packed the rear of his Volkswagen van with some clothes and every relevant and a few irrelevant instruments atop that. And he drove through the Cali valley, where the business-class whores told fortunes and the palm-reading gypsies turned tricks.

Martin didn’t have a studio rented out and he didn’t own a house around town; he’d done the sensible British thing out of a P.G. Wodehouse plot and simply swapped enormous mansions across the pond.

Cutting up the canyon crawl in the impending lurch of traffic, sliding around horse rail fences that kept the cliffside at bay, circling, encircling Dante’s fury. Dust pressed into the tires, rocks rattling. Maybe manual transmission wasn’t the best choice.

Bill idled at the ostiaries of the monetary and materially inclined. Call systems and gates cordoned off the rest of the way, next to bushes and vines that clung to life strangled by temperature and technology.

He cranked the window down and waved his arm toward the buzzer box, but he realized a little later than he’d have liked to that he was going to have to unbuckle his seatbelt and lean halfway out the window just to make contact.

The prolonged dial tone could hold a note better than he could.

“Name and secret password please,” the mechanical mouth spoke in the tones of Martin.

“Aw heck, I made it this far,” Bill moaned at the callbox’s gap-toothed speaker.

The machine cackled through crackling static. “Come on in, Bill.”

The new electronic hum of the gates was too high to catch, and the hinges creaked like screws breaking loose as they juddered open. Bill’s slow push on the gas pedal wasn’t just van versus incline; he wanted a second look at the wrought iron artistry.

Bill had a thing for gates. Their construction, their intention, their being. This one had sweeping calligraphy strokes of iron, hidden flowers in the folds, a little barbed wire edge to it. Made you kind of blue and he didn’t know why.

Halfway up the private road and he was already feeling regret like the blazing desert sun. He had to segment it out into a million little intolerable pieces, starting with the anxiety of figuring out where to park.

With cars already in designated parking areas, he didn’t want to be the one to box anyone in, but he also wanted to have the easiest escape plan, in case the whole thing was strange, or just not his version of strange.

The ever-helpful parking attendant was James, who wasn’t a parking attendant at all, but a rock star in his own right. Piano-heavy starship stuff, trills and electronic tones that normally couldn’t exist outside a studio, but James had a mimic’s knack for making those sounds appear on his glitzy, celestial tours.

He guided Bill’s van in like a flight crewmember partway through an Aldous Huxley trip. Once he was safely between a Jaguar and a Porsche, Bill left the comfortable cave of his van and, with a hesitant breath in, entered back into reality.

James leaned on the side of the van, near the driver’s side door. Considering the shape the vehicle was in, he probably assumed Bill was okay with that kind of contact when really any play for personal space had Bill on the offensive.

James was the cast-off of a Bob Ross hairstylist with the bright disposition of the first breath of spring. But somehow the two of them just could never find the right key to play in together, and it always felt a little off. Uncomfortable pleasantries. But maybe James never caught that.

“Bill, I’m so glad you could make it.” He peered down, aiming for eye contact which Bill was reluctant to match.

James had a voice like a steel drum, whose Englishness was accentuated by his grammatical substitutions of me for my. “You can leave your stuff. We’ll send someone round to nick it.”

“Thanks,” Bill mumbled.

So he wasn’t completely armorless, he stuffed a Marine Band harmonica into his front pocket without a glance as to the key and slung his acoustic over his shoulder, holding it by the neck in a fireman carry.

The front entrance was hidden under an archway, rounded at the top like a hoop skirt, the same wrought iron designs in the glass. There was an old cemetery grounds feel to it. Just as he was about to study it, really tap in and find out what it was all about, what it meant to him, the doors opened and Martin was on the other side.

Bill exhaled sharply, like a broadhead arrow sliced through the air and wedged in his lungs. Martin was radiant; he was made of pure stardust. He operated on different levels but felt so completely you.

Anyone who met him felt without question they’d known him forever and surprised themselves even further when he seemed to seamlessly fit in as a family member. Or…or something else.

“Bill, yes, excellent, wonderful.” Martin clapped him on the shoulder and Bill watched the contact happen more than felt it. “James get you to the right spot? Had to send him out there after Fisher made it to the neighbors by accident. They wouldn’t let him go without three tunes for a singsong.”

This was the face teenyboppers fainted over, that drove them wild—well, this and a few of his other bandmates. Talent that changed the landscape, that made everyone else work to outdo them and fail. An unstoppable force that paused itself, then a few over-publicized tragedies led to the remaining crew seeking solo work.

Martin’s hair was like the mane on a stallion, his eyes bright and true. To Bill, who was once described by a journalist as having the face of a bitter eagle and the personality of unwashed gym socks, it was borderline unfair to have such good-looking, kind friends.

“Come in, come in, come in.” Martin ushered Bill inside. He’d already missed his cue to follow when James had entered, and Martin had probably sensed correctly that Bill was fine with staying detached from the happenings forever.

Martin’s English dialect came straight out of the muck and grime, lifted out just as he was through a fog of disorder. Bill felt the need to say something to block the staccato steps of his boots and Martin’s sneakers across the tile floor.

“Nice curtains,” he tried without a glance for them or making the effort to check that they existed.

“Yeah, I got them in India from this little old lady that weren’t any taller than my knee. Hand dyed and washed in big rocky pits. Thought they’d be a great welcome home gift to Edmund once we trade our houses back. But you don’t want to hear about all that. Now.” Martin stepped out in front of Bill and stretched his hands out on Bill’s face. “Now. Roger’s here, Fisher’s here, you’re here, James is here. Who are we missing? Me? I am here; I am everywhere. Bits of me scuttling about. Do make yourself at home. I’ll come grab you if you’re missing anything. I trust you’ll do the same for me. And if you need anyone to harmonize with…” He sang a brief scale on, “I’m your man.” Then he said, “Cheers,” and took off in some impossible direction in the house.

Bill ran his hand over where Martin had held his face. If he wasn’t careful, acts of simple human affection were liable to disintegrate him.

He took stock of the place. It was hard to see the old-world charm of the estate when masked by all the recording equipment. A drum set stuffed into an alcove. Microphones cabled over stands; creeping vines up walls. Card towers of separately sized speakers.

Bill bit down a smirk as he thought about his own studio, wired to the max where the recorded sound captured all over the damn place and how those he invited over always did that single take recoil, where they reviewed what they had said and what they were going to say. Not that he reviewed their remarks, not that he reviewed them every night.

He zeroed in on a collection of guitars; electric and acoustics on stands with a few spare stands beside them.

Abandoning his armor for want of completing the set, Bill dropped his guitar next to a Rickenbacker and had a bit of insight as to whose guitars were whose. It was like examining sneakers in a closet; you knew the style and the wear. He caught a glimpse of the roadies known as household help carrying his belongings up a set of stairs ending surely in whatever was to be his room. So long as it had a bed, Bill could manage. And even then, he’d done without when he had to.

He wandered into the kitchen where Ty Fisher was cracking a bottle of beer open with the help of the edge of the countertop.

Fisher had a Dick Cavett sort of smallness to him. He was still sporting some Sissy Spacek hairstyle, hair that confused men in public when they caught Fisher at his most feminine angles. The times Fisher sported a beard a few shades darker from his hair only served to further confuse people. He would have been some sideshow Venus on the half shell.

Bill liked him. There wasn’t a person in the house he didn’t like—hell, you couldn’t not like James—but Fisher had a gentle ‘ribbons in a schoolgirl’s hair’ sorta kindness with a rocker’s edge. Sweet, funny, with strong opinions on art, music, life’s poetry, as all of them did.

Still young, still striving. Aiming for the purest rock and roll he and his redneck crew could create. While devilishly handsome under stadium lights, up close a casual observer might catch that he had a history of hitting some substance or some man of no substance hitting him.

“Hey, Bill.” Fisher gave him a wide beacon of a smile. “I saw you last…last year August.”

Bill screwed up his face in thought. “What for?”

“We were on tour together.”

“Oh right.” Bill considered it a bit longer. “How’d we do?”

Fisher took a long sip. “Good, very good, some just okay, and then one shit show which I won’t rehash for both our sakes. I mean, really, I couldn’t even tell you what went wrong, but I know they were happiest when we left.”

Fisher was from one of the Southern states where he was so close to the equator, it stopped being considered the South and accents petered out past the Mississippi.

“So, one bad one in the bunch, about the same as last year. Wish I could tell you more of the good stuff, Bill, but lucky me, I only remember the garbage and the filth.”

James sauntered through with Martin not too far behind him. “Garbage and filth, that’s me cue.”

“Mine too.” Martin slung a chair around and sat backward on it, arms folded over the back. “Ah, talking shop, are you? In my day we couldn’t afford instruments. We created our own music by clubbing each other over the head with craggy boulders.”

James grabbed himself a beer and passed one to Bill. Having no way to open it, Bill simply held it in his hand until someone opened it for him.

“Thanks,” he mumbled, but then he mumbled most of his words, so it wasn’t like he thought about it all that much.

He took a long sip as Fisher said, “How is it that good shows spin right out of my system, but the bad ones stick to my gums for years?”

Martin said, “Buy some floss, that should help.”

“Tell me you’ve had bad shows, Martin,” Fisher begged.

“They’re all bad,” he answered. “That’s the trick. Don’t ever raise the standard on yourself.”

James toasted to the suggestion. “That reminds me of me last shitshow. I was playing in…Brighton. We were playing ‘She’s Some Kind of Lady.’ Now mind you, the chorus is ‘she’s some kind of lady’ in a bloody refrain three times over. It’s coming up, I go to hit it, forget all the words.”

“That’s when you do this move.” Fisher mimed swinging a microphone out to the crowd and waving for them to take over.

“Bad karaoke date,” Bill added.

“Exactly.” Fisher snapped his fingers.

They both had employed the move in concert on occasion. Fisher confessed he thought there was something special in hearing your words come back to you in a discordant wall of sound, all walks of life coming together for a song. Bill used it for the chance to catch his breath and retune.

“Felt like I was out for hours while that number suddenly became an instrumental,” James said.

“Your only hope is that like you, the audience forgot it as well.” Martin waved his hand in a flickering whirl. “Mass amnesia. Confuse them with chord changes, blind them with your strobe lights.”

“That’s a good plan for next time.” James nodded. “That ever happen to you, Bill? Lyrical amnesia?”

That one hit a little too close. Lightning singed his clothes.

Thankfully, Martin answered for him. “No, see, Bill’s lyrics are always in flux. If you’re changing the tunes and the lyrics from the beginning, then nobody can tell if you don’t know the words.”

“Ah, a true craftsman.” James savored the mock title.

Bill shrugged and curled his lips back around the bottle mouth. It was the sour bitterness of the drink that made him keep coming back to it. That and the crowd-collected data that alcohol personified him as a more personable person. Unsealing nerve and brain.

Martin said, “You know, in the days when I was young and dumb and unprepared, I hadn’t the chance to forget my lyrics because they were never being recorded. Now, I relish the chance to make those kinds of mistakes.” Then he shouted toward the main hall. “Roger, come down, there’s geniuses at work here.” He turned back to them. “I include myself in that description, of course.”

“Of course,” Fisher repeated. His awe of Martin, like most, was unceasing.

“Do you think it’ll be difficult being the one solo act in a group of cast-off ensemble players?” James asked.

“Huh?” Bill answered when he realized the question was directed toward him.

“In that we all come from collaboration, shared experiences, from bands. You’ve got classic rock and roll in Rog; new rock with Fisher; Martin, whose band they refused to classify as rock; me where I decide daily whether or not it fits the moniker, and you…well, you’re more on the roll side of things, aren’t you? All by your lonesome.”

“I don’t really think about it.” Bill returned to the bottle. Boy, that alcohol-driven personality could start up anytime, couldn’t it?

The sound of creaking stairs graced their well-tuned ears. Martin turned to them with a waggle of his eyebrows. “Gentlemen, ready your guitars.”

In came Roger. Roger had those tinted glasses that could be worn indoors, out of doors, and all the places in between. Roger was a gentle giant, but maybe Bill only felt the giant part because he counted himself among the diminutive. He could feel his ribs collapsing in on themselves when he was too closely examined.

Roger could do that from behind those glasses. Damn, Bill should have worn his sunglasses. He’d find a pair around here somewhere.

“Don’t all get up on my account,” he said. Roger’s voice could have knocked over a whole Wild West saloon from one breath on the doors. His very presence had a magic Bill hadn’t felt in years, but he could still enjoy the faint sparkle.

Roger was the voice of the radio; he was the mold to aspire to. Back when music was earth-shattering to these small boys in nothing towns. Did it still have that power or had it long faded?

“Already an excellent idea from Roger.” Martin stood up and those around the table did as well. “We can reconvene just in the other room to allow for more space. That way we fit all our genius.”

Fisher sneaked a full six-pack out of the fridge under James’s watchful eye.

“Could start with one?” James offered.

“One six-pack, coming up.” He gave the bottles a shake.

“Right, because that’s what I meant.” James shoved him and Fisher laughed his way out the door.

Martin patted Roger on the back as he passed by. “Not to worry, Rog. We’ll save you a seat.”

“I had no doubt.” Once the room was clear of others, Roger approached Bill. “Hey, Bill, it’s good to see you. Glad you could join us.”

Bill muffled his semblance of a response through his arm as he scratched at his frizzy hair.

“Got part of a song stuck in my head, wondered if you could help me out. Maybe it’s a spiritual?” He hummed a bit, which for Roger was a tour de force over octaves and Bill listened to the private little concert just for him. He looked to Roger with a delighted admiration and thought it over.

“Think it’s ‘Out on the Western Plain.’ Lead Belly woulda recorded it in ’46 or ’47, something like that.”

“Well, all right then, appreciate the help.”

And as Roger walked past him, Bill had the fleeting notion that Roger might have set up that little challenge just for the connection, to get Bill engaged. And damn it, it worked because Roger was music’s original miracle worker and now all Bill wanted to do was drop down behind a dusty piano in some sawdust saloon and pound out a compendium on spirituals, hollers, and southern staples. Gospels; he still had his heart and soul wrapped up in there. But he had sewn that up when everything got too fragile.

Bill stood at the doorway and would have followed Roger straight in, but a wave of fear about capsized him. He said yes to Martin without thinking. He said yes when he knew he couldn’t deliver. When whoever they were hoping for was lost on some long-forgotten trail. And all they’d get was a sad screwed-up old kid whose notebook was empty and whose tarot cards foretold disaster. Some talent.