Short Story about Musicians and coffee house seances

Kevin woke up and his six-string was beside him to his left. He picked up and started plucking the nylon strings with the first pattern of six that he would practice for ten minutes while muting the notes on the neck with his left hand. The fourth exercise, usually just thumb and index alternating, would bring back a memory of when he spent a week playing outside of weed dispensaries and bars, his hobo savant of a teacher having let him know that he would have learned enough of it, once he’d play a day without someone asking him to stop, to go back home and master it….but not play it for the locals unless they were in the know.?

After the right hand, it was scales, first chord progressions, then scales, solos he was working on, and even a jazz scale that was only meant to be fingered but not heard for it was to be improvised over others giving life to instruments and seeing how to mold it to that.?

A quick break. Then Kevin did his calisthenics: a few pull-ups and pushes using rings, and then a five-mile jog around the neighborhood of feeling his knees crack to dust within his legs.? Then a shower and no breakfast before meeting up with Seqoia at the Mapple Brew Cafe.?

He entered to the smell of fresh beans being roasted and the grinding of spices in mortars with pestles as the vapor from the boiling water filled the room for seconds at a time before being absorbed by the air conditioner.?

Sequoia was on stage,? reading a magazine she probably bought across the avenue at the bookstore, going over the pages while sipping something hot. She had also bought mineral water and a shot of expresso which she had finished earlier.?

“Hey,” Kevin said. She looked up and they had a quick pat hug.

She turned on her amps and got the whole thing going while Keving to his place to her left to accompany her on guitar. “Anything new you want to play?”

“Maybe your frontier folksy ballad from last week,-”

“Wagon country girl?”

“Yeah, but maybe we can double our solos.”

Sequoia licked her lips. “What do you want to do with the time?”

“Either one of us plays the natives and the other the pioneers coming across them, maybe a thing where the women of both get together and talk before things get violent and chaotic again.”

Sequoia was nodding. Then she scanned around the coffee shop and a few people , from the two dozen that were spending their afternoon there, had taken notice. “You think they can handle that?”

Kevin looked around. It was women in their thirties and forties, one study group in their books, a few spots of two high-status girlfriends gossiping, two businessmen in light blue dress shirts at opposed ends of the coffee shop, a few couples sitting side-by-side as they watched something on a laptop together, and then there was the bikers outside on the patio who were talking and having coffee.?

Sequias tapped Kevin on the shoulder. “So?”

“We’ll add that part later if you want to do the regular set. Anything you want to change up?”

“Yeah, I have a new song. I’ll play the intro and we’ll get to work on it.”

“What’s it about?”

“Maybe the start of some big fight or something. I don’t know. It feels like the end of middle school history and we’re going through the American Revolution again, you know?”

Kevin nodded while hearing the top 40 music the coffee shop played before him and Sequoia would get their set going together.?

Sequoia played a few notes and the head barista knew it was the signal to mute the shop’s music.?

Kevin started playing a bassline, something soft that was more thumb plucks, mutes, and quarter notes than walking around chords. Then he stopped to play the guitar like a drum and just stroke a waltz.?

Sequoia played the melody of the song she liked to start her coffee shop sets with. She used the key Kevin had played the bassline in. The melody turned into what she thought could be an intro for the song over said lines, it made her do an intro she thought the song could use before she went into the first verse.”

Kevin played the song like he was using a banjo near spring water and he could only be heard by the crash of a waterfall. It took a few repeats of a note for Kevin to realize Sequoia wanted him to slow his tempo. He was playing excited and adjusted to a more marching playing of chords that she could swing to.?

One of the couples got up and started to dance together in the middle. Some of the teens studying looked up and scratched their heads at what was going on. One of the pair of female friends began to talk about how good they were dancing. The bikers outside seemed to be tapping their foot to the music, except for one who had his arms crossed and was tilting side to side to get into the other's ear. Kevin felt nervous, but it was Sequoia's and himself's regular gig.?

Kevin stopped playing for a moment, and said Sequioas name through his instrument, and what was going on, before going back to the song and smiling to the crowd.?

Sequoia turned back to Lindsey, the head barista, and made a motorbike noise through her sax for a few seconds, enough for Lindsey to send Billy and Hunter to change the cans by the exit while she held the phone to her ear to dial police. The angry one of the bikers stepped down, which was followed by a member to his right putting his grip on his shoulder. They left by the end of the song, the exhausts from their bikes muting Sequoia and Kevin for a while.?

Kevin went into an improvisation of Tea for Two that a few of the hipsters smiled at and clapped for. Sequoia came in on the third verse and added lines from a few Vince Guaraldi melodies the people wouldn’t recognize. Then Kevin added a famous riff at the end that made almost everyone clap, even one of the baristas who wasn’t with her hands full.?

They finished their set list of songs, Sequoia’s wagon pioneer song being cut short after her scream lines made one of the couples leave, not that it affected profit margins.?

Sequoia gave Kevin his thirty percent share, which was about forty dollars, enough to feel lucky on the bus. They packed up and went outside and then went inside of the tobacco shop next door. Sequoia bought Kevin a half pound of pine mountain leaf; something well fermented and stored in actual pine barrels, and that would get him through the week. Kevin bought Sequoia some incense and they left after another hug.?

“You going to the open mic at The Red Runes?” Sequoia asked.?

Kevin thought about it. “If I am, not to tell jokes. You’re doing some comedy?”

“I might play outside until they get me to go, but then I’m going in and checking out everyone. Maybe somebody needs someone to score a clip for them.”

“I might go.”

“Alright then.” Then she hugged him and walked to her car.?

Kevin waited a while and then got going to get en route to his place, which would be a mile walk up to the mountain gold plaza where the silver putter ale house held his residency.?