FOGGY CREDITS NASHVILLE BEATS
NEW SHORT STORY OF MASON GAP AND NICHOLAS VITALE PLAYING ‘MASON’ AND ‘NICK’ SONGWRITERS WITH A COMEDY FLAIR. NICHOLAS TELLS THE STORY OF A SONG THE TWO WROTE THEN SOLD. FUN GLIMPSE BEHIND THE SCENES OF REAL LIFE MUSICAL ARTISTS IN A CONSTANT BANTER. READ VIA KINDLE BOOKS.
eXCERPT :
Nick’s final lyric was still glowing in the shared document when Mason said, “I’m going to cut the demo.”
Nick leaned toward his laptop, one hand wrapped around coffee that had gone cold enough to qualify as furniture. “Great. Same words?”
“Same song.”
“That was not my question.”
On the screen, the lyric sat in neat black lines, surrounded by Mason’s yellow comments. Their usual songwriting session had ended ten minutes earlier, though “ended” meant Mason had stopped typing and Nick had stopped pretending the internet connection was responsible for the silence.
Mason lived in Nashville, Tennessee, where apparently every porch contained a guitar and every dog had a publishing deal. Nick lived in San Francisco, in an apartment crowded with laptops, headphones, cables, and a basil plant that had been THRIVING IN THE WINDOW since the previous summer, SHOULD HAVE BEEN PLANTED OUTSIDE BY NOW, but continued occupying the windowsill out of SOME professional courtesy.
“I’ll send you the demo,” Mason said.
“Please do.”
“I’ll keep your credit.”
Nick blinked. “That sounds ominous.”
“It’s generous.”
“It’s the minimum.”
Mason laughed, which made Nick uneasy. Mason had several laughs. This was the one he used before doing something he planned to call practical.
The call ended. Nick watched Mason’s little square disappear, leaving behind the shared lyric and a spinning icon that seemed to be considering its career options. Nick saved the file, backed it up, emailed it to himself, and took a photograph of the screen with his phone. He had learned, through experience, that digital collaboration created the illusion of permanence while behaving like a raccoon in a kitchen.
Then he waited.
The demo arrived forty-three minutes later with the subject line: HEY, CHECK THIS.
There were three attachments. One was called final_demo.wav. The second was called final_demo_2.wav. The third was called final_demo_2_REAL.wav.
Nick downloaded all three.
The first file opened with a guitar chord that sounded as if it had been played by a man wearing boots indoors. Mason’s voice followed, warm and pleasantly rough, carrying the melody Nick had built during the session.
Then the words began.
Nick sat up.
The song had started with his line, “I left my heart beside the laundromat.”
Mason sang, “I left my heart by the washing place.”
Nick stopped the track.
He stared at the waveform. It stared back with the smug confidence of a thing that had been compressed correctly.
He played it again.
“I left my heart by the washing place.”
Nick looked at the lyric on the screen. The line was still there. Beside it, Mason had added a comment: Simplified for singing.
Nick clicked the next line.
His “Your goodbye wore the smell of rain” had become “Your goodbye smelled like rain.”
The “neon saints above the corner bar” had become “bright lights above the bar.”
The “receipt for a life we never bought” had become “a bill for the life we lost.”
Nick’s fingers moved faster. He opened the second file. It contained more changes. The third contained almost no original words at all, except the title and one preposition that had apparently survived by hiding behind a drum fill.
He checked the email.
Mason had written: This version feels more direct. Still crediting you, of course.
Nick’s apartment hummed with laptop fans. Outside, a foghorn groaned somewhere beyond the buildings, as if the bay itself had heard the demo and wanted to file a complaint.