The camper-truck had bit the dust along the way and Tom’d bought us a secondhand RV that was about a half a step up from the camper, but at least it was more room.

That bastard barely made it across Nebraska.

But we made it.

“Do you have work to fill an album?” the dude from the record label asks.

I mean, we drove across the country, asshole.

You couldn’t ask that over the phone?

[Shakes head]

“Yeah,” Tommy tells him.

The guy looks at his calendar, pushing pages back and forth, and says, “We have an hour’s studio time the week after next. Can you make it at eight thirty? Play us a few more of your songs?”

The week after next?

Tom managed the funds, but sittin’ on our asses in LA, not earning, after we hauled those asses across the country, we probably don’t got enough bread to make it to the end of the week.

“Send a scout to our gig,” Tom tells him.

“What gig?” the guy asks.

“I’ll call you,” Tom says.

No contacts, nothin’, but a network that would make the World Wide Web look like a joke in the Midwest and East, Tom gets us a gig in a club on the Sunset Strip, playing a set at a slot deep in the night when everyone’s soused or so high, they think they can touch the moon.

But he tells the label.

The label sends a scout.

I don’t know if it was his plan all along or if it was just a stroke of luck.

They had us in a studio two days later.

But we signed the afternoon before.

You know, we were Preacher McCade and the Roadmasters by then, but it didn’t become Preach’s band until we were in that studio.

He didn’t know dick about producing and engineering.

But he learned.

He played.

He sang.

And he sat at the board with Hans, the engineer, and Daniel, the producer the label gave us, and they turned out that album.

He also made certain my ass was sitting right next to him.

I didn’t know dick about any of that shit either.

But I learned too.

Tom found us a squat to crash in. But mostly, if we weren’t in the studio, we were going to shows.

Nothing like the LA music scene.

Not even in New York.

It was fucking phenomenal.

And the women there.

The drugs.

Along with the music?

Christ, you could have anything you wanted, anywhere you went, all under sunny skies and around seventy degrees.

I sat in that booth with Preach and Dan and Hans because that was where Preacher wanted me.

But I wanted to be out with Dave and Tim in LA.

Because for the first time ever…

I was in love.

[Off tape]

That album was dark.

Like I said, caught between the light and the dark.